supanon's Blog

You've spent many hours researching mobile phones and finally found one that meets all of your needs. Now the tough part begins. With the many facets and features of cell phones service plans, which one is right for you and your family? A good way to begin is by first determining whether you need a plan just for you, or whether a plan encompassing more than one phone may benefit you more. Here are a few pointers to get you started.

Individual Plans

Individual plans vary from carrier to carrier, but there are a couple of issues that are generally core to cell phones service: coverage and value. If you plan to travel with your, you will benefit from looking into what sort of wireless services your carrier offers.

No matter how great the plan seems, it is of absolute no value if you get stranded in an area where your carrier has no service. Roaming charges can be quite substantial. Get an idea of the number minutes you anticipate using during a billing period.

Make sure you choose service that includes enough minutes plus breathing room. Extra charges or "overages" apply once you've talked past your allotted minutes. Many carriers now let you roll over certain minutes from month to month. Find a cell phone carrier with a competitive plan that fits how often and how long you talk.

Family Plans

As with individual plans, family plans can vary by carrier. The two main factors in picking a family's wireless services are shared minutes and network calling. It's pretty essential to find a plan that allows family members to call each other without using up minutes.

This is a great way to use mobile phones as a means of communicating between family members without using up shared minutes. And did you know that plan members don't have to live in the same household. You can set up your aging parents who live nearby or your oldest child who just moved out on her own.

Don't be intimidated by doing some research to help you make your decision regarding cell phones service. Also know that mobile phone carriers are very competitive and want your business. Inquire about what they can do for you. Give them a chance to earn your business.

Take advantage of trial usage periods some providers offer. It is a good way to determine if they can provide the coverage you need and give you flexibility in when and how your minutes are used, along with satisfactory customer service.

We've all heard that it is important to exercise. The experts tell us we should exercise every day. I will be the first to agree with you that there are some people who smoke like a chimney, drink alcohol like a fish, eat junk food daily and still live to be 100 years old. This is definitely the exception and not the rule. How many of these people do you know? I don't know any. On the other hand I do know many who live a much healthier lifestyle and exercise regularly.

The choice is entirely up to us as individuals. Are we really willing to take the risk? Exercise, and for that matter, daily exercise should be non negotiable. As the cliche goes, 'Just Do It'. Maybe to give an example - have you ever been in a car that has only been driven to church and back on Sundays, and then a teenager takes it on the expressway at wide open throttle. Initially it is quite sluggish; it hasn't been through those paces for a while. Similarly our bodies need to be kept active and in tip top shape.

We pick up toxins daily, from our environment, from the food and drinks we consume, from the stress of daily life. Our body deals with these toxins as best as it can. But when we have too many toxins our body does what it can and then it leaves the rest for another time. Well think about it, if we keep storing more and more toxins, then over time aren't we creating the environment for something major to happen. We are setting ourselves up for a major explosion. If we don't deal with these toxins our body will deal with them as best it can, and it will do it in its way, likely not what we would have chosen.

Have you ever gotten a little sniffle, then taken a couple of aspirin and continued your busy schedule. A couple of days later a fever starts and you know you should get some rest, but the report has to get done and you get 3 hours of sleep and grab some junk food instead of a good meal. Your body has been trying to get your attention, the sniffle was a tap on the shoulder, the fever was a stronger tap, but since you ignored those hits your body smacks you across the side of the head with a 2 by 4 and now a week later you have the flue, pneumonia or worse. Had you taken care of yourself, gotten exercise and rest this would not have happened, or it definitely would not have been as bad.

Our bodies can handle a certain amount of stress, this is a natural process. It is when this stress gets out of hand, and in these hectic days it seems to be more of the norm. Exercise is our body's way of physically releasing this stress. In other words by exercising we improve our ability to cope with the every day stress, and we improve our health. Therefore the bottom line is exercising needs to be a vital part of our everyday lives.

At last, spring has finally sprung and we can once again venture outside and enjoy the great outdoors. Traditionally, this is the time of year when weekend warriors all over the nation dust off their racquets and begin their mass exodus toward whatever passes for a tennis court in order to play what is arguably one of the most popular games in the UK.

Considering the popularity of the game, you'd think that those who play tennis would be serious about their conditioning. After all, with a sport that requires rapid direction change, explosive power output and a huge anaerobic component, the demands placed upon the body can be immense. Unfortunately though, many players rely on playing the game itself once or twice a week as their only means of physical preparation and often fall foul of injury as a result.

In fact, statistics tells us that over 6ooo UK adults are injured every year due to tennis participation (HASS Report 1998) with lateral ankle sprains, ACL/MCL/LCL and rotator cuff injuries becoming more and more prevalent. And lest you think these problems are confined to older adults only, think again. It has been reported that more than 4700 youths under 15 years of age are treated for tennis related injuries every year with many of these due to lack of physical preparation.

Clearly then, there is a great need (and a great market!) for Personal Trainers to develop conditioning plans that reduce injury risk and increase performance amongst tennis players. But where do we start?

Well, it has been argued that ANY conditioning programme is better than none and for the most part this has been found to be true. As Wayne Westcott demonstrated last year with golfers, a general programme of strength, flexibility and cardiovascular conditioning can have positive effects on sports people regardless of the sport or position they play. That said, it is important to recognise that all sports, and all players for that matter, have their own unique performance profiles which, when addressed through correct conditioning programmes, can dramatically reduce the chance of injury and increase player efficiency.

Player Profiling

Long before we ever put a weight into our budding tennis players' hands or suggest a stretching programme to address flexibility deficits, we need to learn about the 'machinery' that comprises the movement system of that unique individual. A thorough assessment of the individual joints, muscles and neurological recruitment patterns can tell us almost everything we need to know about the neuromuscular integrity of our athletes including:

- Which muscles are facilitated

- Which muscles are inhibited

- Patterns of synergistic dominance

- Postural distortion patterns

- Inner/outer unit dysfunctions

- Motor pattern irregularities

- Functional range of motion compensations

As complicated as this assessment may sound, it is in fact a relatively straight-forward process which, with a little study and practice, can remove the guesswork from your programming protocols, speeding up the results in the process and virtually eliminating the chances of injury.

For example, during a Kinetic Chain Assessment (KCA) of a tennis player we'll often find the following:

Static Posture

Regular tennis players will often exhibit forward head posture, depression and internal rotation of racquet arm, anterior tilting of pelvis and hyperextension of the knees. All of which are created by dominance patterns within the sport itself e.g. internal rotation and depression caused by myofascial shortening of the pectorals (major and minor), Latissimus dorsi, Teres major and Subscapularis as a result of overuse of the limb.

Fundamental Movement Profile

Using a standard lunge or squat pattern (both particularly relevant to the sport) often indicates the following movement dysfunctions:

- Pronation of the feet - Poor eccentric deceleration of the foot by the Tibialis anterior

- Medial tracking of the knees - Dominance of adductors over relatively weak gluteal group

- Abdominal protrusion - Weak inner unit

- Anterior pelvic tilt - Weak outer unit/ dominant erector spinae and lats

- Increased thoracic kyphosis - Inhibition of rhomboids by pectorals

Neurological Recruitment Assessment

When the reciprocal relationships between opposing muscle groups become affected by facilitation or inhibition there follows an altered recruitment sequence in the muscles creating movement around the joints.

In tennis players we'll often find that the muscles that abduct the shoulder 'fire' out of sequence leading to overuse of the Trapezius and cervical musculature creating a condition causing overuse and stress-type injuries to these areas. In addition, the gluteal musculature will often become inhibited by the overused quadriceps leading to a pattern of dominance in the lumbar erectors and hamstrings.

Space doesn't allow for a full description of the KCA but as you can see, the information gained from this type of assessment is invaluable in creating programmes that are specific to each and every individual player.

Tennis is a sport unlike any other. Played within a small confined area, players are expected to accelerate a ball at speeds often exceeding 100 mph whilst moving in any and all directions and from any number of body positions.

With so many variables to address it's often difficult for personal trainers to know where to begin with their programming efforts. Many place their emphasis on developing extra power for the serve (a mistake in an already overdeveloped area) whilst others focus on developing upper body strength-endurance for the rallies. This is the way it's always been done for tennis conditioning, after all it's predominantly an upper body game isn't it?

Well, the upper body may be responsible for delivering the ball to the opponent's side of the net, but in truth, the upper body has relatively little to do during the game (I said relatively!). For example, consider the following statistics:

- The ball is in play for a mere 23-26% of the total match time

- The ball is exchanged only 2.91 times per point

- A rally lasts between 4 and 4.5 seconds.

That's not a lot of upper body time is it? Yet how much 'gym time' gets devoted to upper body conditioning for tennis players? Clearly, we need to re-think our approach if we're going to affect our players performance and keep them from injury.

Activity Demand Analysis (ADA)

The key to creating a meaningful programme for any sport lies in gaining a clear understanding of the demands it places upon the body. For example:

Bio-energetic demands - Which energy systems dominate the activity? (All three energy systems are ALWAYS at work to a greater or lesser degree). With an average duration of only 4 or so seconds per rally it's clear that the phosphocreatine (PC) is the dominant energy system therefore any successful training programme needs to reflect this.

Muscle Contraction Spectrum - What form dominates the muscle contraction TYPE? For example, what is the ratio of eccentric, isometric and concentric contraction?

Tennis is clearly concentric dominant through the racquet arm yet the contribution of the core musculature and lower body clearly requires eccentric force reduction, isometric stabilisation and force production in almost equal measure.

Contraction Velocity Spectrum - What form do the muscle contractions take?

Are they slow, rhythmical, reactive or explosive?

Obviously, the nature of tennis and the skill of the player mean that contraction velocities will change but which dominate? During the serve, the action will be explosive for the racquet arm and core musculature yet will change to become more reactive during the rally as the player focuses slightly more on accuracy and less on pure power.

The lower body, by contrast, will often require a high level of isometric strength in order to create a stable base during the serve yet move to a more reactive and even explosive requirement during the rally.

Dominant plane of motion - Again, depending on the skill, experience and style of the player we need to emphasise the planes which require the most attention during conditioning.

For example, during the average game 47% of the time is spent moving forward (Saggital plane), 48% moving sideways (Frontal plane) and only 5% moving backward (Saggital). Therefore it makes sense to condition tennis players predominantly in the frontal and transverse planes (rotary) if we wish to reduce injury risk and increase player potential.

In contrast, the upper body movements required of tennis are predominantly transverse or rotary movements with almost no frontal plane (lateral) and only the occasional saggital plane work during service or 'smash' type movements.

Activity Duration - What is the work to rest ratio of the activity? How long will the player perform continuously and what sort of rest will they get before they perform again? These factors need to be ascertained and then programmed for.

In Conclusion

As you can see, tennis is a rather complex sport to programme for. With such far-ranging and often opposing demands from the upper and lower body, many personal trainers tend to either overcomplicate or oversimplify the training requirements for each of these areas leading to programmes that, at best, yield little if any improvement in performance and at worst, increase the likelihood of injury.

The answer to this problem is simple really.

First, identify the unique functional integrity of the individual.

Use a KCA or similar to identify weak links in the chain and endeavour to formulate a corrective exercise strategy that addresses any dysfunctions that are present. Often you'll find that just by correcting these dysfunctions with your player that their game will improve dramatically.

Second, with dysfunctions corrected, use the ADA to create a programme that addresses the various unique requirements of the sport.

Determine where your clients' strengths and weaknesses lie in relation to the sporting demands and endeavour to reduce any weaknesses (speed, strength, agility, flexibility etc).

This approach may sound far too simple for many of you, especially those who fancy themselves as 'conditioning specialists' and the like, but consider this; each and every aspect of the programme that you design this way is based upon hard scientific fact rather than personal preference and guesswork and as such is certain to bring your client real success.

And after all, isn't that why they hired you in the first place?