Tennis seems like an exhausting sport involving complex full body movements under continuous duration.
Why is it then that good amateur tennis players have kind of dumpy looking bodies (no upper body, sometimes pudgy looking, rectangular etc.)?
You would think they would be cut with some nice upper body strength. Even some of the pros don't look that impressive.
I reject your entire premise as being fallacious.
What else ya got?
How could a person with no upper body be pudgy?
On the women's side in the pros, there is some belief that a little extra weight helps with power. On the men's side, they are extremely fit. They just wear baggy clothes all the time. The current men's game favors endurance over power because the larger balls have slowed the game considerably after advance in racket technology made it a battle of aces. So, top players like RF are lighter and expend less energy moving around and returning balls.
Your local pros usually have day jobs. My son takes lessons from a woman who plays challenger tournaments every now and then. She has a full time job with an energy company. So, her training load is not that much compared to a full time pro.
It's kind of a skinny fat look - no body definition. Also I realize amateurs/local pros etc. train less but they still play almost daily.
contradiction wrote:
How could a person with no upper body be pudgy?
Because they are unfit.
What is a good amateur? Pros are fit but I am an amateur so of course I may be unfit. Good amateur runners are unfit also. Look at the other stupid thread about a 72 second 400 runner that people are claiming to be good. The guy is probably way overweight.
As a fair tennis player (A/B level, 5.0 NTRP rating) most of the players I encountered were in awesome shape. Better overall than runners; especially the older women. Yeah and it's a brutal sport. A couple attempts at open class a few times resulted in being sent home with my racquet protruding from where I couldn't see it.
You could say the same about any sport, say basketball. You'd think they'd all be cut but some have rectangular bodies and some look downright pudgy.
That said, this is the type of build many top tennis players have:
Nadal has more muscle bulk than the average tennis player. Most have pretty lean upper bodies - i.e. Fed, Djockavic, A Zverev. The only "skinny fat" pros that come to mind are Raonic and Jack Sock.
You can definitely have minimal fitness and be a good amateur. It's all about racket skills and the differential is huge at the amateur level. Most of the time your opponents aren't good enough to move you around and wear you out.
thisguy wrote:
Nadal has more muscle bulk than the average tennis player. Most have pretty lean upper bodies - i.e. Fed, Djockavic, A Zverev. The only "skinny fat" pros that come to mind are Raonic and Jack Sock.
You can definitely have minimal fitness and be a good amateur. It's all about racket skills and the differential is huge at the amateur level. Most of the time your opponents aren't good enough to move you around and wear you out.
Raonic and Sock aren't thin enough to be skinny fat...they're just a little chubby. There's some American, Donaldson maybe?, that seems more skinny fat.
Are you kidding, tennis is about one step up from ping pong. They don't have to be athletic at all.
They run at most about 10 meters in any direction. 10 meters!
thisguy wrote:
It's all about racket skills and the differential is huge at the amateur level. Most of the time your opponents aren't good enough to move you around and wear you out.
I would say that the racket technology has largely taken away the skill and fitness needed to play the game. If you look at the days when wooden rackets were used, players like Borg were much more lean and had better endurance compared with today's players. They also hit ball much cleaner as the wooden rackets had a much smaller sweet spot than today's carbon fibre rackets. Today, players can pretty much just stand at the base line and just swing and club the ball; there is no longer any finesse to the game. Tennis governing bodies should enforce wooden rackets again with a restriction on racket head size and the game would become great again. This is not backward thinking: baseball has restrictions on bats, and in running springs are not allowed in shoes.
Bring back wooden rackets wrote:
thisguy wrote:
It's all about racket skills and the differential is huge at the amateur level. Most of the time your opponents aren't good enough to move you around and wear you out.
I would say that the racket technology has largely taken away the skill and fitness needed to play the game. If you look at the days when wooden rackets were used, players like Borg were much more lean and had better endurance compared with today's players. They also hit ball much cleaner as the wooden rackets had a much smaller sweet spot than today's carbon fibre rackets. Today, players can pretty much just stand at the base line and just swing and club the ball; there is no longer any finesse to the game. Tennis governing bodies should enforce wooden rackets again with a restriction on racket head size and the game would become great again. This is not backward thinking: baseball has restrictions on bats, and in running springs are not allowed in shoes.
Borg didn't play with a wooden racket.
one problem with that suggestion wrote:
Bring back wooden rackets wrote:
I would say that the racket technology has largely taken away the skill and fitness needed to play the game. If you look at the days when wooden rackets were used, players like Borg were much more lean and had better endurance compared with today's players. They also hit ball much cleaner as the wooden rackets had a much smaller sweet spot than today's carbon fibre rackets. Today, players can pretty much just stand at the base line and just swing and club the ball; there is no longer any finesse to the game. Tennis governing bodies should enforce wooden rackets again with a restriction on racket head size and the game would become great again. This is not backward thinking: baseball has restrictions on bats, and in running springs are not allowed in shoes.
Borg didn't play with a wooden racket.
He did when he was good in his first career. Then he reluctantly adopted the modern racquet for his comeback. Didn't work.
I was affiliated with a D1 men’s tennis team for a while and got to the know the players well and watched a lot of tournament tennis and would agree there’s something to the OP’s post. It was rare to see an athlete who gave an obvious impression of being physically dominant. Lots of the male players seemed small and/or skinny and unathletic and many of the women, frankly, were pudgy. Weight-training and fitness work-outs just didn’t seem to be a big part of the training regimen and practices focused on skills, drills, tactics, and practice matches. On the court, some players with high motors chased every point like madmen and women, but many others favored cautious, low-energy styles of play that conserved strength for long multi-set matches.
From the players’ perspective, however, it was an article-of-faith that a grueling three (or five) set match was the toughest physical challenge imaginable, that the best way to prepare for it was by playing matches (not cross-training), and that no amount of fitness, strength, and size could overcome lack of skill or psychological aptitude for playing well under pressure.
Any top-tier players care to comment?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZZMuXBr_Hk&frags=pl%2CwnSigh Borg wrote:
one problem with that suggestion wrote:
Borg didn't play with a wooden racket.
He did when he was good in his first career. Then he reluctantly adopted the modern racquet for his comeback. Didn't work.
Tennis Watcher wrote:
I was affiliated with a D1 men’s tennis team for a while and got to the know the players well and watched a lot of tournament tennis and would agree there’s something to the OP’s post. It was rare to see an athlete who gave an obvious impression of being physically dominant. Lots of the male players seemed small and/or skinny and unathletic and many of the women, frankly, were pudgy. Weight-training and fitness work-outs just didn’t seem to be a big part of the training regimen and practices focused on skills, drills, tactics, and practice matches. On the court, some players with high motors chased every point like madmen and women, but many others favored cautious, low-energy styles of play that conserved strength for long multi-set matches.
From the players’ perspective, however, it was an article-of-faith that a grueling three (or five) set match was the toughest physical challenge imaginable, that the best way to prepare for it was by playing matches (not cross-training), and that no amount of fitness, strength, and size could overcome lack of skill or psychological aptitude for playing well under pressure.
Any top-tier players care to comment?
Good post. I wasn't a top tier player, but I played (local) competitively for years. For me, a large part of being successful in tennis, after getting to a high skill level (at least it was for me) was simply being composed in matches and not choking. You'll get to a point where guys can hit all the shots in warm ups and practice, serve at 100+ but when it counts, something happens to lots of players and they can't carry over the skills that they have into matches. It would be like a guy who could run 5 minute 1600m intervals all day long, but then couldn't break 19 in a 5k race. In tennis, this happens.
I was good for awhile, but then started choking and it just feeds on itself. I got so disgusted with myself that I quit. It's no fun all of the sudden losing matches because you start choking and lose your stroke. It's actually one of the things that I really enjoy about running. You can't choke. If you can run fast in practice, you can run fast in a race; your brain can't somehow get involved and slow you down; or can it...do any runners actually choke in that sense, I've never seen it?
i don't even play tennis but i don't even have to look at google to know that OP is a retard and professional tennis players are actually in really good shape.. he's probably some bodybuilding or nfl fan moron that thinks more muscle = more athletic/better shape.
whyisitthisway wrote:
Tennis seems like an exhausting sport involving complex full body movements under continuous duration.
Why is it then that good amateur tennis players have kind of dumpy looking bodies (no upper body, sometimes pudgy looking, rectangular etc.)?
You would think they would be cut with some nice upper body strength. Even some of the pros don't look that impressive.
Who told you that they look unfit? Do you think the duffers at the local park are high level amateurs? Do you think the fat hobby joggers in your neighborhood are sub-elite?
Is there a rule against attaching a helium balloon to yourself while running a road race?
Am I living in the twilight zone? The Boston Marathon weather was terrible!
How rare is it to run a sub 5 minute mile AND bench press 225?
Move over Mark Coogan, Rojo and John Kellogg share their 3 favorite mile workouts
Mark Coogan says that if you could only do 3 workouts as a 1500m runner you should do these
Red Bull (who sponsors Mondo) calls Mondo the pole vaulting Usain Bolt. Is that a fair comparison?