BackTennis fitness: A marathon in sprints
Is there any sporting feat that matches the speed, grit and endurance of a gruelling five-setter?
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The speeches would not end. Novak Djokovic began to wilt first, dropping his head for a second and then swinging his arms in discomfort. Seconds later, Rafael Nadal let a grimace creep on to his famously stoic face. Then, in a moment that seemed choreographed, both bent forward, palms meeting knees simultaneously. Over the deliberate voice of Tae Hyun (Thomas) Oh, chief operating officer of motor vehicle company Kia Motors Corp., they must have imagined a rumbling sound as lactic acid built up in their muscles, sending waves of pain through their legs and eventually forcing them to sit down. The crowd applauded as chairs were rushed on to court even as Stephen Healy, the president of Tennis Australia, was still praising Djokovic and Nadal for their epic match. It was inspirational: two men had given of themselves till they literally had no more.
It was the 2012 Australian Open final, and Nadal and DjokovDjokovicic had played 5 hours and 53 minutes of some of the fastest, most intense tennis ever witnessed. It had taken heart, and now theirs could no longer pump oxygen to their muscles fast enough.
This doesn’t usually happen in tennis. The rest periods in between points and games usually allow the body to recover from bursts of anaerobic activity. But in tennis there is no defined length of a match, no limit an athlete can plan for when preparing himself, and therefore the effects of matches on a player’s body can vary dramatically.
It is due to this unpredictability that tennis has provided us with some of the most remarkable displays of fitness and endurance in sport, especially over the past decade. Unlike a marathon runner, a cyclist or a triathlete, tennis players cannot pace themselves for long contests. They have to play the first set without knowing whether the match will last 2 hours or 5, hitting every shot as hard as they can, running for every ball and stretching for every volley. To a viewer, there are few more impressive feats of strength and endurance than a tennis player getting through a five-setter.
So are tennis players the pinnacle of fitness? It is hard to measure what a tennis player does against other sportsmen because the sport requires such a wide variety of movements. It is also difficult because the amount of energy tennis players expend varies from one game to another. When you calculate averages, tennis usually compares unfavourably to other sports. The average distance covered by a player in a tennis match, for example, is much less than that covered by a footballer or a basketball player. Statistics from the 2014 Australian Open show that David Ferrer was the most active player on the court, covering around 3.3km per match. In comparison, top basketball players cover more than 4km per match. Basketball players also play more matches per season, sometimes over 100, compared to between 70 and 90 for top tennis players, and spend more active time on the court per match.
And, of course, they were using almost every muscle in their upper body while doing all that running. To truly appreciate the requirements of tennis, you have to go through a player’s moves one by one.
It begins with the serve. It is among the fastest things you will see in sports. Australian Samuel Groth’s 263 kmph (Busan Open in South Korea, 2012) bomb is actually the fourth fastest hit in sports, behind only the fastest badminton smash, the hardest golf drive and the fastest jai-alai throw.
While serving, a tennis player’s body goes through an overhead motion similar to that of a baseball pitcher’s. According to a study, by sports scientist Marc A. Keller of Western Washington University, US, published in 2012, the shoulder and elbow move around their axes faster during a serve than during a pitch. Again, if you compare averages, a professional pitcher has more overhead movements per game than a tennis player. Currently, the most active pitcher in Major League Baseball is pitching over 107 times a game, while Djokovic in 2015 has completed about 102 serves per match.
However, when you look at outliers, it is incredible how tennis dwarfs other sports. In the 2010 Wimbledon marathon between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut, the players sent down 621 and 650 serves, respectively. In comparison, the record number of pitches in a baseball match since 2005 is 149. That means tennis has produced one of the most dynamic displays of sustained shoulder strength in sport. Once a player serves, he begins hitting forehands, which also require high angular velocity and strength.
Reid and Duffieled explain that you cannot consider the physiological impact of tennis without considering extended matches between top players, which are often not only longer, but have much more action than regular games. In the 2012 Australian Open final, Nadal and Djokovic hit 1,100 groundstrokes, and more than 40% of their rallies lasted more than eight shots, well over the average of 2.5-3 strokes per rally estimated by other studies. This meant Nadal and Djokovic would have been changing direction several times in each point.
They would also have been using various types of movement to get to the ball. The study, Endurance: Basic, Semi-specific And Specific, by sports scientists Ferrauti A., Weber K. and Wright P.R., published in 2003, calculated that 80% of shots a tennis player hits are within 2.5m of his body, requiring him to take one stride towards the ball. On 10% of the shots, a player has to move 2.5-4.5m to get to the ball and will often do so using a sliding motion. Only when the ball is more than 4.5m does a player actually run to get to the ball. Changes in direction and style of movement increase a person’s oxygen uptake, requiring a higher level of fitness than if the person had to repeat a similar motion continuously.
Tennis players also have to deal with different surfaces and equipment—different balls are used for different surfaces—which requires changes in training methods and style of play.
It is not surprising that top-ranked tennis players score high marks on fitness tests. Nadal is reported to have aerobic fitness—measured by VO2 max, the maximal rate at which your body pumps oxygen to the muscles—comparable to long-distance cyclists, considered the toughest endurance athletes. Combine that with the tremendous strength required to lash top-spin forehands at over 100 kmph and there is a compelling case to declare tennis players the most impressive athletes on the planet.
Eventually, though, what matters most is the spectacle, for it is that which makes one’s hair stand on edge. Whether or not the biometrics concur, there is something about watching a single man or woman, with no team behind them, sprint across a court, glide forward and backward, and whip balls back and forth. There are few images in sport like two men at a trophy ceremony, leaning on a net to relieve their weary bodies, after almost 6 hours of doing that over and over.
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