OnTheLine blog

Fueling Your Body for Success: Tennis Nutrition

You re-string your racket, re-wrap the grip, and pick up a new pair of shoes when you start slipping on the court. But what do you do to maintain the good working condition of your body? It's the most important aspect of playing tennis: when your body has shut down, you're completely incapable of finishing a set, much less winning a match. Fortunately, you can engineer your nutrition to meet your tennis-playing needs and enable you to succeed where you've been challenged before by fatigue, injury, or illness. Manage your energy, immune system, and glycogen levels with a diet that's focused on your tennis activity.

Adhere to a Balanced Diet

The USTA recommends that tennis players take control of their daily diets rather than leaving the absorption of necessary nutrients to chance. This means making the commitment to a diet regimen that provides the carbohydrates, fats, proteins, minerals, vitamins, fiber, and water needed by bodies that experience extended vigorous physical activity. To maintain a balanced diet, the following should be consumed daily:
* 3 ounces of whole grains (bread, pasta, cereal, crackers, rice, and other foods)
* 2.5 to 3 cups of vegetables (dark green vegetables are best, such as spinach and Swiss chard, because they help balance an acidic diet with alkaline properties)
* 2 cups of fruit
* 3 cups of milk products (choose low-fat varieties to get enough of the fat you need without consuming too much)
* 5.5 to 6.5 ounces of protein (meat, eggs, beans, nuts, and seeds)
* 5-7 teaspoons of oil (vegetable and nut oils such as olive oil)
* Supplementary calories as needed (try upgrading from low-fat to regular milk products if you find that you're not taking in enough calories for your activity level)

Avoid Nutritional Risk Factors

In addition to avoiding vitamin and mineral deficiencies by maintaining a balanced diet, it's important to avoid excessive saturated fats, sugars, and alcohol. Supplementary calories should be chosen with care and deliberately calculated to satisfy caloric needs, not cravings. To reduce your nutritional risk level, keep all of your food as organic as possible.

Compensate for Energy Expenditures and Rehydrate

Jump on the carbo-loading bandwagon to help keep your energy levels up for extended matches. Because you can end up playing tennis for over five hours at a time (or, as Isner and Mahut showed us this year at Wimbledon, eleven hours), your body's energy supply can become depleted and fatigue can overwhelm you. Carbohydrates are the most readily available energy source during high-intensity play, so they can be used up quickly and leave you struggling to stay engaged. Plan your carbo-loading before important matches to make sure you have enough energy to last all the way through. In addition to carbohydrates, glycogen is an important part of your body's functionality to maintain during tennis play. Consuming glycogen on the fly can compensate for the effects of insufficient carbohydrate consumption, so choosing energy drinks that contain glycogen is another way to maintain sufficient energy during a long match. Drinks that also contain amino acids can improve your rate of glycogen absorption, increasing your recovery rate and giving you that extra edge. Once you've found the right drink to meet your needs, work on timing your energy drink consumption to maximize its effect. This means drinking it before you start to feel fatigued, but regulating your consumption to avoid over-energizing and feeling jittery. Achieving this balance and supplementing it with water will help you maintain your energy level during matches and recover more quickly once you've finished.

Bio: Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education, researching various online programs and blogging about student life issues. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

Reasons for a Bad Tennis Serve

There is no doubt that having a great tennis serve is a key factor for success at any level of the game. It can be a tough thing to master and perfect so I will discuss some of the reasons why people have a bad serve. This way you can look at the areas that you need to work on and avoid the habits that cause the poor serve.

Problem 1: You Serve with a Forehand Grip

There are people out there that continue to serve with the forehand grip when the continental grip can be a better overall serve technique. The forehand grip usually has a safer feel so it's hard to switch to the continental grip. Try switching to the continental serve in practice and start slow. Progressively increase the usage of the more professional continental serve and get accustomed to it. This will make you a better tennis player in the long term.

Problem 2: You're Placing too Much Effort on It

I'm sure just about everyone has realized that if you try too hard and place too much effort on the serve, you are more likely to make a mistake. When you try too hard to hit a ball fast, a lot of times all the muscles in the arm contract and work against each other. If you watch the professionals hit the ball, you will realize that they hit it effortlessly. So try not to focus on hitting the ball fast and aim for an effortless serve.

Problem 3: Not Focusing on the Ball When Serving

A lot of times, a bad serve is caused by the server not focusing on the hitting the ball enough to hit it perfectly. What happens is people tend to focus on the court ahead of them more than the actual body and mind connection of the serve. You need to discipline yourself to stay focused on the ball until it disappears from your racquet.

Problem 4: Serving a Ball into the Net

Just about everyone makes this mistake every once in awhile. What happens is you aim for a specific spot for the ball to land and you can only aim straight so it's harder for people that aren't exceptionally tall. Try to focus on hitting the ball over the net with an intended path.

This was a guest post brought to you by Eric Woolf of MidWest Tennis Sports serving tennis shoes and other tennis tips for pro and seasonal tennis players.

Note to Maria Sharapova

Please. Just. Shut. Up.
Your wails are worse than a stadium full of vuvuzelas -- and weren't those supposed to be banned?

Note to Andy Roddick

Dude, that thing you said after losing the Wimbledon final was pure class.

Note to Wimbledon

Dudes! You so need lights on all courts more than you needed a roof.

Note to Maria Sharapova

It's not that we do not like you. We do not like the screaming. Also, perhaps the preening. And the slowness. But you're okay!
Now, please go and have a think about the extra great reserves of energy you would have if you did not produce all that sound. You would be tremendous!

Note to the BBC

Less talk, more tennis!
And why is it that Elena Baltacha cannot get any respect? Is it that she is Scottish (by way of Ukraine)? No, wait ...

Another note to Tracy Austin

Silence is golden. Go with it!
Thank you.

Note to Tracy Austin

The word "error" in fact contains two syllables.
Thank you.

The ATP is getting hit...right in the money-maker

Something is wrong with the ATP tour of late. It's actually becoming...competitive?

At one time, finals matches were a place reserved for Rafa and Roger. It did not particularly matter who won, for Rafa got his kicks on clay (and then grass), and Roger was pretty content with a mere two Slams a year in Australia and the U.S.

But all of a sudden, these tennis peons have developed the audacity to rise up and defeat King Nadal and Duke Federer.

How am I supposed to watch Roger do titillating tennis tricks in Schick razor commercials when I know that he's close to being number three or (God forbid) number four in the world?

Tearfully.

Tennis is fast-becoming a sport of not the few, but the many. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga has already picked up 19 wins in this young season (including two titles), and is quickly becoming the man to watch in men's tennis. The burly Frenchman not only breaks the scrawny tennis player stereotype, his appearance and Ali-likeness seems to transcend the sport. He's not your mother's tennis player.

Players like Juan Martin Del Potro, Andy Murray, and Gael Monfils are a new generation in men's tennis, and all of a sudden, the tournament has become more than a Federer-Nadal bout.

And Novak is no hack either. Djokovic, the sensational Serb, has developed an overall game that can beat both Federer and Nadal regularly. And that's not very nice.

Neither are the economic implications. Roger and Rafa brought in millions of dollars, and viewers with nothing more than a passing interest in tennis and biceps. But with a field that is quickly leveling, we have to wonder if the ATP will feel the financial crunch without two consistent money-makers.

The press they received for the latest Wimbledon was astronomical, and the match itself was exponentially more exciting than advertised.

But remember Tsonga's particularly disinteresting loss to Djokovic in the Aussie Open last year? I don't. How is the ATP supposed to survive with finals that leave much to be desired?

I certainly appreciate their talents. I'm not so certain the ATP execs will quite as much. Because how Roger and Rafa go will indicate the popularity of tennis. Bottom line.

Best of luck, men of professional tennis. Also, be sure to get some extra sponsors.