TFP 033: Dr. Mark Kovacs—Strength and Conditioning for Tennis Players

You're listening to episode 33 of the Tennis Files Podcast with special guest Dr. Mark Kovax. Fellas, you know Degree Cool Rush Deodorant, right? Well, last year they changed the formula and guys were mad about it. One dude even started a petition. So guess what? Degree heard us, admitted they messed up and brought the original Cool Rush scent back exactly how it was. And it's in Walmart Target and other stores now for under $4. So grab some and remember why it's cool, crisp and fresh scent made it the number one man's antipersmen for the last decade. Degree Cool Rush is back and it smells like victory for all of us. Welcome to the Tennis Files Podcast, bringing you advice from the top minds in tennis to help you improve your game. And now here's your host, Maribon Ironshot. Hey guys, I hope everybody has been well since the last episode. I have been actually out sick with a cold for the past week or so, but I am back with a vengeance and with a very well respected and amazing guest in Dr. Mark Kovax. He is just an expert in the field of sports science and tennis fitness. And he's trained so many elite athletes around the world in so many different sports. And there's really, you know, not much else to say. I just want to get into the content and get you guys pumped and ready to take your game to the next level by taking your fitness to the next level. So without further ado, here is my interview with Dr. Mark Kovax. Everybody, welcome to episode 33 of the tennis files podcast. And today it is really my great honor to speak with Dr. Mark Kovax. Mark is a world renowned sports science and fitness expert who has trained numerous top professional tennis players and other athletes, including John Isner, Sloan Stevens, Sam Query, Donald Young and Melanie O'Deen. In 2015, Stack named Mark one of the top 31 fitness professionals to follow. And Mark is a performance physiologist, researcher, professor, author, speaker and coach. He's just an amazing background in sports science. And he's been featured in many of the biggest sports and news publications, including ESPN, the New York Times and tennis magazine. And Mark was also a very good player himself, played college tennis at Auburn and achieved a world ranking on the ATP tour. And Mark is here with us today to talk about tennis fitness and his new book that came out that he co-authored with a couple other fitness experts called Complete Conditioning for Tennis, the second edition. Mark, again, it's truly an honor and I want to welcome you to the podcast today. Wonderful. Thank you so much for the nice introduction and really excited to be on with you. I love talking about this topic of conditioning and fitness for tennis. Really excited to be here and looking forward to discussing some really interesting topics. Thanks so much, Mark. It's kind of interesting. I first heard about you when I purchased a course from Will from Fuzziello Balls and it was a, I believe, a kinetic chain course, which was actually very helpful in understanding the weight transfer and the importance of the kinetic chain. And from there, I've read your articles and you actually have a staring amount of articles on PubMed, which are all really great. But again, thanks so much for being on the show and I just want to start off by asking you, you're obviously a world-renowned fitness and sports performance expert. How did you get to where you are today? That's a really, really good question because I started as an athlete like a lot of people that get into the area of sports science and sports performance. The only thing I ever wanted to do was be a tennis player. I grew up in Australia, played a few junior grand slams, played a lot on the ITF junior circuit and then came to Orban and played there. I was looking to be a professional tennis player and had some injury issues along the way. And that's really what got me into this whole area of sports science and sports performance. I wanted to better understand myself and what was happening with my injuries. And this was 20 years ago now. The field has completely changed and we know a lot more. We can prevent a lot more. We can train a lot smarter and it really got me into that whole field of why do things happen the way they do and what can we do to make sure that the athletes get the attention they need, train the right way. And it really comes down to improving your performance with using your likelihood of injury. All under a framework of train hard and recover hard. Oh, that's beautiful. I mean, what I really appreciate and what I've noticed in your book that's a big emphasis is the not the cookie cutter approach. Every single athlete has different weaknesses and strengths and it's really important as you mentioned to really analyze the athlete and figure out what they need to improve upon. And looking at your amazing record and you have a lot of degrees and certifications. There's so many letters on here next to your name and I actually wanted to ask you what degrees and certifications do you have? Sure. So, I started in the field as a Strength and Conditioning Professional working. That's a certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist through the National Strength and Conditioning Association. And that's really to work with competitive athletes, not a tennis-related program at all. I actually started working with NFL athletes in pre-draft combined and baseball athletes were the two major ones. So, that's an area that I still spend a lot of time working with individual athletes on the field, on the court, in the weight room, things like that. And then also went and did my academic training. So I have a master's degree in Exercise Science, which is a combination of biomechanics and physiology and then did my PhD in physiology. So that's from an academic perspective. And then we started a association about four years ago called the International Tennis Performance Association. And that educates and certifies individuals that work with tennis athletes from tennis coaches all the way to physical therapists, medical doctors, chiropractors, strength and conditioning professionals. And so I'm certified through the International Tennis Performance Association as well. So that's sort of my background from certifications and education background. But a big part of it is really combining that information and that knowledge with the practical application of working under some great coaches, some great scientists over the last couple decades and really applying it the best I can with the athletes that we work with, the coaches we work with, and the different associations and high performing teams. Mark, well, I mean the breadth of knowledge that you have over the very complex facets of sports science is truly staggering. And we all are aware of all your accomplishments. But I actually want to do want to ask you what's one thing about you that most of the world doesn't know? It's a really good question. There's probably a lot of things people don't know about me. I definitely can't sing. I don't dance very well. So those two things for sure, I'm learning to play golf. I'm trying to get a little better at that. Those are three things that most people don't know about me. That's one of those questions where I could probably name off 10 or 20, but that's three to get you started. Well, that's pretty good, Mark. I'm sure if you practice hard at those, you'd be a pretty elite singer and such. But Mark, so now just to get into the content that everybody is just really excited to hear, we've seen a lot of questions posted when I announced that I was going to interview you and I'm so excited as well. So in your book, the complete conditioning for tennis second edition, the first chapter you talk about several elements of tennis fitness. And obviously, tennis is really in some respects, like underappreciated for all the different skills that people that's required of the players. So can you talk about the different elements of tennis fitness that's required? Sure. I mean, I think it's like most sports that require a multitude of physical capabilities. We need the flexibility. You need the strength and power. You need the agility and movement. You need the endurance to last the long actions. You need dynamic balance. So these are all factors that really come into being a proficient athlete first and foremost, and then a tennis player second. And unfortunately, many people are so focused on the tennis side of it, hitting tennis balls that sometimes they don't develop their physical capabilities well enough. And we see that at every level of the game that if your physical capabilities aren't optimized, you may have great strokes, but if you can't get to the ball, if you can't recover from wide balls, and if you don't have that fitness for the long term, you can't compete at your highest level for three or four hours that you may have to in some actions. So it's really, really important to look at yourself as a tennis athlete and make sure that you don't have major limitations in your physical capabilities. And that's an area that definitely can be worked on. You can really do a good analysis to understand where you're at today and then what areas you need to work on. - Oh Mark, I really appreciate you highlighting just how critical tennis fitness is for the success of tennis players. I know myself whenever I'm at my peak physical condition, that's when I'm playing the best. And obviously, I mean, well, it helps every player, but especially those who are, for example, baseliner, who grind at points, I mean, fitness is just paramount. And, you know, there's a lot of different elements that you mentioned. And sometimes I feel that players get overwhelmed as far as what they should be addressing. So how would you prioritize and address the different elements of tennis fitness when we're trying to plan out our training? - Sure, so it's a really, really good question. And everyone's at a different stage of their tennis development. At younger ages, there's certain things you want to focus on more. At older ages, there's things you really need to prioritize. You know, the thing with most tennis players are from a speed-power strength perspective. A lot of that is based at the foundation on your strength level. So you need to make sure that you are doing some form of strength training. That's really the foundation for a lot of other physical capabilities. So strength is one component that needs to be a priority. The other is your endurance. You've got to make sure that you can last a match because we know plenty of players that are great in the first set, but by the third set, they got nothing left in the tank. So strength on one end of the spectrum, endurance on the other. And then the third big piece is this flexibility/mobility area, which you've got to have the right range of motion. You've got to be able to get into the right positions correctly so that you can really utilize the energy appropriately, meaning that the energy from the ground up through your entire kinetic chain out into the ball. And that's where the great players, the efficient athletes do a great job and they get injured less typically. And their individuals that are less efficient, they're always using the wrong body parts to create their power. They're adjusting at the last minute to make contact with the ball. Those are the players that typically have more issues in the long run. Right, that's fantastic. I remember seeing a picture of Tommy Paul in the book that we're talking about, "Complete Conditioning for Tennis." And I just said, "Beautiful balance." That he has at the end of the stroke. And that attributes to his physical fitness and balance and flexibility and everything rolled into one. In your view, Mark, in your experience, which one of the fitness elements that you've explained to us is most lacking in the majority of amateur tennis players? So when we're talking amicet tennis players, more sort of adult amicet tennis players, a lot of what you see as a limitation is general body strength. Not necessarily absolute strength, not how much can you lift one time, but the ability to sort of repeat that movement. So muscular endurance strength is really one of the areas where we see a lot of people are lacking. Meaning that when I asked someone to do a single leg squat, for example, many of them really struggle to be able to put weight through their hip and through their lower limbs without collapsing or falling one way or the other. And that's a really, really important factor because a lot of what happens on a ground-based sport, like tennis is, is all the energy comes through the lower body through the hips. And if the hips and the core region is not strong and stable, doesn't have that stability, we lose energy, but then we also have to recruit other muscles to allow us to make contact with the ball. And that's where we see a lot of the problem stem from. So if you had to name one area, it would be really developing good muscular endurance. Sometimes people will call this stability, the ability to stabilize in these positions effectively. So we want to make sure we've got stability with muscular endurance. That's fantastic. And so regarding tennis musculature, you discuss in depth the physical demands of the game and the muscles used in tennis. And I'm curious also, what is one critical muscle group that tennis players tend to ignore and under train? Yeah, it's a great, great question. I mean, we used to say it was the core region. I think a lot of people now understand that, that that's really, really important. So a lot more people are now training the entire core region. Still, sometimes they're doing it with the wrong exercises or doing it the wrong way and recruiting the wrong groups of muscles. But that area, at least, is more of a focus. One area that doesn't get enough attention is the lower limb, so the calf all the way down to the ankle. Because that's really your last major muscle groups. And then the last major joint before ground contact. And we know that everything that we can get energy-wise into the ball comes from the ground. So if we have a weak link at the ankle and through the calf, then everything further up the chain is limited. So really emphasize that ability to have good range of motion throughout the calf muscles, have good stability through the ankles, and then really be able to generate enough force through that that we can transfer up through the body and out into the ball. So one of the areas that we see is quite limited in most tennis players, and it's not a major focus, is that calf through the ankle area, especially in the ammeter adult players. And so with that, what is perhaps one exercise that we can implement right now to strengthen that area? So there's really a couple good ones for the calf. I mean, one, you want to make sure you stretch it out daily. Calfs tighten up most players, calf muscles are rather tight. So we want to be doing calf stretching. Most people are familiar with the most common ones. You can push against a wall and lean forward, and that'll stretch your calf. You can put your foot up against a wall, and then lean your body forward, stretching out your calf muscles. So that's two stretches that are really, really beneficial. And then the other area is really doing bodyweight squats is really good. That does more than just the calves. But if you do bodyweight squats on a regular basis and try to get lower each day, it's going to help give you some strength down in the lower limbs, not only the calves, but also the hips as well. And that can really be advantageous to individuals that using their legs a lot when they play tennis. They're on court for multiple hours, and you've got to have your engine, which is your legs working at a good clip on a regular basis. And you need to train that effective with. Fantastic. And I know that you-- amazingly, this book that you co-authored has about 56 videos in it explaining most of the critical exercises that you mentioned. But you also said that we should try to be going a lower each time we squat. And I was curious, there's different, I guess, philosophies on how low we should go. But are we talking parallel or maybe lower than that? Yeah, really good question. Because most individuals struggle to get very low, especially the older you get, the stiffen you become in general, unless you're doing structured flexibility and mobility training. A while back, there was a big advice for most people to not go below parallel. It would put more pressure on your knees. And that's what a lot of people thought. And if it's done correctly, that's not necessarily true. But, unfortunately, a lot of people are very stiff and very tight. So in general, you want to make sure that you get to parallel-- that's goal number one. And then if you're planning on trying to get below parallel, it's not necessarily a negative. I do that with a lot of the-- nearly all the athletes I work with, I'd get below parallel. But it's under control, and it's with correct technique. The challenge is the moment you get below parallel, things start to change in your posture, especially at the lower lumbar spine area. And if you don't know what you're doing in that position, you will sort of cheat to get that extra range. And that's not what we want. So that's why, in general, if you're working out by yourself, if you don't have a trained person who's working with you, helping you on technique, you want to be-- play it safe on that. And you know, just go to parallel. But if you are working with a trained person who knows what they're doing, go and below parallel, it's actually really beneficial. Because when we're on a tennis court, we have to get ourselves in all sorts of positions. We're lunging, we're sliding, we're getting below the height of the ball. So we need to be trained in all those type of movements that we may experience on a tennis court. Right, I appreciate that information. I just love squats, or one of my favorite exercises. I can't help but ask you these two quick follow-up questions. One is there's the high bar squat and the low bar squat, I guess, primarily. And there's also overhead squat as well. I mean, is there one in particular that you would favor over all the others, or is it we just use all of them at different points in our training? Yeah, so there's a lot of squat variations. Where you position the bar is one aspect. Where you position your arms. with the English. whether you go a wide grip or narrow grip on the squat, whether you do a front squat or a back squat, whether you go an overhead squat, whether you then change it up with dumbbells or with kettlebells or goblets, there's all sorts of variations to perform a squat movement. The question that you have to ask yourself is, what's the safest version for me based on my body shape, based on any limitations I may have? So, you know, barbell squatting is great if the athlete has stability, has good technique, has the ability to get in the right positions. However, many tennis players, especially adult tennis players, barbell squatting may not be the preferred model. It may be a form of dumbbell squatting, band squatting, kettlebell type squats. There's a lot of variations there. The big question you have to ask yourself is, am I targeting the front of my legs? Am I targeting my glutes? Am I about muscles? Am I targeting my hamstrings? Depending on how you squat, you can change which muscles get recruited to a higher percentage. So, there's a lot to it. In general, most people don't think like that. They're like, hey, I just want to work my legs out. I'm going to do a squat and I'm going to get everything all at once, which is true. You are going to recruit your quads, your hamstrings, your glutes, your back muscles, your core muscles, your calves get involved. So, that's why squatting is a great exercise because it's a total body movement. But it's important to understand that certain positions in a squat can cause potential issues if they're not done correctly, just like playing tennis. If you hit a tennis stroke with the wrong technique, you're going to get yourself in trouble over time. It may not happen on the first rep, but if you continually hit the ball with the wrong technique, you are likely to hurt yourself and that's the same thing in the weight room. So, you've got to be smart about how you structure your routines and progress appropriately. The biggest thing is gradual progression. And we see that with too many people when they haven't worked out for a while, they get back in the gym, and then they start on a routine. And the first couple of days they feel great because they're not sore, they haven't done much. But the problem is they do two marks the first few days. And that's where we see, and I see, because a lot of people come to me potentially with issues. They've got an injury or they've got a soreness that doesn't go away. And that's really important for that amateur tennis player, especially. For sure, it's definitely important to realize that you have to be biomechanically efficient and also realize your limitations and take it slow. One last question on the squat is, you know, with the myth about going past parallel, the absolute thought that it's dangerous. I've also heard that partial squats could have put pressure on the knees, but is that also something where if you do it technically correctly, it's fine. Yeah, depending on what you mean by partial squats, there's a lot of variations on partial squats. If you're doing quarter squats, for example, which I work with a lot of track athletes and we'll do quarter squats sometimes for starts and acceleration training. That's not putting a lot of pressure on the knees as long as they're sitting back in their glutes. If you do those partial squats or quarter squats where your knees really come forward, then that potentially can put a little extra strain on the knees, and it's not something that's recommended. But again, it comes down to the technical proficiency and making sure we're recruiting the big muscles. Our biggest thing with all movements is we really don't want the joint to be stressed significantly. We want the muscles to be loaded, but we want to limit the stress on the joints in all movements. That's our objective. So if we structure the exercises to focus on the muscles, rather than putting the pressure points on the joints, we're going to have more success in muscle fiber recruitment, which is our goal, typically in strength training. We want to get protein synthesis, we want to get adaptation to occur. Typically, we want muscle to grow, not necessarily get big and bulky, but we want positive adaptation to occur. So that's why you see a lot of players that work out a lot. They don't necessarily get a lot bigger because they've structured their training to not necessarily increase their size of muscle, their hypertrophy. But what they are doing is they're developing muscular endurance and they're developing power, and they're developing general strength as well. But they just not find an increased size of muscle as an objective. And then other athletes do want to do that. There's a lot of people, especially as you age, you want to increase muscle mass because there's a natural aging effect that actually decreases muscle mass over time. Many of the listeners have heard of Sarkopenia, Sarkopenia, depends where you're from. And that's basically muscle loss over time. And that can be reversed if you do structured strength training. So really, really important concept. Perfect, Mark. And so, you go into detail about the different effects of different rep ranges and number of sets that you choose to incorporate in your routine. But can you give us just an overview of in general what rep range or number of sets people should be using and the impact of that on the results? Great, great question. Because sets and reps and total load of three things you really need to understand. Because you'll hear a lot of the time a startup beginner program, many times people will be given three sets of ten of an exercise. And that's arbitrary to a certain extent because the ten reps are only relevant if we know what the load is. So let's say you're lifting a dumbbell. And three sets of ten with 20 pounds is one thing. Three sets of ten with 50 pounds is something completely different. But it all needs to be related to what your sort of maximum capabilities are. Because if you do three sets of ten with 20 pounds, but you could actually do three sets of 15 before you failed on that movement, that's not really going all the way to your ten repetition maximum. Whereas you may be able to do 30 pounds with ten reps as well. But that would be the max you could do. You couldn't do any more because you would fatigue out. So you have to be really smart when you're talking rep ranges because that's the same rep range. Three times ten with 20 pounds is one thing. Three times ten with 30 pounds to failure. So to speak, ten rep failure is something very different. So you really need to make sure that when you're analyzing your sets and reps, that we're talking about going very close to failure. It doesn't have to be exactly failure, meaning that you couldn't do one more rep. But it's going to be pretty close. So that's really important because that's what most of the literature is based on when we're talking about rep ranges. So it gives review for the folks. When we're talking about developing sort of absolute strength, meaning how strong can we be? You want to do less total reps and heavier weight. So usually that's less than six repetitions with as heavy a weight as you can lift safely. Then we get into this sort of hybrid range of things that occur between about six and 12 or so. And that's where hypertrophy can occur. And that's also where some good strength occurs. And that's why you see a lot of the programs have rep ranges between eight and 12. So that's where we see a lot of people start with. And then when we get higher than that, say 12 and over, sometimes 15 and over, that's where we get a lot of these muscular endurance work that we are focused on. So those are the three broad areas. Then we have another area called power, which is really what the optimization for a tennis athlete is the goal of a lot of strength training. We want to turn or utilize our strength for power production. Power transfers our strength and our speed together. So we can actually utilize whatever strength we have as fast as possible, which helps us generate more pace on our forehand and backhand, help out, hit our serves harder. All those factors that I think are pretty important for most people. So power requires us to work at a less total percentage of our maximum load, somewhere between 30 and 60% generally for most people. And that's in a lower rep range. That's usually less than five repetitions, but it's not as heavy a weight. So that's where a lot of people misunderstand sometimes when we're trying to get strength, we want to be heavy and low reps. When we're looking for power, we want to be lighter, move it faster with low reps. That's fantastic, Mark. And you know, what you're talking about with the different rep ranges sets load and even even speed with the power workouts. I'm directly feeds into something that I first learned in college in my tennis program at UMBC with their strength trainer, which is periodization, which you devote a whole chapter to as well in the book, which I really appreciate. And you know, can you talk about, you know, first, what periodization is and how we can use it to maximize our training and performance for tennis? Sure, you know, a great point and periodization is simply a form of planning. It's planning objectively to try to increase and also decrease loads appropriately throughout a period of time. to optimize your training and then be prepared for your appropriate competitions. So, you want to play, most tennis players, the reason a lot of the time they train is so they can compete at a higher level. So, you need to structure your training with heavier weeks, lighter weeks, higher volume weeks, lower volume weeks, and doing that in a scientifically based way that you can optimize your training, not get injured either, which is a big benefit of periodized training, because we can't week after week do more and more and more. At some point you break down. For some players that may be week two or three of a program, other players that may be week six or eight of a program, but at some point if you keep increasing the workload and increasing the intensity, you are going to break down and a structured periodized program is designed to avoid that. You monitor the workloads, you monitor the rest and you then pull back on the training based on what the numbers are telling you objectively. So, it's very objective if it's done correctly. You see where the players are at, you progress them based on a plan, but then you monitor and track them on a daily basis. So, when you get a number or two that show you that hey, they're starting to fatigue at this point, we're starting to see signs of fatigue and there's a lot of different ways to monitor that. Then you want to start backing off and you want to reduce volume, reduce intensity, let them recover a little bit for two, three, four days, maybe even an entire week depending on how bad it is. Then you start ramping up the training again. The other option if you don't do that is the body naturally will shut itself down. It'll get injured, it'll get burnt out, it'll get sick. That's the worst way to really structure your training. Train, train, train, get sick or injured, stop and then do it again. That's what most people do. They train, train, train, get sick or injured, then they take time off and then they start it all up again. Periodized training is really designed to appropriately ramp up our training with structured download or unload weeks throughout the year so that that doesn't happen and that we can continually progress better and better training, more volume if needed and appropriate progressions with recovery. Fantastic stuff Mark. In general, when we consider the different phases and I suppose types of training, I would surmise that in the order we would approach this is we would first do strength and then we would do power and I'm wondering where aerobic and anaerobic training fits in so could you give us maybe a general progression let's say if our audience was preparing for a big tournament in four months, what we would train first in terms of strength and power and such. Yeah, no, great, great question and there's really two avenues you can approach the progressive training like that for if you've got a few months out. One is called a traditional or block periodized model which is you do training blocks on a specific focus. You may spend two or three weeks on strength, two or three weeks on hypertrophy, two or three weeks on muscle endurance, two or three weeks on power leading into an event. So you really emphasise one specific component for a extended period of time. This is a great way to train and develop those areas. No doubt about it and with a lot of athletes that have a traditional season where they have a full off season, a full preseason, that's how I train them, you know, football players, basketball players, different sports like that that have six months some of them to really train physically without competition and that allows you to do that. In many tennis players, I don't have that luxury necessarily because they're playing once a month, they're playing every two weeks, a pro tennis player may play three weeks on, they may take two weeks off, three weeks on and that's their entire year. So for those individuals that are a year round sport that are competing year round, we use a tennis-specific periodized model that I personally use. It's a development over the last sort of decade and a half and it's a form of non-traditional periodisation meaning that we do everything every week. We have a strength day, we have a hypertrophy focus day, we have a muscular endurance day, we have a power day and what we're doing there is we're working everything each week and the way we periodise it is we increase or decrease the volume and intensity in a structured way leading into our major tournaments. So certain events where we know aren't as important as others if someone's playing for a national championship for example that's a priority. So those weeks we want to peak for whereas if they're playing a local event in their hometown just for match practice they're going to train through that tournament somewhat, they're going to maintain their physical training regimen, they're going to work through their periodised plan so that they can really peak for some of the more important events. So those are the sort of true broad models that you can utilise and you both have their benefits, both also have some limitations because based on how you structure them and what your scheduling limitations are. But again the objective is to build the foundation so making sure you have good stability, good flexibility and good general strength as you base and then you put things on top of that, you put your hypertrophy on top of that, you put your power on top of that, you put your speed movements on top of that. If you do speed and power first without having a strength base you're going to really limit your development and you could potentially injure yourself as well because power movements are very high velocity and if your body's not adapted to the right type of training we don't want to go straight into power movements on day one without a good base of support there. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Not everyone is careful with your personal information which might explain why there's a victim of identity theft every five seconds in the US. Fortunately there's LifeLock. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen a US-based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year by visiting LifeLock.com/podcast in terms of apply. Thanks so much for that Mark. That's just super helpful. I'm going to help a lot of people in our audience train effectively with periodization. One question that I have from Gray Suplays ITFs is what are the best strengthening exercises for this serve? Yeah really, really important question. I do a lot of work on the serve. We do a serve specific screening tool that we utilize with our athletes to figure out where their weak points are specifically related to the serve and then put them on structured training programs to improve that. In general the big areas that athletes need to focus on are the hip range of motion. Most people don't think of the serve as a hip range of motion exercise but that's really where a lot of the power source is. So they have to have good hip stability and hip range of motion and then the second big area is their back leg strength. Most people don't have great strength or power off their back leg. If you're a right-handed tennis player that would be your right leg and that's an area of focus. We still want to focus on the upper body. We know how important the shoulder is and we do a lot of work in the shoulder as well but step one is we need to make sure that our lower limb and our hip is really doing its job because if it's not doing its job then the arm and the upper body has to take over and do more work than it's really designed to do and that's where we see a lot of the upper arm issues. A lot of the upper arm issues whether it's shoulder elbow even wrist a lot of the time is a result of poor hip stability, poor core strength and poor lower leg strength. So we really try to make sure that we focus on the lower body first before we overemphasize the work we do on the upper body. We still do work on the upper body because it is very very important but usually that's not the cause of the problem. The cause of the problem in nearly all cases stems from the lower body. I really appreciate you emphasizing lower body because a lot of people when they set out to train for to make themselves better servers they concentrate on tricep exercises and such where they're not really even thinking how much the hip and lower body contribute to the kinetic chain and ultimately the better serve. You had a you authored a fantastic article that I saw in PubMed called an eight-stage model for evaluating the tennis serve and I was wondering if you could just kind of just talk about that article briefly and then in general is just the importance of the kinetic chain. Yeah no most definitely I mean this all came about been starting the serving pretty extensive detail for nearly two decades and a lot of the work that was done in baseball hadn't been done in tennis so we kind of wanted to analyze the serve in a biomechanically correct way using the evidence-based literature that's out that's been done in biomechanics labs all over the world summarized that and then put it into a model that coaches can use players can understand and really there's eight areas of the serve that have to be hit in the right way to have the most efficient serve possible and all the players get into those eight positions but the good servers getting into them correctly the poor servers find a way to get into them but they're not in them correctly so it's really really important to make sure that we get an appropriate loading transfer of energy from the ground up through the lower body through the core and then out through the arm into the racket into the ball and you know simply put we've got a load in the opposite direction to where we want our energy to go you know if we think back to Newton's laws we think about for every action we have an equal and opposite reaction and if you think like that it makes the whole serving concept a lot simpler to understand we need to store our energy in the opposite direction to where we want to release it and we need to sink or summer our forces from the ground up through the body and out into the ball and there's really one correct way to do that there's a lot of ways to hit a tennis ball there's a lot of ways to make contact but usually if you don't sink all these areas correctly certain parts are going to do more work than they should and usually they're smaller groups the joints get stressed more in the upper body we start getting core and lower back strains because our core and lower back are trying to do more than they should because the lower body hasn't done its job and that's really what we are trying to avoid so what we do is we screen the athlete specifically from a serving standpoint we understand their mechanics analyzing their serve and then we do a full physical screen specifically designed for the serve to make sure that we know where their bodies week and where they're strong where they're flexible where they're not specifically for the serve and then based on that they put on a training program both a technical training program on court for serving and then also a physical training program to make sure that we correct the limitations that are causing the not to be elegant in the right positions and again it's a process that takes weeks sometimes months to correct but just like everything else if you understand the cause of the problem you can fix it a lot of the time people try to fix their technique without understanding the cause of the problem sometimes it's purely a technical issue that can be changed just by a cue and some practice most of the time there's a physical limitation that's is the reason why you can't do certain things on the tennis court we do the same thing for movement as well I love that Mark I mean again it's really important to know yourself and what's going on in and your limitations and that's another reason why I really love complete complete conditioning for tennis a second edition because you devote a chapter that shows players how to actually perform fitness tests and such to figure out what areas they're deficient in whether it's power balance and such and I mean I think that's that's really cool that you have that in the book but you also just mentioned footwork a speed and agility and you know there's a lot of players who have inefficient biomechanics especially with their footwork and as you mentioned inefficient you know just they don't get to the ball in the least amount of steps so what advice would you give a player who knows that they have inefficient footwork on how they should approach correcting these deficiencies yeah very very important area because the footwork piece is quite misunderstood sometimes a lot of people think that taking a lot of little steps on a tennis court is the best way to move and it's definitely not it's actually that one of the it's a slower way to move on a court we want to be in the air more than with then we're on the ground so what that means is we want to take less total steps to go from a to b the problem is we want to do that as quickly as possible so we have to have a right amount of power to generate into the ground and out so if you think about you saying bolt for example of the Olympics the reason he wins pretty much everything is he takes less total steps than all this competition in the 100 meter dash if the fastest way to move was to take a lot of little steps we'd see everyone shuffling down the track and we don't see that for a reason because the fastest way to move is to take big steps what happens though is if we take big steps sometimes we do need to take those small adjusting steps but that only occurs if something's gone wrong in your movement meaning though you haven't timed it right you've overran the ball you've misread the ball that's coming to you so great move as always look like they're in the right position and it's not because they're taken a lot of little steps is because they're timing their steps to get to the ball at the right time so for individuals that really struggle with movement you've got to ask yourself am I using the most efficient footwork patterns possible from a technical standpoint that's question number one then question number two is you've got to analyze your strength and power to make sure that you actually have the leg strength and the ability to produce the power to move quicker so that's step number two and then the third piece is do you have the flexibility and balance and they go together in this standpoint so this is this concept of stability do you have the stability to be able to take these larger steps land absorb what you need to absorb and then take another step without losing your balance or without taking too much extra time to regain your balance so there's really three broad areas there that we need to focus on to make sure that you can correct some of those movement inefficiencies that you may have but again you got to understand the cause because everyone has slightly different causes or limitations in movement it's not always the same reason for you your your doubles partner may have a completely different issue as well they're limited so that's why really understanding yourself and you know really having a good picture on what the causes and limitations are of your movement can really make a big difference in how you try that's fantastic advice mark and so assuming I had to just this question a bit but assuming that you know the athlete has a good solid foundation for their footwork technique what is one footwork drill that you like to incorporate into your athletes training that will help their speed and agility on the court yeah so from an on court training standpoint there's a lot of different drills that work really well we do the t-line to s-line drill which is basically you know the server you know we have the the s-line which is the line in the in the single sideline and then it goes to the t so it's just about a 13 and a half foot distance so it's the service box width and then all you do is you run facing you know facing the net and you cross over touch the lines and you do that for 30 seconds that's a great exercise not only for your footwork because you have to work on you change the direction you have to work on accelerating and then decelerating quickly and then re-excelerating and if you do that for 30 seconds that's about as long a point as most people will play it's 30 seconds so you get a little a little good speed endurance is what it's called so you're still running at a fast speed but you're starting to get a little tie at those last 10 seconds so you got to maintain your speed so that's one great exercise that we do another one is the spider drill or a five ball pickup this drill's been around this has actually been a test for over 30 years so this is a test that is utilized a lot and it's in our testing chapter and it's really five balls positioned on the corners so on the singles line and the bass line on the singles line and the service line on the service line and the T line then we and then you do the same on the other side and you have five balls you have to pick those up and put them back on the T on the bass line T and you do that as fast as you can so that really incorporates a lot of different movements in the distances that we see on a tennis court so those are two great exercises that can be incorporated there are dozens actually hundreds of others that I utilize with players some ad resistance some require shorter distances some require longer distances but it's really really important to focus on your technique understand your angles going in and out of corners because that's really really important that's where you make up your time is when you go into a shot and you decelerate and then you have to immediately re-excelerate and that's where the great move is do so well it's not how fast you start it's how well you stop and how well you restart it's really the art of good movement fantastic thank you for that mark and you know there's a ton of footwork drills among other exercises that are all in Mark's book which I will certainly link to in the show notes at tennisfiles.com/33 so we had Alistair McCall on the show another you know well-respected trainer fitness expert just as fantastic fantastic knowledge of the game and he mentioned that you know how important flexibility is in general especially I think he attributed Novak's rise specifically to flexibility at least substantial part of it. And so what are three stretches that every tennis player should be incorporating into their stretch routine? Yeah, no, stretching is very, very important. You have to understand that stretching by itself is vital, but we have to get functional range of motion, meaning that we can utilize the new range of motion that we get. If you just continually stretch without strengthening that new range of motion, that can potentially lead to issues. So, you know, there are people that stretch a lot, but don't strengthen in those new ranges of motion. So you have to be a little careful there. But in general, most tennis players are very stiff. Stretching is really, really important. At couple areas, first off is calves. Got to get those calves loosened up. That's, again, we talked about that earlier, really, really important to do your calf stretches, to loosen up that area. The next is our hips, our hips, typically very tight for tennis athletes. So we want to make sure that we loosen up our hips and specifically, you know, our internal hip rotation. Internal hip rotation in tennis players is very poor. So we want to make sure that we stretch out internal hip rotators and there's some great stretches in the book for that. And then the third area that you really want to, you know, focus on is the shoulder. Because that's where we see a lot of the challenges. And the biggest challenge in the shoulder is our internal range of motion in our shoulder. So, you know, the sleeper stretch is one stretch that is commonly recommended. There's a lot of others. But if you take a look at the book, they'll really go into detail as to which stretches and how to perform them because it's really, really important to make sure that the flexibility and the stability is developed. So the athletes really can do what we want them to do on court because having the strength is great. But if the flexibility is not there with it, you're limited in how much range you can use that strength in. So it all goes together being strong is great, but you have to have the flexibility. If you only have flexibility without strength, we have a problem as well. So you need to make sure you're training all these components appropriately. That's fantastic. That reminds me of I believe you're quote, and I forgot which magazine about it. It's been ESPN, where you mentioned now, Fetter, you know, he didn't have, you know, the top top, you know, strength in the world or the you wasn't the most, for example, flexible or powerful. But if you take the average, you know, he basically was off the charts of these attributes. Yeah, I mean, all the top tennis players, you know, really, they're never going to be have the best vertical jump. I've worked with football players and basketball players with 42 inch verticals. No tennis player has a 42 inch vertical. You know, they're in the mid 20s, low 30s at best. But they're, you know, 40 dash times aren't going to be four threes or four fours, which a lot of athletes I've worked with can run. They're going to be in the four sixes, the four eight range probably. You know, they're not going to put up 225 on the bench press 25 times or 30 times. So they're not going to win any of those traditional competitions. They're not going to win a marathon against one of the top marathon runners. However, they're going to do pretty well in all those competitions. And when you combine all those scores together, their average is going to be higher than a football player because they're not going to have the endurance. They're not going to have some of the other attributes that tennis players have. The marathon runners not going to have the strength or the power of the speed that a tennis player has. So, you know, tennis is one of the tougher sports in the world to play at a high level because of you need to be really good at all those physical variables. Let alone the one on one mental competition and the stress and anxiety and pressure that one on one competition forces you to do. So you have to perform at a really high level under physical stress, but also significant mental and emotional stress in every match. Yeah, I mean, that's so true. And I just really appreciate you mentioning how important it is to just focus on several aspects instead of, you know, some people just go and work out and focus on strength only and you've got to put it all together. Mark, I mean, obviously your book, Complete Conditioning for Ten Ace, a second edition, which you co-authored with Todd Ellen Becker, who I've actually been in communication with and I really hope he comes on the show and Paul Roachard, who are two just amazing fitness experts. I just want to ask you, you know, there's a ton of information in the book and how do you recommend we digest it all and put what we read into action? Yeah, no, if I'm glad you mentioned, doctors wrote it and Ellen Becker both Paul and Todd have been long-time mentors of mine. They actually wrote the first edition of this together. I was honored and humbled when they asked me to take the lead on this next edition and they're phenomenal individuals in the tennis space. Both of them have really changed the field over the last two decades in the conditioning space and the strength and conditioning space for tennis. But from a standpoint of how you should sort of analyze the book, the way I would suggest it would be to read through the whole book once, like you would any normal sort of fiction book. And then really then highlight chapters that you feel like you need to optimize. So, you know, we have chapters on movement, on strength training, on nutrition, on recovery, on injury prevention, on testing. And although all the entire books good for everyone, we all understand we don't have unlimited time to go through everything and do every exercise. So, we've given some sample examples. We've given a lot of videos that a lot of people like. So, that's definitely one of the best ways to utilize the resource. I want to also thank the United States Tennis Association because we worked very closely with them and they're a co-author of the book as well. And the folks at USDA Played Development, you've got Dr. Paul Lubbers, Dave Raymoss, Satoshi Ochi, all contributed and really helped to get this over the finish line to be a really good resource for the industry and for tennis players at all levels. Yeah, I mean, again, I echo your sentiments about thanking the USDA. They've done a lot for tennis and for this book and furthering a lot of people's enjoyment of the game. USDA leagues and such just amazing job from them. So, this is the second edition of the book, obviously. The first edition, James Blake on it, this one has Isner. But what else has been changed or updated from the first edition? Yeah, great question. I mean, we've completely read on this book. So, there's some similar chapter names as the previous edition, but every chapter has been completely read down with the latest information. The previous book was more than 10 years old. So, there's been a lot of differences in the research, in the best ways to train. So, that has been read down in the chapters that have similar names to the previous edition. But we've also added a series numbers of chapters as well. We've added a nutrition and hydration area, which is an area I spend a lot of time in. A whole chapter on recovery, which we know how important that is. Our injury prevention and rehab chapter was really increased significantly our testing chapter. So, we've really added a lot more detail. All the photos, all the videos are brand new. So, it's a completely different book just because it's got the same title. More than 70% of the information has been updated. I appreciate that, Mark. Just incredible job to all of you on this book. If you had to pick one chapter that you were the most proud of, that you think has the most value. I mean, this whole book has incredible value, but which chapter would you pick? That's a tough question. Yeah, no. I think it comes down to the individual. Every individual has a different area of need. I think that testing chapter is phenomenal because there are so many different types of tests and that allows you to assess yourself all easy to do or can be done on a tennis court. And again, the one thing about this book is we didn't you don't have to go into a weight room to actually utilize this book. It allows you to do everything with bands pretty much and or dumbbells. So, you can do all the workouts without a lot of equipment, which for a lot of people is really beneficial. You can also go in and do a lot the work in the weight room, but it was designed in a way that allows you to take this to the court, you know, really utilize, you know, limited resources to perform a lot of these exercises. Fantastic, Mark. Well, obviously a very important question is where can we get complete conditioning for tennis? Sure. So, it's available everywhere online, Amazon, bookstores, etc. You can check it out also and contact me through my website, mark-covax.com, mark-covax.com. Or you can also find it on the International Tennis Performance Association website, which is itpadaxtennis.org. Also, if you're interested, follow on Twitter. You can follow me at MCOVAX PhD. I am. And I can give you, I do a lot of updates on there if you're interested in daily information, a lot of research studies I put up out there. It's a good easy way to communicate the latest research, upcoming events, things that are going on. So if you're on Twitter or Facebook, feel free to follow and communicate through those mediums. Fantastic, Mark. I just want to ask you a question, one fan question, we got a ton, one from JR Striker. What is one misconception or myth that is common among players looking to increase their fitness to improve? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of misconceptions. One, I think a lot of people is the strength training aspect. A lot of players still haven't completely bought in to the benefits of strength training and pretty heavy strength training as well. A lot of the top pros have because they're competing against the best in the world. And although a lot of players may not look super imposing, some do, some don't, but they're all lift in pretty heavy weight compared to their body weight. So that's an area that really, to get faster, to get more powerful, you need a strength base. And there's no way around that. There's no way that athletes that want to get faster, they have to get stronger. There's a reason that the fastest athletes in the world, wide receivers, running backs, 100 meter sprinters, most of their life is spent in a weight room lifting heavy weight. It's really, really important to understand that. And that's one of those things where it's a pretty important area. If you want to develop your speed, your movement, your power, your strength training, and relatively heavy strength training needs to be incorporated. Remember, you need to have good technique. You have to know how to do it correctly. That's why you want to work with a trained professional. But it is an important area of the development for your tennis fitness. And that's like, Maria, so it's all about making the body adapt. And you can only do that through pushing your body gradually within reason and tweaking one of the many variables when you train. Mark, what are some other books because you've written a ton and/or articles that you think we should check out that you've authored? Yeah, no, I mean, there's a lot of information. I've done another book where Paul Roderp, which is called "Tennis and Atomy." And that's another strength and conditioning type book for tennis. The beauty about that book is it's got a number of phenomenal drawings actually with all the muscles embossed on it. So you actually see the muscles that are working during strokes, but also during strength and conditioning exercises. So that's a great resource. We've got a few other books, Dynamic Stretching Book, which is for multiple sports. We've also got a stretching strap flexibility book. So I've done a lot in the flexibility space. We've got this tennis recovery book as well. So there's a lot of areas that are relevant to the tennis athlete in those resources. But if you're looking for more information, I'd recommend you go to my website and there's a lot of information there and can direct you to other resources that are available for you as well. Fantastic. Yeah, I really recommend that for our audience to just immerse themselves in just all the wonderful resources and materials that Mark and other respected fitness experts have created for you. Much of what is free online as well as the book which you can purchase. Just amazing stuff that will really help you take your game to the next level. Mark, where can we find you either online in person and on social media? Yeah, no, definitely. So easiest way to contact me, if you're on Twitter or Facebook, it's Mkovax PhD or on Instagram or three of the same Mkovax PhD. So Mkovax PhD or you can check out the website, mark-kovax-maok-kovax.com. Those are the two easiest ways to reach me. If you've got questions, feel free to reach out through that website or on Twitter or Facebook. So look forward to hearing from folks and a catch up with our other tennis players around the country and around the world. Yes, everyone, please comment on the tennisfiles.com/33. Just on any thoughts you have about Mark's advice and what works for you and what doesn't in such. I'm sure it'll pretty much all work. But Mark, we love to end the show by asking our esteemed guests this question, which is what is one tip that you can give our audience that is the key in your mind to help improve their tennis game? Yeah, the biggest is focus on the details, meaning focus on your technique, focus on doing the little things correctly. And that's the biggest thing that'll make the biggest amount of impact. The drills, the exercises, you've got to pick the right ones, but especially even more important is focusing on the technique and doing it the right way. Way too often people are doing the right exercises. It's not about the wrong exercise. It's about doing the right exercise the wrong way. So make sure you emphasize, overemphasize, learn from the right people who can teach you the right ways to do what you're supposed to do. As we know, there's a lot of information out there. Much of it is incorrect. Much of it is an evidence-based. Make sure you're doing things the correct way. Find out the best resources, utilize the experts, and make sure you're really getting your information from quality sources. Mark, I can't thank you enough. It was just amazing to speak to you and to hear all the knowledge that you've accumulated over the years. And thanks for positively affecting the performance in lives of so many athletes from all sports. And I really cannot endorse complete conditioning for tennis. The second edition enough, I've been reading this book and I'm really amazed by just the amount of depth and the personalization that is afforded. Everybody who reads this book in terms of finding out what they need to do through reading this book to take their fitness and their game to the next level. There's so many videos in here and explanations and it's just incredible. I think you'd be making a mistake to be honest. If you didn't pick up this book, it's just fantastic. And Mark, thanks for being just a wonderful guest and for being so responsive on Twitter messaging me back when I asked a brand that you'd come on the show and you did. And I just want to thank you for everything. Yeah, no problem at all. Keep up the great work and keep spreading good information which you do and look forward to following the podcast in the future as well. So appreciate all the opportunities to share good quality information. Thank you so much, Mark. You take care. All the best to you. No problem. Thank you so much. I hope you guys got a ton of value from my interview with Dr. Mark Kovak. No, I certainly did just some amazing stuff from a very highly accomplished fitness expert. If you guys are interested in getting Mark's book that he co-authored with Paul Roachert and Todd Ellenbecker, you can get it at tennisfiles.com/fitnessbook. I just know that's an affiliate link. So if you were to click on that link and make a purchase, then I would make a small commission. Always got to disclose that for you guys. And you can also find all the show notes on this episode, including a timestamped question. So for every question that I asked, Mark, I have the exact time where the question was answered by Mark. So let me know what you think of that. Again, tennisfiles.com/fitnessbook.com/fitnessbook. I really would appreciate it. If you guys would subscribe to the tennisfiles podcast, I'd love to have all you guys as subscribers. The advantage with that is that as soon as I publish an episode, you will receive that episode. I will be downloaded immediately onto your favorite podcast app that you use to listen to the show. If you're not subscribed, then you'll have to search for the show and then click on each individual show to listen to it. And it also does not actually populate in the podcast apps. If you're not a subscriber until many hours after I actually publish it. So it's another reason to be a subscriber. Appreciate it. And I always like to end the show with a quote. And today's quote is by John F. Kennedy relating to fitness, of course, this being an amazing fitness episode. For you guys. And John F. Kennedy said, "Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body. It is the basis of a dynamic and creative intellectual activity. Take your fitness to the next level and I promise you that you will take your tennis game and your life to the next level." as well. Thank you guys so much for listening. I really appreciate it. Subscribe to the show, and I can't wait to see you on the next episode of the tennis fos podcast, where I will be interviewing Brian Bowland on the show. He had coach of the University of Virginia, definitely another very exciting and should be a great episode. National Champs for the men's team that he coaches. All right, thanks for listening, guys. And we'll see you on the next episode of the tennis fos podcast. Take care, guys. Thanks for listening to the tennis fos podcast. For more tips to help you improve your tennis game, visit tennisfos.com.