Physiological responses and match characteristics in professional tennis players during a one-hour simulated tennis match

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of serve and return game situations on physiological responses and match characteristics in professional male tennis players during one hour-long simulated singles tennis matches. Ten internationally ranked tennis players (age 22.2 ± 2.8 years; body height 180.7 ± 4.4 cm; body mass 75.9 ± 8.9 kg) participated in this study. Their physiological responses were measured using two portable analyzers during indoor hard court matches. Ratings of perceived exertion were also determined at the end of the game. The variables describing the characteristics of the matches determined from video recordings were: (a) duration of rallies; (b) rest time; (c) work-to-rest ratio; (d) effective playing time; and (d) strokes per rally. Significant differences (p<0.05) were found between serving and returning conditions in an hour-long simulated singles tennis match in terms of oxygen uptake, a heart rate, ratings of perceived exertion, pulmonary ventilation, respiration frequency and a respiratory gas exchange ratio. In addition, both the heart rate and ratings of perceived exertion responses were moderately correlated with the duration of rallies and strokes per rally (r = 0.60 to 0.26; p<0.05). Taken together, these results indicate that the serve game situation has a significant effect on the physiological response in an hour-long simulated tennis match between professional male tennis players. These findings might be used for the physiological adaptations required for tennis-specific aerobic endurance.

Effects of passive, active, and mixed playing strategies on external and internal loads in female tennis players

“…As hypothesized, our key finding was that each playing strategy has a different impact on the external and internal loads, technical-tactical actions, and activity profiles of the players during play. This outcome is supported by the few available studies that have also investigated the effects of playing strategies [4,16] or that of further strategical situations as service and return games [38,41] on tennis match play data. Consequently, playing strategies should be considered for practical purposes like match analyses and training procedures in the tennis environment.…”

Probabilistic models comparing Fast4 and traditional tennis

“…Fast4 tennis may also reduce the physiological demands on players at the game level due to the maximum number of points in a game being 7. Higher physiological responses have been found in service games than in receiving games (Mendez-Villanueva et al, 2007;Kilit et al, 2016). Avoiding lengthy service games with multiple deuces could reduce the demands on players.…”

Playing tennis matches on clay court surfaces are associated with more perceived enjoyment response but less perceived exertion compared to hard courts

“…Numerous recent studies have shown that psychophysiological responses (Chapelle et al, 2017;Fernandez-Fernandez et al, 2010;Martin et al, 2011;Reid et al, 2013) and time-motion characteristics (Galé-Ansodi et al, 2016; Kilit & Arslan, 2017; Ponzano & Gollin, 2017) were affected by not only different playing conditions (Kilit & Arslan, 2018;Kilit et al, 2016), but also different court surfaces (Martin et al, 2011). In addition, all these variables have been found to affect the match characteristics (Kovalchik & Ingram, 2018;Reid et al, 2013).…”

“…The high number of strokes, short-and high-intensity activities (especially in serve games and clay court condition) cause more physical strain (Fernandez-Fernandez et al, 2007;Mendez-Villanueva, Fernandez-Fernández, Bishop, & Fernandez-Garcia, 2010). Thus, more rallies on clay court games might explain with higher psychophysiological responses of tennis players to have a closer relationship with match characteristics in terms of the higher stroke per rally and the longer duration of rally (Kilit & Arslan, 2017;Kilit et al, 2016;Mendez-Villanueva et al, 2010).…”