Tennis Racket Vibrations and Shock Transmission to the Wrist during Forehand Drive

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the effects of two different racket models and two different forehand drive velocities on the three-dimensional vibration behavior of the racket and shock transmission to the player’s wrist under real playing conditions. Nine tennis players performed a series of crosscourt flat forehand drives at two velocities, using a lightly and a highly vibrant racket. Two accelerometers were fixed on the racket frame and the player’s wrist. The analysis of vibration signals in both time and frequency domains showed no interaction effect of velocity and racket conditions either on the racket vibration behavior or on shock transmission. An increase in playing velocity enlarged the amount of vibrations at the racket and wrist, but weakly altered their frequency content. As compared to a racket perceived as highly vibrating, a racket perceived as lightly vibrating damped longer in the out-of-plane axis of the racket and shorter on the other axis of the racket and on the wrist, and displayed a lower amount of energy in the high frequency of the vibration signal at the racket and wrist. These findings indicated that the playing velocity must be controlled when investigating the vibration loads due to the racket under real playing conditions. Similarly, a reduced perception of vibration by the tennis player would be linked to decreased amplitude of the racket vibration signal, which may concentrate the signal energy in the low frequencies.

Active tuning of stroke-induced vibrations by tennis players

“…From an energetic point of view, as indicated by Rogowski et al (2015), the harder the stroke, the greater the vibrational energy transferred into the forearm. Specifically, our results show that vibrational energy is mostly concentrated along the ball impact axis, regardless of the stroke intensity and the racket properties.…”

“…This result is of primary importance since a correlation between the frequency of the racket's first bending mode, estimated under freely suspended conditions, and the amount of vibration transferred to the forearm following a ball impact has been pointed out (Hennig, 2007;Hennig, Rosenbaum, & Milani, 1992). It follows that stroke-induced vibrations are not determined entirely by the mechanical properties of the racket, but rather that racket vibrations are also dependent on the playing velocity (Rogowski et al, 2015) and the attributes of the player's grip (Banwell, Roberts, Halkon, Rothberg, & Mohr, 2014;Kawazoe & Yoshinari, 2010). This hypothesis is supported by the fact that, despite comparable grip forces, the magnitude of vibration transferred into the hands of skilled tennis players is significantly less than that of recreational players (Hennig, 2007).…”

Hand-Arm Vibration Assessment and Changes in the Thermal Map of the Skin in Tennis Athletes during the Service

“…The Tourna grip, when compared with the standard Wilson Pro, does not present significant differences. According to Marchetti et al [44] the access point of vibration is the palm of the hand, so the way the athlete handles the racket has a significant influence on the HAV. The average values for the weighted acceleration specified (a hv ), considering the results of the six athletes and obtained in the four situations evaluated are 42.99 ± 8.4, 41.42 ± 8.2, 41.21 ± 8.5, and 43.01 ± 8.4 m/s 2 , for WGNAV, WGWAV, TGWAV, and CGWAV, respectively.…”

Validity and reliability of a novel monitoring sensor for the quantification of the hitting load in tennis

“…It is certainly an important indicator that could contribute to a comprehensive analysis of the characteristics of tennis shots but requires further research. Mainly towards the causes for racket vibrations, with the following possible factors: racket mass, stiffness and velocity, ball contact location, grip stiffness and type of acceleration or deceleration [40].…”