 Hi, I'm Philip Halfmann, I'm the Director of Tennis and Strength and Conditioning with Fit2Hit and I work with professional athletes for a living. Today I want to talk with you guys about core training for tennis and why it's important. Did you know that core strength ultimately determines the speed of your serve? Okay, so let's take a look at the service motion of Swiss national champion Alexander Richard. As you can see, he pushes off the ground, jumps up into the air and hits the ball above his head. So why is the core or the trang region so important even though he hits the ball with his right hand? The answer is energy transfer or kinetic chain efficiency. The reason why the core is so important in energy transfer is because there are many connecting points within the movement chain, which also means that there's a higher risk for energy leakage, which results in reduced force production. Therefore, core training for tennis is important. So let's take a look at transfer of energy. Tennis is ground driven, which means everything happens from the ground first, so you push off the ground, you transfer the energy through your body and then you hit the ball. So there's a chain of events occurring before you actually hit the ball. It doesn't matter if you hit a serve or a ground stroke, that procedure is always the same. It's the bottom up transfer of energy. So during the serve you start with 100% of potential energy at your feet, then you start the motion, transfer energy through your body and you hit the ball above your head. During that motion you actually lose some energy due to heat. So the energy available above your head is going to be less than 100%. So the speed of your serve ultimately depends on three factors. First, how much force you can generate at your feet. Second, how much you can transfer through the body. And third, how much you can actually apply to the ball. Well, that's it again for today's episode. As usual opinions differ. What's your point of view? Let us know below in the comment section. A brand new episode will be available next Sunday. So make sure you don't miss it and subscribe. In the meantime I recommend you watch some of the previous episodes. You should really watch them all. If you like what you saw, tell your friends. I'm sure they will appreciate it. I'm Philipp Halfmann, thank you for watching and auf Wiedersehen! Tennis conditioning TV episodes are licensed under Creative Commons. You are welcome to link or embed these videos, forward them to others and share these ideas with people you know. Brought to you by Advanced Concepts of Strength and Conditioning for Tennis. Available at TennisConditioningBook.com. Music by Dan Oh at DanOhSongs.com