 Hello and welcome. My name is Philipp Halfmann and I'm the Director of Exercise and Sports Science at the IAAPH and I'm also the author of Advanced Concepts of Strengths and Conditioning for Tennis. In the previous episode I shared my opinion on how to improve the state of U.S. tennis. In today's episode I will explain why steady state jogging is a waste of time for tennis conditioning. Many coaches require the athletes to incorporate jogging into their regular training program in order to enhance or maintain endurance capabilities. But from a conditioning standpoint continuous steady state jogging is ineffective and hence a waste of time. There are other training components such as interval training that allow the athletes to improve other performance parameters besides improving aerobic energy system efficiencies. I will talk about the energy system contribution during competition, interval training and towards the end I will provide some training recommendation. Now let's take a closer look at the physical demands of tennis. As you can see the intensity is rather high with rallies lasting 10 to 15 seconds on average depending on court surface and skill level. Now with regards to energy system dynamics, a tennis player requires the contribution of all three energy systems. The ATP-CP system, anaerobic glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation during a tennis match. But the anaerobic energy systems actually predominate and therefore enhancing their capabilities during training should be the emphasis. Steady state jogging on the other hand requires a lot of time and targets the wrong energy system. It mainly enhances the aerobic energy system. So why would you send out your players each week jogging if that time could be used much more beneficial? Now interval training is a much better alternative. Interval training which is characterized by alternating low and high exercise intensities over a prolonged period of time actually enhances the aerobic and anaerobic energy systems. It mirrors the physiological demands experienced during a tennis match and hence is a much more sport specific form of training. Now depending on age, gender, level of play and court surface work to risk ratios during a tennis match vary. According to the ITF rule book during professional play there are rest intervals of 20 seconds between points, 90 seconds during changeovers and 120 seconds between sets. Next are the training recommendations. Let's assume that on average a point lasts 10 to 15 seconds and seven points are being played per game. That means that a game lasts approximately three and a half to four minutes of which one to one and a half minutes of high intensity work and two and a half minutes of low intensity activity. Therefore on average the work to rest intervals during a tennis match are one to two and a half to one to three which means 10 seconds of high intensity activity following 25 to 30 seconds of lower intensity activity which means that during interval training the athlete sprints for 10 seconds and lightly jogs for 25 to 30 seconds. Now each game lasts approximately three and a half to four minutes and two games are played before there's another 90 second rest interval due to changeover. Therefore we have seven to eight minutes of interval work before the athlete gets a 90 second break which means that the athletes alternates 10 seconds sprinting and 25 to 30 second light jogging for seven to eight minutes before getting 90 seconds to recover. Therefore if each interval includes the duration of two games and 10 games are played per set then five intervals will represent a set which means that an interval training session of five intervals will last 41 to 46 minutes. 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 comments. 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 dano at danosongs.com