Racket Sports:

Racket sport disciplines include tennis, badminton, squash, racquetball, soft ball, cricket and table tennis. All of the sports have one thing in common; they are played with a racket which propels an implement in order to score points.

All of these sporting disciplines require athletes to rapidly accelerate and decelerate and possibly change direction whist on the move or from a static position. The sports also require the ability to produce maximal force in short periods of time (<0.1sec) and apply this force to the ground and skilfully through the object. Mobility and producing force from awkward body positions if often a forgotten trait of racket sports, good movers often have a significant advantage. All of these characteristics are trainable under the guidance of DNA Sports Performance.

Athlete Case Study–

Recently we have been working with the squash national governing body, which identified a group of their most talented young athletes for elite strength and conditioning support. Working in conjunction with the national lead strength and conditioning coach at the English Institute of Sport (EIS) we designed a package for the athletes to tie in with squash’s long term athlete development (LTAD) needs of an elite performer. The picture below displays Istvan Balyi (2003) model of LTAD with the squash group fitting into the “learning to train” stage.

Balyi’s (2003) Model of participation of lifelong physical activity