Whether your goal is to slim up for summer just avoid going up a pants size, these tips will start you off on the right foot. They may even help you develop a new, healthier relationship with food.

1.       Eat Less, More Often
The main reason that we gain weight is that we take in more calories than we expend on a daily basis. In America, we don’t really know what it’s like to be hungry, we only know ‘less full’. Eating smaller meals has obvious benefits, but breaking meals into two portions and eating them several hours apart will not only decrease your total caloric intake, but keep your metabolism at a higher rate throughout the day, enabling your body to burn more calories.

2.       Drink Water – A Lot of It
Drinking water throughout the day has several benefits. You should …

Let’s Talk Nutrition
Today I want to discuss nutrition and it’s role in maintaining a properly functioning machine. Your body is a calorie eating, energy generating organism that twill devour just about anything you put into the intake duct (your mouth), and is designed to use this fuel to generate energy, repair tissue, deliver nutrients, and even fight diseases.

Obviously we all have a different style machine – some are slim and fast, while others are larger and more powerful. The type of machine that you have is largely determined by genetics, but that is not to say that we can’t change out some of the rounder, less streamlined parts for more efficient, aerodynamic accessories by using nutrition properly.

The shape and performance of our machine is largely dependent upon the type and amount of fuel that we feed it. I want to give you some guidelines that you can use to properly …

I love playing tennis and working out – a lot. I supplement my on-court time with some serious time in the gym a few days a week so that I can continue to be at the top of my game. I am however, starting to cruise towards the forth decade of my life, and with that comes the normal aches and pains that accompany an active lifestyle. Despite my best efforts to maintain my body and ward off injury, I have developed some nagging injuries. I suffer few chronic back and neck issues that no amount of stretching or working at can seem to ease.

I’ve visited the chiropractor for years, but the issue isn’t spinal related, it’s muscular. I’ve visited my general practitioner on several occasions, the last time going so far as getting a cortisone shot to treat my …

There has been a lot of talk on the forums lately about endurance and being able to perform late into matches. I thought I’d take the opportunity to address some frequently asked questions and hopefully give you a game plan for taking your endurance to the next level. We all want to be able to go out and enjoy ourselves on the court, and part of that comes from being able to perform when we are on the edge physically.

Now that the temperatures have climbed across the states, we are seeing the results of the training we did in the ‘off’ season. You did train over the cooler months in preparation for playing when it got hot, right? You will need to supplement your on-court time with some off-court time in the slower months, depending on how seriously you take your tennis. If you want to be prepared to weather …

Today I want to discuss one of the most important and often overlooked aspects of getting and staying in shape: motivation. It seems to me that this is one of the hardest things that we need to overcome in order to maintain this wonderful organic machine that we know as the human body.

By now, if you are not aware of the benefits of regular exercise, you must not have turned on a TV, read a magazine, or fired up your internet browser in over three decades. We all know that regular exercise can decrease the likelihood of many ailments that come from carrying too much weight on your frame. It also improves lung capacity and function and can aid in maintaining bone health, to name just a few. So why aren’t’ we a nation of extremely healthy individuals? We have ready access to proper nutritionally balanced foods, advanced exercise techniques, …

It’s time to wrap up our earlier conversation about Olympic lifting and how we can incorporate it’s elements into our tennis fitness regiment. Today we’ll look at one of the most complex lifts and break it down into smaller elements that we can more easily apply to our own routines.
Why Learn the Clean and Jerk?
The clean and jerk is a two part lift where the bar rests on the ground and the lifter brings it up to shoulder height in the first part, then extends the weight overhead to complete the lift. To be properly learned, the lift needs to be broken down to its base components, and this is where we as tennis players can make use of these smaller, less complex lifts. Olympic lifters train for years to perfect this lift and attempt to raise as much weight as possible using the strictest of forms. These …

What are some images that come to mind when you hear the words “Olympic Weightlifting”? Big, barrel chested men in unitards, chalk flying everywhere, meaty guys in the gym lifting dangerous amounts of weight, or maybe just thoughts of that time in high-school when you tried to squat a heavy load and the plate fell off the end of the bar? Ok, that last one was from personal experience. Today I want to give you loyal readers a taste of what Olympic weightlifting is and how it can benefit you on the tennis court. Impossible you say? Well strap into your favorite unitard and read on!

The Queensland Weightlifting Association (www.qwa.org) describes Olympic lifting as “a contest between an athlete and his or her belief in themselves” and “a pure test of flesh and blood against iron and gravity.” While that is a rather romantic way of putting it, I think it would benefit us to understand the principles behind …

The lowly push-up, long regarded as simply an exercise for guys that just received a high-and-tight haircut and now have to call everyone “sir”, or a simple, P.T. type movement that doesn’t really do much. I want to revisit the push-up and hopefully give you some different looks at this old, dusty standby that will endear it to you again in your workout regimen.
Basic Training
Let’s start with the basics, grunts, and that would be what does a proper push-up look like? There are many iterations of this relic, but we need to start at the bottom before we go deeper. The standard push up should be started with hands shoulder width apart, back straight, and up on your toes. Your body should basically be in a straight line from your heels to the back of your head. Begin the motion by lowering the chest to within an inch …

We’ve been having some good discussion on the forum about stretching, so I wanted to write a follow up article about some stretches you can incorporate into your on-court warm-up before the serious hitting starts. You can thank John in Real Life for this supplement, as he recommended I put up some pre and post tennis stretches for you. Here we go.
Warm Up – Please!!!
As I mentioned in the previous article, the importance of warming up cannot be overstated. You do not want to start pulling cold muscles into uncomfortable positions. Run in place, jump rope, do some laps around the court, whatever it takes to break a sweat and get some blood flowing to your muscles. A great way to warm up the core muscles (see blog post “The Core of the Matter”), is to do some crunches or other ab exercise. Seriously, warm up until you are WARM. This will go a long way towards getting …

How important is stretching to you? Probably ranks right up there with going to the dentist or cleaning out your gutters, right? I have to admit that the idea of stretching, putting my body into uncomfortable positions and producing pain for myself is not my idea of fun. Now, how important is flexibility and preventing injury? When we think about these goals, especially as tennis players, they probably rank a little higher on the priority list – and if not, they should. I’d like to look at how important flexibility is, how to incorporate stretching into our exercise regimens, and what benefits it has to overall body fitness.

Stretching Physiology
Let’s look at what stretching actually does first. Muscles are composed of long, elastic fibers called fascicles, and like any elastic material, they work better when warm and flexible, …