Acute effects of in-step and wrist weights on change of direction speed, accuracy and stroke velocity in junior tennis players

Joshua Colomar; Ernest Baiget; Francisco Corbi; Joshua Muñoz

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0230631

Acute effects of in-step and wrist weights on change of direction speed, accuracy and stroke velocity in junior tennis players

PLoS One. 2020 Mar 23;15(3):e0230631. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0230631. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Joshua Colomar^{1

2}, Ernest Baiget³, Francisco Corbi⁴, Joshua Muñoz^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ National Institute of Sport and Physical Education (INEFC), University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
² Sports Science Department, Academia Sánchez-Casal, Barcelona, Spain.
³ Sport Performance Analysis Research Group (SPARG), University of Vic-Central University of Catalonia, Vic, Spain.
⁴ National Institute of Sport and Physical Education (INEFC), University of Lleida, Lleida, Spain.

Abstract

The main aim of this study was to investigate the acute effects of the use of a weighting set (Powerinstep®) on measures of stroke velocity (StV), accuracy and change of direction speed (CODS) in junior tennis players. A within-subjects design was used to evaluate seventeen (6 female and 11 male) tennis players (mean ± SD; 16.5 ± 1.3 years old; 1.75 ± 8.4 m; 67.0 ± 8.1 kg; 22.04 ± 1.8 kg/m2) on StV of three specific tennis actions (serve, forehand and backhand) and CODS for the following conditions: wearing a 50, 100, 150, 200 g weight or no weight at all (baseline). No significant differences were found between conditions for forehand (F = 0.412; p = 0.799), backhand (F = 0.269; p = 0.897) and serve (F = 0.541; p = 0.706) velocity and forehand (F = 1.688; p = 0.161), backhand (F = 0.567; p = 0.687) and serve (F = 2.382; p = 0.059) accuracy and CODS (F = 0.416; p = 0.797). Small-to-moderate effect sizes (ES) negatively affecting StV when using 200 g compared to the baseline (ES = 0.48, 0.35 and 0.45) could be observed. Moderate (ES = -0.49) and trivial (ES = -0.14 and -0.16) ES for a higher accuracy score were noticed in serve, forehand and backhand 100 g compared to the baseline. Moreover, small ES (ES = 0.41) for improvement in 200 g CODS comparing to baseline conditions were found. These results indicate that the use of a weighting set does not significantly affect StV or CODS respectively. Notwithstanding, small-to-moderate changes show impact in accuracy and no variance in velocity production when using 100 g alongside faster execution in CODS when using 200 g.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adolescent
Athletic Performance / physiology*
Biomechanical Phenomena
Female
Humans
Male
Mechanical Phenomena*
Tennis / physiology*
Wrist / anatomy & histology
Wrist / physiology*

Grants and funding

The research leading to these results has been conducted using funds from the agreement between the Universitat de Vic – Universitat Central de Catalunya and Powerinstep, SL. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.