It's All about the Feet Our feet have many nerve endings that collect data on pressure, temperature, and terrain if we are walking barefoot.

Wearing shoes limits these inputs and the balance and mobility is less natural and can increase the risk of falls, ankle sprains, and other injuries. Lately, there has been a lot of movement toward minimalist footwear (such as Vibram's FiveFingres shoes) and a lot of books on barefoot running.

Obviously, that is not something a tennis player would want to do, especially when playing on hard courts. A few players state that playing in minimalist footwear on clay or grass is an amazing and healthy experience, but for the rest of us, we need to take care of our feet in a different way.

Extrinsic and Intrinsic Feet Muscles

Any imbalances in musculature in your feet will limit full range of motion and alter your running and walking gait, which in long term can cause problems and overuse injuries. There are two kinds of musculature in your feet, extrinsic and intrinsic:

1) Extrinsic foot muscles have one attachment in the foot and the other one somewhere up in the leg. These muscles move your foot relative to the lower leg. The three muscles of the calves are all extrinsic.

2) Intrinsic foot muscles have both ends inside the foot. Intrinsic motions move one portion of the foot relative to other foot joints. One example is the muscle (abductor digiti minimi) that moves your pinkie toe out and away from the other toes.

Fit and Healthy Feet for Better Tennis

For the feet muscles, wearing shoes is like putting a cast on your arm after a bone break: without regular use, the muscles atrophy quickly. When the smaller intrinsic muscles with fine motor skills atrophy, the larger extrinsic muscles start to compensate. Slowly, they are overused, developing trigger points and tension that will further cause more problems.

Training Your Feet

The muscle groups of your two feet make up 25% of the body's muscles. If you ignore the strength and function of your feet muscle, it is like eliminating upper-body exercises from your routine. That doesn't sound too good, does it? Yet, it is very common that we don't pay enough attention to our feet.

Exercises that innervate the intrinsic foot muscles and restore the length of lower leg muscles are extremely important. Foot strength has the key role in proper foot mechanics, gait patterns, ankle stabilization, and whole-body balance. Your toes are designed to have as much dexterity as your fingers -- each toe joint can flex and extend, abduct and adduct.

These are basic, simple motions, but when you try it yourself, you realize how difficult it is to lift one toe without lifting the other toes. That's why you need to start a strengthening program for your feet, and work on it until your movements are fluid and the motor skills are visibly improved.

Toe Lifts

Lift your big toe on its own, without the other toes lifting. Keep working on it until you are capable of doing it smoothly. Process to lifting each toe one at a time, until they are all in the air. Then, reverse and place them down again, starting with the 5th (smallest) toe, until you get your big toe.

Toe Abduction

Our feet are always smashed and compressed inside our shoes, often too narrow for the toes to move. The narrow toe space in footwear creates weak toe abductors and tight adductors, which prevents your toes from spreading wide naturally.

Stand up barefoot, with the weight on your heels so you can lift your toes. Now spread your toes away from each other without lifting them off the ground. If you wear flip-flops as footwear of your choice when you are not in the tennis shoes, you need to know that flip-flops force your toes to increase the gripping action, which can cause chronic tension in the flexed position and eventually alter your balance.

Stretching the Toe Flexors

Stand up and reach one leg behind, placing the top of the foot on the ground. Relax and stretch your ankle. If you experience cramping in your toes, take a break and return to the stretch. Work yourself up to holding 1 minute on each side.

Strengthen Bottom of your Feet

In this exercise, you can either use small pebbles that you will pick up with your toes, one by one, from the ground. You can also use a towel that you will scrunch with your toes. Try to feel the muscles in the bottom of your feet. If you would prefer a simple, yet very effective tool for exercising your feet muscles, get yourself the Elgin's Arch Exerciser that will make it simple to strengthen the muscles and also helps to prevent plantar fasciitis and heel spurs. You can find the exerciser on many websites or stores, but I often find Amazon's prices the most affordable.

Foot Circles and Points with Therabands

Many foot problems happen because of the limited range of motion or flexibility in the ankle and surrounding muscles. The simple, restorative Foot Points and Circles as described in one of my previous articles will create more movement in your ankles and bigger range of motion.

To bring this exercise a bit further and work with some resistance, take a Theraband (or any resistance band of your choice) and loop it around your foot. Pull on the band to create enough challenging tension, and do 20 points and flexes, followed by 20 circles clockwise, and 20 circles counter clockwise. You will definitely feel the muscles working. Then repeat for the other foot. If you find one foot much weaker, repeat on the weaker side one more time, until you get both sides evenly strong.

Walking Barefoot

Occasionally, you may want to walk around barefoot or in minimalist footwear, so you would exercise the muscles in your feet during body movement. You will feel the ground differently; you will create a new sense of balance and develop a light foot strike, which will help you to move lighter on the tennis court.

Rehab of your Feet

Give your tired and beat-up feet more love. Besides strengthening and stretching, massage them occasionally, give them a hot bath, and soak them in good lotion or shea butter. If you suffer from hammertoes or other toe issues, or if you are in your tennis shows for many hours each day, you could use this simple device "Pampered Toes" to give your toes a little bit extra room. You can use it just for a few minutes a day, yet it will make big difference in your feet's well-being. You can also roll your feet on a golf ball or other small massage balls.

After only a few weeks of strengthening your feet muscles, you will notice a better movement on the tennis court, and if you have been experiencing aches in your knees, or tightness in your calves or glutes, you may be surprised that these will go away. Make sure to give your calves a good stretch and myofascial release regularly! Keep your feet fit and happy, and your tennis game will blossom too!

Article sourced from: http://www.tennisfitnesslove.com/2012/01/fit-and-healthy-feet-for-better-tennis-and-less-injuries/

There are many principles that work n all areas of life, whether if be business, personal or your tennis game. The following 14 ideas are from the Goal Planner book by Brian Tracy.

For more information about Brian Tracy go to www.briantracy.com

1.       The great secret of success is that there are no secrets of success: there are only timeless principles that have proven effective through the centuries.

2.       If you change your thinking you change your life.

3.       It doesn’t matter where you are coming from: all that matters is where you are going.

4.       You have great untapped reserves of potential within you. Your job is to release them.

5.       Decide what you want and act as if it were impossible to fail.

6.       Learn from the experts: you will not live long enough to work it out by yourself.

7.       The more reasons you have for achieving your goal, the more determined you will become.

8.       There are no limits on what you can achieve with your life, except the limits you accept in your own mind.

9.   You  are a potential genius: there is no problem you cannot solve, and no answer you cannot find somewhere.

10.   Your success will be largely determined by your ability to concentrate single-mindedly on one thing at a time.

11.   If there is anything you want in life, find out how others have achieved it and then do the same things they did.

12.   If you conduct yourself as though you expect to be successful and happy, you will seldom be disapointed.

13.   It is not what you say, or wish, or hope, or intend, it is only what you do that counts.

14.   Everything you have in your life you have attracted to yourself because of the person you are.

Visualize and Affirm Your Desired Outcomes: A Step-by-Step Guide

Shoulder External Rotation with a Resistance Band

The repetitive nature of tennis puts your body under severe stresses and potential injuries, especially in the knees, ankles, lower back and shoulders. Shoulder injuries are one of the most common in a tennis player because the shoulder muscles are relatively small and exposed to tremendous repetitive forces.

Also, because of the large range of motion in the shoulder, the ligaments alone cannot provide enough stability through all planes of movements. The main stability of the shoulder should be provided by the four muscles called rotator cuff: supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor and subscapularis.

It is extremely important to do a regular strength training of the rotator cuff -- both external and internal rotation, with more emphasis on the external rotation. The internal rotators are helped by the bigger muscle groups in your chest and back, while the external rotators work alone and are generally much weaker than the internal rotators. All tennis strokes involve more or less some external rotation, but the greatest stress is caused by the serve and overhead.

Keeping the external rotator muscles strong will help you to prevent future overuse injuries - chronic inflammation or even rotator tears which can be excruciatingly painful and take long time to heal. Prevention, which means strengthening and stretching, is the best way to go. In the following great exercise you will need a resistance band, also known as Theraband. A resistance band should be in every tennis player's bag. If it is not in yours yet, please, go and pick one at any sport store or online. I get my Resistance Bands at power-systems.com.

Buy a few different bands -- different colors mean different resistance. The Theraband is also great for a warm up before your match or practice, and for strengthening of many muscles without going to the gym. You can carry it with you everywhere and pull on it even while you are watching TV.

External Shoulder Rotation with a Resistance Band

Stand straight with your right arm bent in the elbow and the upper arm "stuck" to the side of your body. Hold one end of the Theraband in the right hand. Now you have two options: you can either fasten the other end to anything stationary, or you can anchor it with your other hand on the opposite hip. I prefer the latter -- when you master the technique of it, you can easily do the exercise anywhere and anytime, even while walking your dogs in the park (that's when I do my rotator cuff exercises). Now keeping your anchor hand steady, rotate your right hand and forearm outward, without moving the upper arm. Keep the wrist steady as well. Hold the outer position for a second and resist on the way back to the starting position. Make both movements smooth, no herky-jerky. Do 15 repetitions, switch the side, and perform 4 sets total.

If you find the movement too difficult, maybe your band is too strong for your rotator strength. Choose a proper resistance of the band -- you want to feel some resistance, but it cannot be too heavy, or you won't be able to pull the band smoothly. For the optimal shoulder health it is beneficial to also strengthen the scapula stabilizing muscles which can be easily accomplished with all the variations of the previously described plank: plain, with hip twists, arm and leg lift, knee-to-elbow and side plank with leg lift.

Besides the shoulders and scapula, the planks are excellent for the entire core. Strong rotator cuff and core = better tennis and fewer injuries.

Article sourced from: http://www.tennisfitnesslove.com/2010/05/shoulder-external-rotation-with-a-resistance-band/