TENNIS – Ashleigh Barty recently announced she is taking an indefinite leave from professional tennis and Nick Kyrgios will not compete for the rest of the 2014 season. Are young tennis players at risk of burnout? Is the decision to take a break the correct one? Our Tennis Performance Specialist Johnny Fraser examines the issue of burnout.
Tennis is one of the most challenging sports physically, mental and socially. Many hours are required on court, players must train to be elite athletes and mentally being prepared to deal with challenging situations on an individual basis. Furthermore at the top end of junior and professional game there are very few sports which require players to travel across multiple time zones week in week out, spending months away from family and friends and having a schedule which can be so unbeknown based on whether you make the ranking cut off a few days before an event or if you lose in the first round. Due to these challenging demands we often hear players ‘burning out’, particularly at a junior level. This in the worst case scenario leads to them quitting the game, despite spending many hours dedicated to the sport.
Burn out is often considered as being an inability to cope with chronic stress produced by the demands placed upon the athlete to meet the physical and psychological demands of the sport (DiFiori et al. 2014). A recent review suggested potential ways to help reduce the likelihood of burnout avoiding excessive over scheduling and time commitments in sport (DiFiori et al., 2014). However in a sport such as tennis where at a junior level players are attempting to improve rankings and ratings to compete at a higher level and for professional players trying to earn a living tournament schedules can often be exhausting. Indeed recently the promising eighteen year old Australian Ashleigh Barty announced her indefinite leave from the WTA Tour. Having won junior Wimbledon in 2011 and having reached three Grand Slam doubles final in 2013 it appears Barty has decided to take time out from the game suggesting burn out and no definite commitment she will return. This for the former junior world number two must have been a challenging decision to make having spent the majority of her junior life committed to tennis and for any tennis fan seeing a promising, exciting player hang up their rackets at a young age is disappointing.
Staleness if often another term considered with regard to overtraining and potentially burnout. Defined as a combination of psychological and biological issue in which physiological changes lead to a profound affect on the athlete’s psychological state (Polman and Houlahan, 2004) it appears fellow Australian Nick Kyrgios is taking time out from the ATP tour for the remainder of 2014. The nineteen year old has had an astonishing two years with an effortless transition from the junior to senior game currently ranked 57th in the men’s tour.
It appears a sensible decision from the player who is one of few on an esteemed list of players to have won a challenger event before the age of eighteen. Indeed Kyrgios who competed his final junior event at Wimbledon 2013 is well ahead of schedule to be a successful player based upon recent research. This suggests that the development of male players is taking a longer duration potentially linked to the more challenging and robust environments athletes are required to prepare for (Bane Reid and Morgan, 2014). Furthermore recent research suggests ranking milestones in which ATP players need to be achieving to reach top ten status with Kyrgios very much ahead of where predictive measures suggest (Reid et al., 2014). Within three years on tour players are expected to be achieving rankings of 76 ± 89 or by the age of 19 to be ranked 106 ± 12, clearly suggesting any break by Kyrgios is unlikely to affect his future development on the tour. It appears a clever move by the Australian to maintain longevity in his career which is likely to see him continue to move up the rankings. Some may question why is a nineteen year old burnout? However for such a young player he should be applauded for his maturity, understanding how the demands of tennis will affect both his physical and mental state and ultimately showing respect to the challenging game that modern day tennis has evolved to.
by Jonny Fraser (MSc, Owner Science in Tennis, iTPA Master Tennis Performance Specialist)
Bibliography
Bane, M.K., Reid, M., Morgan, S. (2014) Has player development in men’s tennis really changed? An historical rankings perspective. Journal of sport science, 32 (15), 1477-1484.
DiFiori, J, et al. (2014). Overuse injuries and burnout in youth sports: a position statement from the American medical society for sports medicine. Clinical journal of sports medicine, 24(1), 3-20.
Polman, R. and Houlahan, K. (2004). A cumulative stress and training continuum model: a multidisciplinary approach to unexplained underperformance syndrome. Research in sports medicine, 12, 301-316.
Reid, M, et al (2014). Rankings in professional men’s tennis:a rich but underutilised source of information. Journal of sport sciences, 32(10), 986-992.
