Investigation of the effect of tennis specific resistance band trainings on strength speed and balance performances

Objective: The purpose of the study was to examine the effect of resistance band training applied concurrent with tennis training on strength, speed, balance, agility and tennis targeting performances. Methods: A total of 42 male volunteers (age: 20,51±2,20 year, height: 175,81±6,73 cm) were voluntarily participated in this study. Participants in the study were randomly assigned 3 groups. Traditional strength and tennis training group (TSG) (n = 15) tennis and traditional strength training, tennis group (TG) only tennis training (n = 11), resistance band group (RBG) resistance band and tennis were trained (n= 16). All groups were trained for 8 weeks, 3 days a week, 60 minutes a day. Anthropometric measurements, isokinetic strength, balance, speed, agility, tennis targeting tests were applied at the beginning and end of the study. Results: There was a significant difference between isokinetic extension, isokinetic flexion force, speed, agility and tennis targeting performances when all groups had pre-post tests (p <0.05, p <0.01). No statistically significant difference was found between static balance performances when all groups had pre-post tests (p <0.05). When comparing the pre-post tests in dynamic balance performance, a significant difference was found in TSG (p <0.05) and no significant difference was found between TG and RBG (p <0.05). Conclusion: Isokinetic extention force, isokinetic flexion force, speed, agility and tennis target performance similar was found in all groups. It had been found that strength training with tennis and only tennis training didn't support the development of static balance. Dynamic balance performance improvement was found to be supported only by traditional strength training. However, except for balance performance, the percentage improvement in all other parameters more improvement was found in RBG. Key words: tennis, resistance band, strength, speed, balance.