The aim of this research was to find out whether there is any connection between the maximum grip strength, wrist speed, and the efficiency of the serve. The latter was measured in speed, effectiveness, and in how accurate it was in hitting the target serve area. The second goal of the research was to observe the occurrence of tiredness with two different measurement protocols which differed from each other in the number of consecutive serves inside an individual interval (9x10 serves and 3x30 serves). The aim was also to discover any differences between the two measurement protocols in regards to the grip strength, wrist speed, and the efficiency of the tennis serve.
The sample of the participants included 4 students from the Faculty of Sports, University of Ljubljana who direct (oversee) tennis. They all also partake in the coaching process and have competition experience. The data on the grip strength was obtained with the manual dynamometer. The data on the wrist speed was gathered with the Armbeep device, and the serve speed was measured with a radar speed meter. A serve was considered successful when the ball hit the right service box. The serve was considered to be accurate when the ball hit the target area with the dimensions 2x1m in the right service box.
We found out that there are no statistically significant links between the grip strength and other variables in both of the measurement protocols. We also did not find any statistically significant differences between the wrist speed, the grip strength, and the effectiveness of the serve in either of the measurement protocols. It is interesting to note that all average values of the variables were higher in the 3x30 protocol. We would expect exactly the opposite since the 3x30 protocol is supposed to be more burdensome due to a greater number of successive servers within a single batch, which should reflect in a greater fatigue of the players. Therefore, we can conclude that the degree of the strain experienced during the measurement protocols does not affect the fatigue of the participants.
The main shortcoming of the study is a small sample of participants so the findings should by no means be generalized. In further research, it would be necessary to increase the number of the participants, and design a more perfected stress test with a higher number of repetitions.
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