THE MUSCULAR PROFILE IMPROVEMENT AFTER MEDIUM ALTITUDE EXERCISE TRAINING IN YOUNG TENNIS PLAYERS

The present study is aiming to investigate the muscular profile improvement after resistance training at medium-altitude in young tennis players. Methods: We performed a prospective study on 19 young amateur tennis players, who took part in a training camp for 15 days at an altitude of 1700 meters. At the beginning and the end of the training camp the subjects were evaluated in regard to: body composition; isometric muscle strength, mean power and jump height after performing 5 counter movement jumps. According to the evaluation results, there were established individual training programmes for each subject. They were used heart rate monitors in order to monitor the effort intensity during the exercise sessions. We applied the paired t test in order to calculate the statistical significance of the analyzed parameters. Evolution of parameters was considered statistically significant if the P coefficient value was under 0.05. Results: After performing 15 days of resistance exercise training, we noticed significant improvements of the following parameters: skeletal muscle mass; isometric strength of arm flexion, internal rotation and abduction; jump height and explosive power (recorded during triple extension of the lower limbs). Conclusions: The study demonstrates that after only 15 days of resistance exercise training at medium-altitude, muscle profile of young amateur tennis players can be significantly improved.