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Posts Tagged John Isner

How John Isner Trains For Long Tennis Matches

Jul 1

Posted by ira in diet, exercise, gym stuff, tennis | No Comments

I wrote recently about the dangers of playing sports like tennis in hot weather. Doing it is much more difficult than watching it. I remember during the 2009 Australian Open that announcers were commenting on record temperatures over 100 degrees—it reached 111 one day. I had trouble in Miami, where I grew up, when I visited last year and played in just 87 humid degrees. How do players survive it for hours?

Isner and Roddick—2007

I heard that John Isner trained for this year’s Wimbledon by practicing heavily at Saddlebrook Resort in Florida’s mid-day heat. He spent up to 3 ½ hours a day on strength training and endurance. He also drinks coconut milk. By the way, he is 6’9″ and weighs 250 pounds. You can get some sense of his size in these pictures.

John Isner

So I looked up his specially designed training program and found this story by Joey Johnston of the Tampa Tribune:

… Before Wimbledon began, Craig Boynton, Isner’s coach, told the player he was strong enough to play for 10 hours. It was meant as confidence-building inspiration. But he wasn’t far off the mark.

“We develop programs for a lot of different players – some of them follow the plan and others don’t as well as they should,” said Jason Riley, Saddlebrook’s director of sports performance, who serves as Isner’s strength and conditioning coach, along with Kyle Morgan.

“John is meticulous about it. He implements the plan. He really takes care of his body. Coming out of college, it’s just speculation, but I’m not sure if his body would’ve held up. Physically and mentally, I’m not sure if he could’ve withstood a match like that.”

The essentials:

Diet: Riley is a big proponent of coconut water, which mimics electrolytes. He stresses food that provides sustained energy, such as fish, chicken, brown rice, sweet potatoes, whole wheat pasta and “a ton of vegetables.”

“When you go 70-68 in the fifth set, there’s going to be a lot of inflammation in your body,” Riley said. “The more antioxidants and vegetables you put in there, the better off you’re going to be.”
Does Isner ever stray from his diet, perhaps getting spotted as a fast-food drive-thru?

“I’m sure he does – but not very often,” Riley said with a smile. “You’ve got to know the times you can do those things – and the times you can’t do those things. He’s in a good place with his body now and he doesn’t want to mess that up. That could mean gaining weight or losing weight.”

Strength and conditioning: Isner alternates between the weight room and exercises to aid his movement and agility. Read the rest of this entry »

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Isner-Mahut Match Like Running Two Marathons Or Doing Jumping Jacks Throughout 11 Hours

Jun 30

Posted by ira in diet, tennis | No Comments

While we admire John Isner winning the longest-ever tennis match against Nicolas Mahut—70-68 after 11 hours over three days, and 7 hours five minutes for part of the fifth set alone on the second day in 81 degrees—it’s the fitness, endurance and determination to keep playing by both men that impresses me the most. Even if Isner was looking and acting like a zombie with no idea of where he was and what was happening.

John Isner

How did they survive it? Here is what : Lauren La Rose wrote for The Canadian Press:

…So just what would it feel like to play that much tennis over the course of three days? Imagine expending the energy equivalent of running two marathons, says Brendon Gurd, an assistant professor in the school of kinesiology and health studies at Queen’s University.
Gurd says the intensity of tennis is probably on par with a light jog.

“It was separated by two nights, but they essentially jogged for 11 hours total, so it’s a huge demand,” he said from Kingston, Ont.

“What goes along with that is as they’re exercising, they’re using stored fuels, so they’re using carbohydrates stored within their muscles, they’re using fat stored in their fat cells, so a lot of that as you continue to exercise will become depleted.”

Lance Watson of B.C.-based LifeSport, who has been coaching triathlon and distance runners for more than 20 years, including Canadian Olympic triathlete champion Simon Whitfield, said the big difference with tennis is that it’s a stop-and-go sport.

“Eleven hours of that would just be brutal because there would be so much muscle teardown,” he said from Victoria.

“I guess for the regular person if you could imagine doing sets of jumping jacks on and off for 11 hours I think that would be a comparison.”

Nicolas Mahut

Gurd said in a rough estimate, the players were probably burning somewhere in the neighbourhood of 600 to 700 calories an hour, but those figures could potentially be higher.

Both Gurd and Watson said staying nourished and hydrated while competing is critical.

Watson said in working with Ironman athletes, a huge part of their preparation and training is becoming systematic about the way they consume calories and fluids. For example, many will set their watches to go off every 15 minutes to ensure they’ll remember to eat a certain amount of carbs, he said.

“They would be probably preparing their hydration and their nutrition for their typical length of match and they wouldn’t have probably preloaded and kept the calories coming in in anticipation of that kind of an endurance match.”

Gurd said Isner and Mahut were probably eating as many carbohyrdates as possible to stay fuelled, while also guzzling Gatorade, which is source of both carbs and hydration. Read the rest of this entry »

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