NEUROMUSCULAR DETERMINANTS OF PERFORMANCE IN EACH TYPE OF BALL SPIN TENNIS SERVE

Abstract

There is a paucity of studies that have used EMG techniques in order to better understand the motor control patterns associated with a quality execution of a mature serve. Some studies have characterized the action of the upper limb muscles in the execution of a flat serve (Behm, 1988; Buckley and Kerwin, 1988; Yoneda and Sahashi, 1995) but just two have used EMG analysis related to different types of serve. Chow et al. (2003) studied the activation patterns in the abdominal muscles for the three types of ball spin tennis serves and reported no significant differences between the three types of actions. Coutinho et al. (2004) found in an EMG analysis of eight upper limb muscles in the flat and the topspin serves, of an elite level player, several differences in the muscle activation patterns and intensity between the two types of serve. The aim of this study is to identify the different muscle activation patterns associated with each type of ball spin tennis serve.