In Q1 2025, Melbourne Sports Chiropractor Dr. Nicholas Shannon and WTA Tour Coach Carlos Martinez will release their ebook titled “Injury Prevention in Tennis: A Comprehensive Guide”. This ebook pulls together the experience and knowledge Dr. Shannon has accumulated in sports and tennis medicine over the last 18 years, including 8 years working at the Australian Open and published academic work on injuries in elite players. Together with Coach Carlos’s wealth of experience in tennis, ranging from his competitive playing days, to academy coaching, to Pro Tour coaching both in women’s singles and doubles with top 10 players, including his wife Nicole Melichar-Martinez. This unique combination blends the best of both worlds to give readers a deeper insight in injury prevention in tennis.
How The Book Came To Be
Injuries in elite tennis have been an ongoing problem on the pro tour, with reports every fews weeks of another top tennis player being struck down with an injury, resulting in time off court. Dr. Shannon’s paper on injuries in elite players highlighted playing load management and players often returning too early from injury as potential problems leading to injury.
When Dr. Shannon met Coach Carlos, he shared his own experiences of seeing players across all levels not being coached correctly, players playing too much and not undertaking the proper conditioning, resulting in tennis players getting unnecessarily injured. Coach Carlos suggested the two work together on an ebook to share their combined experiences and information to help players, parents and coaches be better informed about injury prevention in tennis.
Deciding What Is Important in Injury Prevention
The next step was to decide what to include in the ebook as injury prevention is an extremely broad area. Coach Carlos and Melbourne Sports Chiropractor Dr. Shannon had their own ideas on areas they consistently see as problem areas for tennis players, coaches and parents. However, to create a more holistic book, both asked their colleagues (professional players, coaches, amatuer players, sports medicine physicians, researchers) and the broader tennis world for their input. The results from this feedback built the foundation for the book and what wad deemed important to cover in injury prevention in tennis. These areas included:
- Principles of load management
- Overtraining
- Burnout
- Training periodization (including strength and conditioning)
- Principles of injury prevention
- Common injuries in tennis
- Interventions for injury prevention for the upper and lower limb
- Warm-up and recovery
- Sports nutrition and hydration
Keeping the Tennis Injury Prevention Information Relevant
A primary objective of Dr. Shannon and Coach Carlos was to have information in the ebook that is timely, relevant, evidence-based and most important, easy for the target audience (parents, players and coaches) to be able to understand and digest. In many cases this involved reviewing the literature, it also meant consulting with other experts in fields like sports orthopaedic surgery, sports scientists, sleep specialists, sports medicine physicians, sports dieticians, physiotherapists, professional players, stringers and coaches. Together, the input from these experts helped to refine the ebook, making sure readers can feel confident in the knowledge being dispensed.
Where to Find “Injury Prevention in Tennis: A Comprehensive Guide”
Dr. Shannon and Coach Carlos’s are working hard to have their ebook available for purchase by early January 2025 to line up with the Australian Open in Melbourne. It will be available on Amazon books. For those looking for extra assistance Dr. Shannon and Coach Carlos will be providing a consultation service to help players and coaches with anything from injury assessment and reviews, managing training loads, technique analysis, nutritional support, managing the demands of travel, to reviewing more complex or chronic injuries hampering players or players looking for ways to improvement their on court performance.
Additionally, you can follow Coach Carlos and Dr. Shannon on social media. For anyone looking to book an appointment with Coach Carlos or Dr. Shannon, they can contact Coach Carlos via social media or book online with Melbourne Sports Chiropractor Dr. Shannon. If you would like to learn more about training load management, have a read here. Finally, Dr. Shannon and Coach Carlos would like to give a big thank you to all those who helped bring this ebook together, without their help the ebook wouldn’t have been possible.
