Sports

(Top: Scott demonstrates the Russian Twist, Bottom: Fitness Ball pushup)

I first met Scott McTeer about ten years ago. Scott played college tennis for Duke and later played and coached on the ATP tour. He has worked with Pat Etcheberry and Jim Loeher among others, and has trained with many ATP players, including Andre Agassi and Jim Courier. He is now a certified personal trainer and the author of two books about fitness and training (Your Body, Your Life and Our Body, Our Life). His current clients include former WTA player and coach Beverly Bowes.

Previously when I trained with Scott (before my kids were born and I had time to train) we did a lot of work with weights, particularly dumbbells. When I ran into Scott recently, he told me he is really sold on the benefits of tennis players training with the fitness ball, also known as a swiss ball or stability ball. He told me “In my opinion the fitness ball is the best piece of exercise equipment ever invented. The ball is three dimensional and is functional training in its purest form. It will improve you game, shape your body, and dramatically improve your functional strength, endurance and stablitiy.”


I’m always looking for new ideas to get fitter, so after I checked out his website, I decided to meet Scott at a local gym for a fitness ball workout. I’ll admit I was a little skeptical, even though I have read about the benefits of fitness ball training from several different sources, including Mark Verstegan’s book “Core Performance.”


After a short warmup, Scott put me through a number of exercises focusing on different parts of the body using the fitness ball: Russian twists, knee lifts, one legged lunges and squats, good mornings, wood chops, push ups, planks, double leg raises, back extensions, bridges, leg curls with bridges (that one killed me) and pikes. Those are the ones I remember, I’m sure I left a few out. Suffice it to say that by the end of the hour, I was feeling pretty spent and it was definitely a full body workout.


After the workout Scott explained that he wanted to develop a workout that tennis players could do anywhere – on the road, at a gym, at home, or on the court. In addition, Scott has made videos that can be downloaded to a Blackberry, iphone or ipod touch. He explained “This way, you can take the workout with you, if you forget how to do something, you can just watch the video as a reminder.”