MOVING MEDVEDEV
We’re in the depths of the hard court season and for Daniil Medvedev, it’s a strong end of the calendar. Of his 20 ATP titles, 18 of them have come on this surface. At the time of writing, his 19th (Beijing), is one win away. In this tournament, and like all the other hard court tournaments before, he runs around with confidence, retrieving practically everything. So clearly being mega tall is no longer an obstacle to demon on-court speed, not least on a hard court. We caught up with Daniil Medvedev’s fitness coach, Eric Hernandez, to find out how he’s helped turn him into one of the greatest movers in the game and a winning machine on the surface.
Super tall men’s tennis players were once known for their serves — seldom for their movement. Smaller players like Michael Chang, Marcelo Rios and Diego Schwartzman were seen to be speedy. Even the Big Three, with their awesome all-court coverage, come in at under 6’2” (Federer 6’1”, Nadal 6’1” and Djokovic 6’2”).
So in recent years, one of the pro game’s big surprises has been that many of the taller newer generation (Tsitsipas 6’4”, Zverev 6’6” and Medvedev 6’6”) are also lightning fast and feathery with their footwork. The biggest retriever of them all is charismatic former world No.1 Daniil Medvedev, who’s been nicknamed “The Octopus” and “The Pretzel” for his ability to reach outrageously tough balls and twist into unlikely positions with his flailing limbs. It might all look a bit ungainly, but it’s tightly controlled and hyper effective.
This rise of the nippy big boys has seen been a revelation, changing the way tennis is played at the top and signalling to amateurs over 6’4” that they too can be masters of movement. Medvedev started working with his fitness coach Eric Hernandez ten years ago and together they’ve built an impressive athletic body that contains the right combination of speed, strength and flexibility. Here Hernandez tells us how they did it.
WHEN DID YOU START WORKING WITH DANIIL?
ERIC HERNANDEZ: Daniil was 17 when I met him. He had potential because he was top 20 in juniors, which means he knows how to play tennis. But he wasn’t the best. He's very tall and didn’t have good coordination. He had the potential to be good, but no one can say, “Ok, top 50, or top 10.” We started to win step by step. Year by year, we were like, “Ah, OK, you can do that, you can improve that, let's push more.”
WHEN YOU STARTED WITH DANIIL 10 YEARS AGO, THERE WEREN'T MANY EXAMPLES OF REALLY TALL PLAYERS, WHO WERE ALSO SUPER-FAST AND GOOD AT COURT COVERAGE. HOW HAS THAT CHANGED?
E.H: The new generation is very tall, between 1.90 and 2.0 metres and they can move fast. Daniil had this capacity to move well and we improved that. He was my first player with this type of physicality. To be honest, it was teamwork. We said, “OK, he's a little bit atypical. He's very tall. He doesn't have strength in lower body. The first year was really to try to build the base, because he didn't have it. He was totally not stable on the hips, on the ankles. We needed to take time to build up — we cannot change the player in three or four weeks.
You develop the capacity of the movement of the player if you develop their strength and the capacity of the bounce of foot. Speed is a result of the work, of the strength and the quality of the foot. People can be a little bit surprised when I say I don't do speed practice with Daniil. I do strength, and power of the lower body and the quality of the bounce of his feet. The capacity to be on your toes and have bounce. It's specific tennis footwork. We developed this capacity with Daniel. We said, “OK, he's very tall. He's very — how you say — not normal. Even on the TV you can see he's a little bit skinny on his legs. He's very compact. We are tennis players — we don't play rugby! We don't need to push a lot of weight. For tennis, I consider the strength of the lower body the most important. Tennis is a leg sport. It is not an arm sport. It's a leg sport, because the quality of the ball — whether you’re 200 or 17 in the world — is quite the same. It's a capacity to move fast, be on time, and have good co-ordination to hit the ball correctly.
“The capacity of the champion is to adapt during his career. That's the challenge for Daniil the next three to five years.”
SO WHAT DID YOU DO AFTER YOU’D DEVELOPED HIS LOWER BODY STRENGTH?
E.H: We continue to keep his level of strength and we push a bit more. Without this he cannot have this quality on the court. And we developed more his reaction times, and practised bounce of the foot. Tennis is a horizontal sport, it's not like a basketball, which is a vertical sport.
It means that the extension of the hip and the ability to push forwards is the most important. That's why one exercise, like the hip thrust, can be the base. It’s one of the main exercises, because you want to be strong on your glutes, stable on your hips, and to push forward this extension of the hip. Glutes are the strongest muscle of the body, and you push frontwards with them. We consider the hip thrust to be the main exercise to develop the strength of the lower body.
AND LOTS OF SQUATS TOO?
E.H: For me, you don't need to do a lot of squats because you put a lot of pressure on the spine. I prefer to do lunges on the side. I did the comparison with the rugby, because I worked with some rugby players at the top level. A rugby guy can bench press 150kg or 200kg and their squats are amazing, more than 200kg. Hip thrust also is amazing. With Daniil, we do some eight reps for four sets, at 130 – 140kg. It means that he's strong. I don't know if you are doing that, but me I cannot.
It means that he's compact and he's strong. Maybe on the TV you can see that he's a bit skinny, but his muscles are very strong and stable. Fix the glutes, fix the hip and that will help with performance. It’s the base for tennis. But it makes no sense to push 200kg for tennis, because we don't have contact like the rugby. But the minimum should be like 120kg – 130kg. When your player can do that on 5, 6, 7, 8, reps, you can develop the main strengths easier.
HOW DO YOU FIT THE WORKOUTS IN WITH ALL OF THE HITTING PRACTICE, MATCHES AND AVOIDING ANY SORENESS IN GAMES?
E.H: The first challenge when you have a player at this level is to keep this strength. Because there are a lot of tournaments, a lot of long travel. If you have a good player, you win a lot of matches, so you have less time to work. You just have to try keep the same level. When you consider the tour program, you go to Australia, you come back for the European circuit, we did Doha, Dubai, Indian Wells, Monte Carlo, Madrid, Rome, blah blah blah. You don't have a lot of windows to work, so you have to keep up the level of strength, and as soon as we have time to make a session, let's try to control and still kick in. He played five finals in a row last year, so I didn't have a lot of time to work. Sometimes we work more on reaction time. Maybe we have one challenge on the upper body, to gain a little bit more explosiveness on some challenging shots.
But I'm not here to push on all the things. No, you cannot. We can’t say during the year that we're going to improve everything: the speed, the strength, the cardio. No, no, no, no.
SO AS WELL AS STRONG LEGS, WHAT ARE THE OTHER ELEMENTS TENNIS PLAYERS NEED TO FOCUS ON?
E.H: If you consider tennis is a repetition of sprints and lower body strength. If you don't do weights and strength on your lower body, I don't know how you can be strong. Some guys maybe think the opposite. But lower body strength, good core, good dissociation between upper lower body, good rotation are all important. For the upper body, it’s important to be very strong on the back to prevent shoulder injuries. Because usually, the shoulders of tennis men and woman come forward. And the goal, because they are hitting a lot of balls, is to try compensate a bit. That's why I don't do a lot of anterior chain [chest etc]. I do all that posterior chain [back etc]. The anterior chain. I almost don't do. In tennis, you only have 300g in your hands with the racket, which means you don't have a lot of weight in your hands. To hit the ball, it’s just the capacity to accelerate and to stay relaxed when you hit the ball. If you are very stiff when you hit it, the ball is not heavy. For me, your back is important, because your back controls the acceleration of your anterior chain.
NOT MANY TENNIS PLAYERS HAVE VERY DEVELOPED CHESTS. HOW COME?
E.H: There is no sense in really working on the strength on the upper body, on the anterior chain. For me, developing the anterior chain is a mistake. I see a lot of players, amateur or professional, who continue to do bench presses. You are a tennis player. It’s good to have some strength, yes, and if you’re an amateur, you might want to work your shape in general, but just some advice: don't be focused on this.
Be focused more on your back, on your core and abs, and the strengths of your lower body. To run fast, when you see the sprinter or 100 metres, the guys have big glutes, because it's the muscle of the run. Tennis is more about lateral movement, which means every time you push on side, you see that your lower body — your glutes especially — take a lot of trauma.
“Professional sport is not good for the body. It's a reality. We destroy the body.”
THE FITNESS LEVELS IN PROFESSIONAL TENNIS NOW ARE INCREDIBLY HIGH. PEOPLE ARE RUNNING MUCH MORE THAN THEY WERE 10 YEARS AGO. HOW MUCH IMPACT IS THIS HAVING ON THE BODY?
E.H: Professional sport is not good for the body. It's a reality. We destroy the body. When you finish a tennis or soccer career at 35, your meniscus [a shock absorber in the knee] is like 60 or 70-years-old. It's a reality. It's a statistic. It means that sport at this level is not good for the body. That's why our job is hard, because we take a risk every time. We push the body to its limits, but we need to not pass this limit, we need to stay just under. Injuries are one part of the career though, because you cannot do 10 or 15 years in any sport at the high level without injury. Our goal is to decrease the risk. This is our job and this is the most important thing to analyse correctly. There’s no magic potion for that. You evaluate which is the best thing for the player.
IT’S REALLY PAINFUL TO WATCH DANIIL SLIDING ON HARD COURTS. IS THAT SENSIBLE? IT LOOKS LIKE IT MUST BE SO BAD FOR THE BODY.
E.H: For sure in front of your TV, you can be a little bit like, “Wow, did something break?” But I see his strength, his stability and how he arrives at the ball. He puts his foot correctly. For sure it's hard for the body because there is shock in the hip. We'll see in 10 years. He will have pain somewhere. Maybe in three years we will need to adapt something, because he will repeat
that a lot of times, and maybe he'll feel it a bit in his knee, or his ankle. Nadal is the best example for that. He had a lot of injuries, but he's totally different from Daniil if you compare the body and the games. At the moment, Daniil is fine to run like that, but we will see maybe in three or four years if we need to adapt something in the physical practice. Daniil runs fast everywhere, but plays in the zone and makes rallies. Nadal is more like: I arrive, I put my foot down and I hit the ball hard. When you see him play, sometimes the body is almost backwards. He sits down in his glutes, and he manages to have this power. He has amazing strengths in the hands, and in rotation to have this strength. It's just crazy. I didn't see players like this on the tour.
Sometimes if he's late, he's almost sat down and backwards, and he manages to put amazing energy on the ball. Not a lot of players have this capacity to accelerate the ball. But when you play like this, you can have more injuries.
You put more stress on your body. Daniil cannot do that. If he’s in that position, the ball will go very slowly. He can do it a little bit now, but we’ll see how he’ll develop his career. Daniil has a capacity to accelerate the ball, but his game is more stable. He's one of the top in the world at that. When you move him to the side, he’ll put the ball in. He can repeat that 100 times and he will put the ball in 98 times. He can be in a bad position, but he has this amazing coordination. He controls exactly his body, but with less strength than a lot of players.
HOW WILL YOU CONTINUE TO ADAPT AS YOUNGER PLAYERS COME THROUGH WITH NEW PLAYING STYLES?
E.H: The capacity of the champion is to adapt during his career. Daniil adapted his game a bit when he was 20 and now he’s 27. He’ll go a little bit more to the net. When you see Djokovic, Nadal, they adapted their game during their careers. When you take them at 20, 30, and 35, they don't play exactly the same way. That's the challenge for Daniil over the next three to five years. If you want to stay a champion, you have to make these improvements. Daniil is a really smart guy. Some people call him The Chess Master. I'm sure he has the capacity to do everything. We are the team behind him, but he's the pilot. He’s amazing, he’s smart and he can adapt everything.
WHICH OTHER PLAYERS DO YOU THINK ARE AMAZING PHYSICALLY?
E.H: Djokovic is the ideal guy for tennis. He has the balance between strength and flexibility. He has the perfect body to be a tennis player, around 188-190cm tall with a strong lower body. He's very compact. I have bigger arms than him. He's skinny on the body, and upper region and he doesn't do a lot of upper body.
HOW ELSE CAN DANIIL IMPROVE?
E.H: He's a hard worker. If I say, “OK, now we need to do this, we need to do that,” he’s like, “OK, let's go." He's doing the job. He's not lazy. Some players — and I’m not in the team, so I cannot check everything — don’t work enough for me. I see too many players say, “OK, we are two weeks before Grand Slam, let's go to work.”
But no, it's what we did before that’s important. The winter preparation is important. Consistency during the full year is the most important. Some players don’t realise this, or don’t organise or want to do it. This is the difference.
Words: STUART BRUMFITT