Intensity. Above all else, this is the quality Giselle and Nathan Martin have ingrained in the minds of the athletes they train within their coined ‘Martin Method’ Tennis Fitness program.
This focus on high-quality training has proved vastly successful over the last 20 years, as the Martin’s have had a hand in developing some of tennis’ top athletes such as Arantxa Sanchez, Sam Stosur, Lleyton Hewitt, Jennifer Capriati, Casey Dellacqua, Monica Seles and Martina Navratilova among many other accomplished names in the sport, with the worlds best player seeking out Giselle and Nathan time and time again.
While each athlete was unique in their own right, they all possessed similar qualities that made them so successful in their sport. According to Giselle Martin, each player had a strong work-ethic, was self-motivated, exhibited love and passion for the sport, and was innately competitive in nature. However, perhaps the most important common characteristic among each athlete was resilience.
“The tennis players I worked with were wired a little bit differently,” explained Martin. “Even if they didn’t play tennis, they’d still be successful at whatever they did because they’ve got that passion to strive and that resilience and inner-belief. Whether it’s tennis or not, whatever they did, they were always going to be successful.”
Despite having similar character traits, Martin’s athletes all had different approaches to competition. For instance, Martina Navratilova tended to take a calm and collected frame of mind into a match, whereas Arantxa Sanchez needed an extra boost before stepping foot on the court.
“Martina would visualize every point before she even went out and played. At Wimbledon, she said she really wasn’t that nervous because she had already visualized every point. She didn’t need to be pumped up and reassured,” Martin recalled. “With Arantxa, she would want to box before she went out and played a match, so we’d do boxing as a warmup and she loved it. It’s not ideal for every player, but that’s what she loved.”
With such a vast difference between her athletes’ approaches to competition, Martin knew she needed to focus on building relationships with her players in order to learn how to properly motivate them. “To motivate a player is tricky because it’s quite comprehensive. As a trainer, you build that relationship with the players and you know what’s going to help motivate them and what’s not,” she explained.
In addition to discovering what makes each athlete tick, Giselle and Nathan have developed a comprehensive system called the ‘Nine Threads,’ which includes a focus on bilateral strength, rotational control, force absorption, force expression, unilateral power, repeated power, multidirectional speed, high aerobic capacity, and full-body flexibility.
“If you want to be the best tennis player in the world, you have to have all those threads,” said Giselle. “You’ll find that the best tennis players in the world have every single one of them. There’s not one of them that don’t have every single one of these threads. It’s just a matter of individualizing a program for different groups of athletes depending on their age, training level, and experience.”
Martin Method Tennis Fitness also takes a full-circle, holistic approach to tennis training, incorporating nutrition, injury prevention, and mental training in addition to the typical strength and conditioning programming. Once again, the Martin duo finds that each athlete needs a unique training plan based on their own individual needs.
“It’s a matter of educating the player, finding what they need more of, and slowly introducing those aspects into their game,” explained Giselle. “To be a great athlete, you need to have that holistic approach, otherwise you will eventually break down. I’ve seen it before, it’s really not all about what’s on court. It’s also about everything else.”
Martin believes that in order to be the most successful tennis player, you also need to be a well-rounded athlete. “You look at all the top tennis players, and they’re all great athletes. Martina was an extraordinary athlete. She was not just good, but excellent at ice hockey, basketball, skiing, snowboarding, running, table tennis, and kicking or throwing a football,” she said.
In order to develop these well-rounded athletes, Giselle and Nathan have created a new program called the Tennis Fitness Academy, which is for young players who need guidance and education on how to deal with programming, nutrition, injury prevention, warming up, cooling down, supplements, and mental training. Through this program, the Martin siblings strive to act as mentors for young athletes, particularly for those who do not have access to help and resources.
The Tennis Fitness Academy is a direct result of the lessons Giselle and Nathan have learned over years of working with their top-level athletes. According to Giselle, the pair is always trying to learn and grow.
“One thing we introduced over the last five years is a system called ‘The Why System.’ Whatever we put into our programming or whatever we do with our players, we ask the question, ‘Why are we doing this?,’” explained Giselle. “We probably cut down our programming exercise vault in half and got rid of all of those ‘wow’ exercises. We do exercises that have a purpose behind them and make sure that there’s a reason for it other than looking good.”
By cutting their exercise vault in half, Martin Method Tennis Fitness is looking to train their athletes effectively and efficiently. “We believe in quality over quantity and working smarter, not harder,” said Giselle. “That’s probably something I learned from Martina over the years. Rather than hitting for four hours at 80 percent intensity, she would hit for two hours, but hit with purpose, hit with high intensity, be smarter with the way she was playing.”
At a young age, Giselle and Nathan hope to teach their athletes about the importance of training at a high-level of intensity. “A lot of kids think, ‘Oh, I’ve got to train for four hours today. I have to pace myself.’ There is a time and a place for pacing yourself, but it’s better off going hard for two hours rather than hitting for four hours at low intensity with no purpose,” said Giselle.
When it comes down to it, the conscious decision to train at high level of intensity is completely up to each individual athlete, but with the Martin Method Tennis Fitness program, tennis players certainly have a leg up on their competition.
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