July 2007 -- Question: There is an incredible amount of excitement around the new alliance between USPTA and the American College of Sports Medicine. Can you tell us more about the relationship and how USPTA's Tennis - for the health of it! fits with what they are doing?
Answer: Without a doubt, this historic alliance will open many doors for both organizations. But, before I go into that, let me explain how this got started.
When I took my first tennis lesson in 1963, I heard people describe tennis as the sport for a lifetime. Being a dedicated baseball player, I fought my parents when they made me take tennis lessons. They said, "You can't play baseball your whole life, but you will be able to play tennis your whole life!"
About 20 years ago, I began asking questions about our great sport and reflecting on the health benefits of tennis. Going into an extensive literature review, I developed the 34 reasons to play tennis, which was first printed as "Why Play Tennis" in 1997 in the "USTA Sport Science for Tennis" newsletter. Since then, more research has strengthened the theory that tennis is beneficial to our mental and physical health. The added research and our desire to educate the industry and the public about this news led USPTA to initiate a campaign to communicate this information.
Tennis - for the health of it! was born, and to celebrate we published a booklet that greatly expands on the 34 reasons to play tennis with detailed scientific data, and produced complementary collateral material to help our members promote this campaign at the grassroots level.
With the help of fellow USPTA Professional Mike Bergeron, who is also a Fellow in ACSM and on its Board of Trustees, an introduction was made between USPTA and the ACSM leadership. Interestingly, ACSM, in partnership with the American Medical Association, had also begun (in November, 2007) a nationwide initiative called Exercise is Medicine™. A primary goal of this initiative is to change the sedentary behaviors that have caused our current obesity crisis and to promote a more active lifestyle among Americans. Since tennis has been shown to have tremendous health benefits, from many different perspectives, we believed that it made perfect sense to form a strategic and programmatic partnership between USPTA and ACSM. After all, USPTA has an incredible infrastructure through which to deliver tennis and the ACSM can influence medical professionals to push exercise through tennis.
To give you a little more information from the ACSM perspective, I had the great fortune to recently interview Adrian Hutber, Ph.D., vice president of ACSM's Exercise is Medicine initiative. Here are some excerpts from that interview:
JG - Dr. Hutber, first let me say how honored we are at USPTA to have this affiliation with ACSM. Could you tell our members a little about your organization?
AH - The American College of Sports Medicine is an association of 20,000 members, mostly physicians, fitness professionals, scientists and educators. Our mission is to provide the educational and practical applications of exercise science and sports medicine. Our newest flagship initiative, Exercise is Medicine, has three primary goals: (1) For physical activity to become a vital sign, with physicians routinely discussing it with each of their patients; (2) For the physician to either prescribe appropriate physical activity to each patient or refer the patient to a qualified health and fitness professional to get a physical activity prescription; and (3) for the public to begin to ask for and expect their physician to talk to them about physical activity during each office visit.
JG - Why is ACSM so interested in working with USPTA?
AH - To make the second goal a reality! It's important to realize that not all patients will want to engage in "traditional" exercise activities like walking, running, or resistance training. There needs to be fun alternatives for both the physician and the fitness professional to offer their patients and clients. The USPTA is in the great position of being able to provide the public with an activity that has the documented health benefits (Tennis - for the health of it!) that coincide with the goals of the Exercise is Medicine initiative. Tennis also provides a lot of fun activities and it will be appealing to people who might otherwise not exercise in a more traditional environment. Most importantly, through USPTA, there is an infrastructure of trained and certified professionals already in place to make our goals a reality.
JG - What are some of the plans being discussed?
AH - Right now, both organizations are ramping up for the delivery mechanisms to fall into place. I would envision ACSM's physicians and other health care professionals, along with USPTA's certified professionals, being educated in both initiatives. One goal would be to create community partnerships between the certified USPTA professional and physicians, where they work together to create healthy communities. As we roll out both initiatives to our respective memberships and the American public, it will be exciting to see how this takes hold.
JG - Adrian, on behalf of all the certified professionals in USPTA, let me say how thrilled we are to combine our
Tennis - for the health of it! initiative with ACSM's Exercise is Medicine. Together, we have a huge opportunity to build a healthier American public.
Send questions to jgroppel@LGEPerformance.com.
