ABSTRACT
This article describes the age of initiation, the training loads and competition, the incidence of injuries, the technical content of training and parental support received by young tennis players. The study sample was composed by 20 athletes (14.2 ± 0.4 years) and 12 coaches (34.2 ± 7.6 years), male. As instruments were used two charts for monitoring of sociodemographic variables and control, ITT-12 and the Family Support Questionnaire to Participation in Sport. Were performed frequency calculations, central tendency, dispersion and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and t-Student test (p ≤ 0.05). The results indicated that the tennis players started the practice with about eight years old, trained an average of 427 hours and participated in 41 official matches throughout the season. The incidence of injuries and their severities were low. Parents served somehow as a model to sports practice. Evidence of early technical specialization where found.
Keywords
Tennis; Training; Competition