Catizone, manager of the physical motor area of Fitp: “In five sets the athlete must be totally relaxed, otherwise the energy expenditure is higher and cramps occur”
Being twenty years old and raising the white flag against a 36 year old after two hours and little more due to cramps. What happened to Carlos Alcaraz during the Roland Garros semifinal against Novak Djokovic is a more unique than rare, almost unbelievable case, and everyone wondered how such a thing was possible. The Spaniard blamed the tension, the effort of having to play against Djokovic, but we are talking about a young world number one, already a Grand Slam winner and who had already faced the Serbian. Among other things, at the time of the cramps, Alcaraz had just won the second set and seemed to be the one most on the ball. Professor Giovanni Catizone, head of the physical motor area of Fitp and professor at the Catholic University, where he teaches Theories and Methodology of individual sport, has tried to give an explanation and has his own theory, namely an excess of power work by Alcaraz, with an impressive muscle mass that would obviously have pros and cons: “First of all we need to see how these guys train, because it’s nothing new that these twenty-year-olds of this generation suffer from three sets out of five, which is completely another sport – he says -. It’s like going from training a runner who runs 10,000 meters to taking him to run a marathon. Of course, they both run, but with different quantities and qualities of work. Great ability, skill, is that to lead to cover the two distances while maintaining the absolute brilliance of the athletes. Seeing Alcaraz play in my opinion he worked too much on strength. These are just impressions, but if it were true, the excess of strength leads you, if not supported by a adequate aerobic part, to have an incredibly high explosiveness, but over time if not supported by resistance work, you either have cramps or have an injury”.
PREPARATION PROBLEMS
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Wrong preparation then? “Seeing Alcaraz I noticed, especially in the quadriceps, an excess of muscle mass – continues Catizone-. The ability to know how to program from a 2 out of 3 to a 3 out of 5 lies first of all in seeking absolute muscle agility in any action motor skills. In five sets the athlete must be totally relaxed. If he plays in contraction, the energy expenditure is infinitely higher, and similar accidents can happen. To avoid this, you have to work a lot, for a long time, work on the muscles”.