Leading injury prevention and athlete welfare expert Stephen Smith has spoken to Tennis365 about Emma Raducanu\u2019s struggles with injuries and revealed the role that the Brit\u2019s stunning US Open win has played.<\/p>\n
Raducanu<\/a>\u00a0has battled a host of problems with her body in her young career to date, including in her last match, where she was forced to retire against Camila Osorio at the Qatar Open<\/a>.<\/p>\n The world No 25 cut short her 2025 season in mid-October having struggled with physical issues at tournaments in Wuhan and Ningbo.<\/p>\n The 23-year-old\u2019s preparations for the 2026 campaign were hampered by a bone injury in her foot that restricted her ability to train.<\/p>\n In May 2023, Raducanu underwent surgeries on both her wrists and her ankle, which ruled her out for the remainder of the season.<\/p>\n Smith, who is the founder and CEO of Kitman Labs \u2014 the world\u2019s leading sports science and performance intelligence company \u2014 addressed whether Raducanu could do anything differently to prevent injuries.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard when a young athlete like that is coming through and having such great success on the court,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the lessons we can take from other sports, and apply them back to a young athlete like that that\u2019s emerging, is all about periodisation.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s one of the challenges that we\u2019re now seeing with the global calendar within tennis, is the requirements in terms of the number of tournaments that they need to be involved in, it makes that even harder.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I think for her, what she\u2019d like to be able to do is cherry pick the ones that are more important throughout the year and keep building in blocks of development work to ensure that she has that base, and she\u2019s getting enough recovery to be able to adapt to the demands of a formalised professional career. And a formalised professional career where you\u2019re expected to get success, you\u2019re expected to make it to finals, you\u2019re expected to pick up trophies.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I think it\u2019s all about periodisation, it\u2019s all about planning and being smart and being really strategic, but I think building in blocks, not just of recovery and rest, but of development work so she can actually top up some of those underlying foundational fitness and strength capabilities.<\/p>\n Jack Draper skipping Australian Open was \u2018smart decision\u2019 \u2013 leading injury expert ahead of Brit\u2019s comeback<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Emma Raducanu\u2019s big problem exposed again \u2013 but this is not a moment to hit the panic button<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Want more from Tennis365? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a> for tennis coverage you can trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI think they\u2019re really, really important in emerging athletes of her age and expectation. Because what she doesn\u2019t want to do is to cut her career short by picking up really significant injuries this early, especially when she looks like she has the quality that she has.\u201d<\/p>\n Raducanu secured the only title of her career to date in remarkable fashion as she won the 2021 US Open as an 18-year-old ranked 150th in the world. She remains the only player in tennis history to win a Grand Slam title as a qualifier.<\/p>\n Smith assessed that Raducanu\u2019s body was not ready for the big step-up in intensity and level of competition that came with playing on the WTA Tour regularly after her US Open win.<\/p>\n \u201cUndoubtedly, she wasn\u2019t ready for that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s exactly why I\u2019m suggesting that her periodisation and planning model for this season is going to be a cumulative build from where she was at, and she needs to get the right balance between enough exposure to be able to compete at that level and also enough time to be able to recover, regenerate, look after her body and keep building it back up.<\/p>\n \u201cIt takes a number of seasons \u2014 what we see in any sport globally, for young emerging athletes who go from a limited or lower intensity competition base \u2014 it takes multiple years to be able to build those foundations. I just think she needs to be incredibly smart, and she\u2019s such a promising athlete that you hope she gets that right.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked if Raducanu is still some way off reaching her physical prime, Smith replied: \u201c100%, I think she most likely is still a distance from her physical prime.\u201d<\/p>\n Following her second round exit at the Australian Open, Raducanu parted ways with her former coach Francisco Roig, and she has now worked with eight different permanent coaches during her professional career.<\/p>\n Smith gave his verdict on whether Raducanu\u2019s frequent coaching changes could be a contributing factor in her injuries, given the potential adjustments to training methods with each change.<\/p>\n \u201cIf there was [a change of methods with each coaching change], we can only hypothesise that there was,\u201d Smith assessed.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard from the outside looking in to be able to say, yes, there\u2019s been a change, but certainly if there were changes with technique, changes with training load, changes with the way they\u2019re coaching and playing et cetera, with each of those coaching changes, that\u2019s another risk factor, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n READ NEXT: Emma Raducanu told what she should do after latest coaching split by former world No 1<\/a> The post Emma Raducanu \u2018still a distance from her physical prime\u2019 \u2013 leading injury expert amid Brit\u2019s struggles<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Leading injury prevention and athlete welfare expert Stephen Smith has spoken to Tennis365 about Emma Raducanu\u2019s struggles with injuries and revealed the role that the Brit\u2019s stunning US Open win has played. Raducanu\u00a0has battled a host of problems with her body in her young career to date, including in her last match, where she was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Tennis News<\/h2>\n
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