Daniil Medvedev stands 6’6”, but does not move like a player that tall. His court coverage helped him climb to No. 1 in the PIF ATP Rankings in 2022.
A lot more goes into that than hard work. Gilles Cervara and the rest of Medvedev’s team drill down to every available detail using wearables to push the boundaries of how well they can prepare the 28-year-old for action.
“It all started in 2020 when we had the plan to improve Daniil’s preparation. One of our teammates came from other sports, especially rugby and soccer, so he had experience with GPS,” Cervara told ATPTour.com, referring to wearables. “He gave us the idea to use it for practice because at that time, we couldn’t use it in matches to have numbers of our different practices and then to compare with matches.
“For matches we didn’t have numbers from GPS, we couldn’t, but we created our own analysis to have numbers of the different movements. And then from those analyses, we put the GPS on during practices, during sets or matches in practice, to also have numbers to compare.”
The idea was to create what Cervara called a “worst-case scenario”. What would be the toughest situation Medvedev would face on court? In that scenario, how many times would he need to change direction? How many times would he need to sprint? At what speed?
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