THANK you for taking the time to look at my latest article.

With the summer approaching and Wimbledon on its way, we're looking at tennis-specific injuries this week.

And with Johanna Konta having suffered a few injury setbacks this year and looking to become the first British women to win a Grand Slam since Virginia Wade in 1977, I'm going to look at female-specific injuries and compare them to men's, to see if there are any key differences.

With tennis being a popular research sport, there are plenty of different papers to look through.

The first research we'll look at is a general review from 2006.

The main cause of injuries within tennis and racket sports is repeated overloading, in particular the hand/arm.

The Ulna, Radius, Humerus and the Hamate bone (bone inside the hand) are very common sites of injury.

This was also the case with the lower extremities.

Plantar Fascia tears, stress fractures and intra articular knee injuries were common (Pluim et al, 2006).

Breaking this down into women’s related injuries, Lynall et al (2006) looks at 227 women’s specific injuries from 2009/10 to 2014/15.

This review shows increased injuries in competition situations because of increased pressures on performance and over reaching for shots players wouldn't normally go for in a training/practice match.

52.4 per cent of all injuries were in the lower extremities (compared with 23.8 per cent in the upper extremities and 17.6 per cent in the trunk) with the most common diagnosis of injury being overuse (43.6 per cent).

Even though lower extremities were the most common area, it was actually the shoulder/clavicle which was the most common single site (11.9 per cent).

This will be from repeated serving and hitting generally causing an overuse injury as the shoulder and clavicle take the majority of the force.

The last paper we look at is specifically from the US Tennis Championships between 1994 and 2009 (Sell et al, 2012).

This looks at 515 women’s injuries over a 16-year period.

Muscle and tendon injuries were the most common, with the wrist and knee (5.52 injuries per 1,000 match exposures).

In conclusion, men's and women’s injury occurrence and epidemiology are very familiar, with all of the papers studied pinpointing different common injury sites.

The main cause of injuries is reported as overuse.

This is especially relevant to professional players who are hitting hundreds of balls per day.

In terms of us (the amateur player), lack of conditioning and strength training is the key to injuries.