Focus For Tennis Athletes
You can improve your game with the right exercise and workout programs. Racquet athletes need strength, power, endurance, speed, agility, quickness, balance, range of motion and a really good core. These exercises include warm up, balance, plyometric, SAQ drills (speed, agility and quickness) and resistance training. And one of the most important for tennis athletes is having a good core and exercises to prevent injury.
It is important to always use proper form and technique over how much weight you can lift, and to mix up your routine. How often you adjust your routine depends on your fitness level, goals, and preferences.
Racquet athletes tend to get tennis elbow, sore shoulders and lower back pain. There are numerous exercises that help strengthen these areas and reduce your risk of injury so you can be fit on and off the court.
My exercise and training program videos will show you how to workout each body part and in different routines, including the 5 Phase training model. These phases take you through a progressive, integrated and safe experience in getting fit, healthy and in being your best.
Phase 1 is Stabilization Endurance, Phase 2-4 are Strength related and Phase 5 is Power. Each phase is a 4-6 week training program. Some tennis athletes may not need all 5 phases. Listed on the right are the five main areas of focus for tennis athletes.
To view Tennis/Racquet videos click on the button below. A subscription plan or personal training plan is required. The first month for access to all exercise and training program videos is free!
1
Core
Having strong, powerful, efficient core muscles is paramount to success in the sport. Tennis is a ground-based, rotational sport that requires efficient transfer of energy from the ground up through the trunk and finally out to the arms and racket and into the tennis ball. Having a good core gives you proper spinal and hip posture. Your core is not just around your lumbar and hip. It includes your abs, glutes, diaphragm and low back as well. Your core "local" muscles extend around your spine while the core "global" muscles include the obliques and lower lat muscles. You want to train your core local muscles before your core global muscles.
2
Stabilization Endurance, Balance & Flexibility
To make sure you are as good in the last game of the last set, your endurance and stabilization need to hold up. Having good balance on the court is fundamental. Better balance gives you better movement patterns and reduce the potential for knee and ankle injuries. For endurance, choose high rep and aerobic type exercises to set you on the right path. Burpees, squats, lunges, kettlebell swings, circuit training, supersets and cardio are just a few of the choices to enhance your stamina and endurance.
3
Strength
Strength is the ability to exert force, while power is the ability to do that quickly. A strength training program in the context of tennis should aim at developing highly innervated muscles with an explosive ability, so players can hit with greater speed and put “more weight” on the ball for a longer period of time. Strength training helps your endurance, your core, lowers the risk of injury and will keep you stronger in that last set.
4
Plyometric & SAQ (Speed, Agility & Quickness)
Exercises that focus on SAQ will improve your on court ability to chase down and get to those balls. Exercises include foot drills in a box ladder, cone drills and other acceleration and deceleration drills. Research indicates that plyometric or reactive exercises combined with resistance training significantly increase muscle force production which leads to increases in strength and power. Plyometric training (or jumping, stepping up and down) is an effective tool to increase muscle thickness in the quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves and ankles, which help lower the risk of ankle and knee injuries. These include exercises such as burpees, squat jumps, box jumps, multiplanar jumps and skater jumps.
5
Power
Your racquet game needs power and force, which includes high velocity exercises. Power is the ability to exert force quickly. In addition to resistance training, supersets and giant sets are a good way to increase power. Power training is making the concentric contraction (the part where you raise the weight against gravity) fast and powerful, but preserve the slow, steady pace on the eccentric contraction (when lowering the weight back to the starting position). There are multiple exercises routines you can incorporate to increase your power.
