Tennis has common tennis fitness training aspects that must be kept in mind before you start tennis fitness exercises

• You must perform some short burst exercises before the start of play. ex. jumping, swinging or moving your arms freely, all this is called warming up.
• You should take a mild jog forwards and backwards in order to warm your body.
• You must take a short recovery between each scoring point.
• You must take adequate rest during rallies because once the rally stops in a tennis match, you must not lose concentration.

Once you perform this, the blood circulation in your body will now be in proper order and your body will be warmed up. Currently there are several tennis fitness exercises, these exercises will improve the strength and power of your body, while at same time these exercises can abate the chances of injuries. Some of the most common tennis fitness exercises are:

1. Lateral Band walk with External Rotation

For this tennis fitness training, You just place a mini band (sports band) around your ankle and hold a piece of Thira-Band palms up. Keep your elbows at a side while rotating your arms externally creating a moment (tension) through Thira-band. Maintaining this position, you step a head while keeping your feet straight in an athletic way. You have to repeat two sets of this exercise of about 10-15 yard moving in both directions.

2. Single leg balance with External Rotation

In this tennis fitness training, you have to balance your body on your one foot while standing on a foam pad. With opposite arm, perform the full external shoulder rotation in 90/90 position with a piece of given tubing. You must focus on stabilization of your moving shoulder with scapular muscles and in order to get the great outcome, you have to perform at least 15 sets of this exercise.

3. Bench Split Squats

In this tennis fitness exercise, you place your one foot on the top of the bench or given physioball, while your other foot must be forward in the split squat position. Now, with the weight of your body or the dumbbells in the hand, squat your body down on one leg. The weight of your body must be on your heels, shoulders back, chest up, and abdominals. The key in this tennis fitness exercise is to maintain a perfect position through the spine and throughout the movement. You must have to perform three sets of 10 reps for each leg.

4. Rotation Cable Rows

In this tennis fitness exercise, you have to load your hip close to the machine (use for exercise) by squatting down in an athletic position. Once you maintain this perfect position with your chest up and your abdominal muscles engaged, you don’t have to take much stress because everything will be easier for you. Now, allow your body to just coil up with your arm crossing over towards the exercise machine. From this loaded position, you start the rotational movement by simply pushing through the ground with your foot, hip, abdominal muscles, and by keeping your body close the exercise machine. Now you just continue with your foot, hip, abdominal, and your opposite shoulder as you transfer yourself into the standing position. Perform at least three sets of this tennis fitness exercise of 8 reps in each direction.

5. Split Stance Curl-to-Press

In this tennis fitness exercise as it is obvious from the name to this exercise you have to stand in the split stand position with your one foot on the bench, and your down leg pushed up onto your toe while squeezing your glutens. Now maintain your perfect position with the head tall, your shoulders back and down, and the abdominals engaged throughout the lift. While you are in this position, you can perform a dumbbell curl and then press the weight overhead. Perform three sets of 10 reps of this tennis fitness exercise and make sure to switch the lead leg every set.

6. 1 Arm 1 Leg Cable Row

In this tennis fitness exercise, you have to perform the single leg squat position. In this you have to reach for the cable in front of you with the opposite hand as your other leg extends back behind you. Now you maintain the perfect posture of your abdominal engaged and keeping your spine straight. As you just shift up from the single leg squat to a standing position, just pull the cable toward your side in a rowing mode with moving your shoulders back and down motion. At the same time, your extended knee and your hip will move forward into the ending position. You perform at least two sets of 10 reps on each side of the standing position.

These are some of the tennis fitness exercises, which are helpful to improve your tennis fitness skills. Incorporating these tennis fitness exercises will make you strong and help you to increase your stamina.

Muscles Building Exercises:

Muscle building is a crucial element of the fitness for the tennis players because this game requires intense stamina, power, strength, and aerobics. This entire thing just comes with a lot of hard work and time. As I told earlier, a tennis player must be strong enough to hit powerful shots. For such strokes to be played, a player must have tough muscles. In Muscular exercises pushups, up lifts, back lifts, biceps, and triceps and fore hand exercises are the most common exercises recommended to most tennis players for the tennis fitness. All these exercises need a lot of work out.

Quickness and Speed exercises:

Speed and quickness are vital for almost every sport because if a player is quick and active, then he or she will be able to respond quickly, giving no room to his or her opponent to take over. For quickness and speed, it requires a lot of practice so every player has to practice. To obtain speed, a player must play more and more. By this, a player can build stamina. Once he or she can retain stamina for long time, the player can respond well and speedily. For the quickness, a tennis player has to practice playing more shots in less time as well as managing the timing of the shots so that he or she will be able to compete against anybody. Timing, quickness and speed is required to be successful in tennis.

Interval Exercises:

A rally exercise is one of the important exercises in tennis. A tennis player must perform a rally for a number of times during the game. A rally is basically the breaks of small intervals of 10-25 seconds every time a player makes a score (point). By taking this break, a player is able to refresh himself, even such breaks are helpful for the player to be mentally relaxed. Hence this exercise is a very helpful for fitness of the player.

Stamina building exercises:

For tennis fitness, stamina plays a key role because stamina is the basic necessity of this sport. For stamina building, it’s usually recommended to be jogging daily, which is a great cardio workout. By jogging, a person becomes able to gain stamina, and he even gets rid from many of the muscle problems. Jogging is also recommended by the doctors to people for their medical fitness. Similarly, jogging is recommended to a tennis player for stamina and power gaining purposes. Even yoga exercises are also recommended by many renowned couches for the tennis players. Tennis fitness is very important for a tennis player. Jogging as well as running helps the player to build his muscles. On the other hand, jogging increases the metabolism of the body, which removes excessive fat from your body.

Benefit of Tennis Fitness Training

These mentioned tennis fitness training must be performed on the regular basis by a tennis player. Key of success of every professional player is the fitness and the techniques he or she learns during the game and routine. Even if a player is not well skilled but he or she is physically fit, then he or she can perform well in the game. Basically, tennis is an athletic game, so the fitness requirement becomes mandatory for this sport. Tennis fitness is the need of every player, hence in order to become a professional tennis player, you must be physically and mentally fit. Meanwhile you must be familiar with proper tennis techniques. Physical and mental fitness is a mixture of strength, power, quickness and stamina.

In order to be a better tennis player, you have to utilize your tennis fitness and tennis skills together to cope with the possibility of a long competitive tennis match. While doing such fitness exercises, you are able to strengthen your body, and at the same time you are able to grow your stamina. To play this sport, you have to grow your explosive power. Your explosive power improves both by weight training exercises and leg muscular exercises. You must remember to work within your own limits because overtraining in a workout will lead you towards serious injury. You must aim to spend at least 1-3 days in a week for such exercises, or you can also perform these exercises on the daily basis by just spending an hour.

Tennis players are also able to get a clear overview of tennis fitness exercises by consulting different pictures and videos online. By surfing online, you are able to get a clearer view and knowledge about tennis fitness exercises. You can also consult different couches and sport clubs to improve your tennis fitness. You need to get a proper plan to become fit.

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Implementing a tennis fitness program should not be left in the back burner, but rather it should be a key part of the physical tennis training program. A tennis fitness program should be a well designed and highly specialized tennis training routine with clear goals and performance requirements each day, week and month.

Maximizing the Benefits of a Tennis Fitness Program

If you have been playing tennis for a considerable period of time already, you may notice that there are certain months or seasons when you play better than others. If you are fortunate, these months will coincide with the times when you participate in tournaments.

But if not, then you have to find a way for your game to peak at the right time. This can be done by properly planning a tennis fitness program that will help improve your game in time for any important competition period.

The main concept behind the design process for any tennis fitness program is periodization. It is simply unrealistic to expect a player to perform at his or her very best throughout the entire year. So in order for the design to work, each player must identify his or her own specific time of the year when peak performance is desired.

Using Periodization in a Tennis Fitness Program

For example, if you are a college varsity player, you might want to peak during the months of April and May. Club players may want to peak during the summer months when most club tournaments get scheduled.

A tennis fitness program should cover all components of training for completion. These are strength, stamina, flexibility, movement, balance, weight, nutrition, strokes, strategy and mental toughness. Your actual training program should schedule you to start working out 4 months before the identified desired peak performance period.

Developing Core Body Strength in a Tennis Fitness Program

During the first month, the main target is to develop a base level of strength. Total body workouts through weight training achieves this goal. The exercises should target the major muscle groups like the legs, core, upper body, shoulders and arms.

However, since tennis places a lot of repetitive stress on some key joints and muscle groups like the elbow, wrist and the rotator cuff of the shoulder, specific exercises should be performed for these areas. The following are exercises commonly used during this period of the program:

• Squats or Leg Presses
• Bench Presses or Push Ups
• Back Extensions on Stability Ball
• Lunges
• Single Arm Dumbbell Rows
• Twisting Crunches
• Shoulder Presses
• Bicep Curls
• Calf Raises
• Barbell Upright Rows
• External rotations
• Internal rotations
• Forearm pronation and supination
• Wrist curls
• Wrist extensions
• Wrist rotations
• Grips

Weight Training in a Tennis Fitness Program

Weight training should be done around three times a week. On alternate days, endurance training can be done with long distance running, cycling or swimming. Flexibility is also very important. Dynamic stretches should be done before each activity and static stretches used for cooling down after a training session. Unlike weight training and endurance training, stretching is something that can and should be done every day.

With regards to actual tennis playing, you should hit only every other day and put more emphasis on drills and rallying instead of playing actual sets.

Proper Tennis Diet and Nutrition

For your diet and nutrition, make sure you are getting enough high quality protein for muscular development. It is also important to take a day off every week to do nothing and allow your body to recover. You can still stretch but you must not do anything strenuous.

Focusing on Movement, Strokes and Flexibility in a Tennis Fitness Program

For the second month, the emphasis becomes movement, strokes and flexibility. Stretching exercises are done on all the days when you do any kind of physical activity. For improving movement, sprints, shuttle runs and jumping rope exercises are done.

You can now increase the frequency of when you play tennis from about 3 times to 5 times a week. You can play practice sets as well as do drills. Specifically, you should be assessing your game and working on improving weaknesses or learning new shots to add to your repertoire.

Weight training and endurance training are still done but with less frequency. If you did these exercises three times a week in the first month, reduce them to only twice a week. Again, allow yourself a day out of every week to rest completely.

Nutritionally, you should continue to take in a balanced diet. With the increase in your overall physical activity, you might find yourself gradually attaining your ideal playing weight.

Tennis Fitness Program: Playing Practice Matches and Tennis Drills

For the third month, your tennis fitness program should now focus mainly on developing your game. You will now be going to the court up to 6 times a week to play practice sets and do drills. Endurance training will now be reduced further to once a week. However, speed training will be emphasized further with movement drills being done up to four times a week.

Strength training will be done 3 times a week but with slightly lighter weights and more reps. Stretching exercises are still standard and should be done before every activity. A weekly rest day is still required.

Your diet should start to see an increase in the intake of complex carbohydrates. Since you will be doing even more sprints and practice sessions, you need the extra fuel.

Optimizing Your Peak Performance in a Tennis Fitness Program

During the fourth month of your tennis fitness program, you should be ready to compete. Your strength, speed, stamina and flexibility have all been developed to optimal levels. You have worked on your game such that you can now try out what you’ve been working on in a competitive situation.

You can join tournaments and play a lot of practice sets. However, you are only doing this to make yourself match tough. Do not put too much pressure on yourself to win right away. Use each match to try to improve. Apply your strategies and tactics in an actual match. See how your strokes hold up in pressure situations.

Weight training, endurance training and speed training all get reduced to a frequency of only 1-2 times per week. However, stretching remains a key component which should be done every day.

In terms of diet, you should keep your carbohydrate intake up because you have to be prepared for the contingency of playing long matches in the tournaments that you participate in.

Final Component of a Tennis Fitness Program: Competition and Match Play

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After four solid months of preparation, you should now be ready to do some serious competition. During this period, all off court training gets reduced even further. The main focus is match play. Practice sessions are not as intense either.

Instead of following a rigid schedule, you should be flexible and adaptable. Work on things that need to be worked on. For example, if you are not serving well, add extra serving practice sessions.

Nutritionally, you should load up on carbs before a tournament match. Keep yourself well hydrated with water and sports drinks. Bananas are excellent food to bring to the court. You should refrain from taking in any alcoholic or caffeinated beverages at least until after your match. Ideally, you should wait until after the tournament.

Off Court Preparation in a Tennis Fitness Program

Proper rest and sleep are also vital in preparing for a tournament match. See to it that you get 8 hours of quality sleep so that you are alert the next day when you wake up.

After the competition months are over, the last phase of the tennis fitness program begins. During this time, you take a break from playing and training. Instead, to keep in shape, you can engage in other relaxing activities like hiking, swimming, ballroom dancing or whatever it is you feel like doing.

Final part of a Tennis Fitness Program: Rest

While you are taking a break, it is important not to lose too much of your conditioning. All you really want to do is to get away from playing tennis so that you miss playing and become eager once more when the time comes to start playing again.

Having a cycle of training/playing/resting is a great way to keep fresh and allow yourself to improve and learn. However, it may not be for everyone. Some people prefer to keep playing regularly all year round.

They just do a cycle where they intensify their practice and off court training before a period of competition and take it down but not altogether out afterward. Try to discover what works for you by learning from your own experiences.

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Tennis fitness components are more than just running or exercising on a regular basis. For world class tennis players and any accomplished athlete, tennis fitness components involve highly specific aspects of a tennis training program. In the high performance tennis environment, players spend a large amount of time training the physical tennis fitness element of their game.

Most of these tennis fitness components are composed of highly specific exercises that are performed off the court in most cases. This is the time spent in the gym, working on elements such as flexibility, speed, agility, proper nutrition for tennis and a variety of other factors that relate to the fitness part of tennis.

We’ve already established that high performance tennis players undoubtedly include a host of different tennis fitness components inside their tennis training program. For club players, even they can benefit from undergoing some of these fitness routines to not only strengthen their physical prowess, but to provide them with a distinct advantage over their out of shape counterparts. This article will discuss some of the tennis fitness components needed to succeed at a high level of tennis.

Tennis Fitness Components At the Pro Level

When former world number one Lindsay Davenport first turned pro, commentators, fellow players and retired greats all looked at her and immediately pencilled her as a potential future great. She was tall and strong and her strokes were so smooth and clean.

The power that she generated was almost like the power of some of the men. But there was a big, literally big, problem. She was too… big. Like overweight big. This prevented her from moving well around the court. Also, she was very self-conscious which made it hard for those around her to point out this problem.

Despite all this, she got to the top 10. But if she was ever going to fulfil her destiny of becoming number one, she needed to get into better shape.

In 1998, after years of gradually shedding the pounds, she finally achieved her ideal weight and fitness level. As a result, she won her first grand slam title at the US Open and reached the number one ranking. She was able to maintain her fitness until she retired. Impressively, she was even able to come back to the tour after giving birth, though she has now since retired permanently.

Lindsay Davenport’s Realization on Tennis Fitness Components

Davenport realized during her journey to achieving fitness, that it was not enough for her to develop physical strength, flexibility and endurance. Although she tried her best to be as fast and agile as she could be, the extra weight she was carrying prevented her from reaching her full potential. So she had to change her diet. She didn’t want to completely give up the kind of food she liked to eat so she didn’t cut them out completely; she just greatly reduced the amount that she was consuming. In short, she had to pay attention to all of these tennis fitness components before she could do a fitness program that could really elevate her game.

As ordinary mortal players, we can learn a whole lot from what Davenport did. We may not be as talented as her but if we want to improve and take our game to the next level, we can do the same thing she did. We must pay attention to all the tennis fitness components and work on all of them.

Taking a Closer Look At Tennis Fitness Components

What exactly are these tennis fitness components? Let’s look at it by analysing what we see when we watch a tennis match. The first thing that you could notice is that the player who can hit with more power has an advantage. So it stands to reason that a stronger player is a better player. The first component is therefore strength. The second obvious thing to see is that a player who can run down more balls usually wins. Therefore, a faster player is also a better player; which brings us to the next component: speed. In relation to this, a player who can shift and change directions quickly is also at an advantage. He or she cannot easily be wrong-footed and sent off-balance. So another component is agility.

In a long match, one player usually gets tired before the other and loses because of this. So the fourth component would be stamina. Looking more closely, there are some players whose techniques are just not as good as others. There may be hitches in their motions and they look tight when running or stretching for a wide shot. If you examine the careers of these players, you might find that they have suffered injuries more frequently than others. This is related to their lack of flexibility, which would then be the fifth component. The last component is the thing that Lindsay Davenport worked very hard on in order to lose excess weight: diet.

Tennis Fitness Component #1: Core Strength

Let’s examine each tennis fitness component more closely, one by one, starting with strength. This is developed by training in the gym, lifting weights and using resistance cords. The goal is to strengthen the muscles, tendons and ligaments of the whole body. Special attention is paid to specific parts that are put under prolonged and repetitive stress by playing tennis.

These parts are the elbow, wrist and shoulder (especially the rotator cuff).

Because tennis is a sport that makes use of some muscles more than others, strength training for tennis requires that all the different muscles of the body be developed in a more balanced way in order to prevent injuries and possible disabilities resulting from imbalanced development.

Core strength (abdominals and lower back), lower body strength (hips, legs and calves), upper body strength (shoulders, chest and upper back) and arm strength are all sub-components that need equal attention and work. As we have mentioned, greater strength contributes to greater power on all strokes. Now, you will be less likely to be overpowered on court.

Tennis Fitness Components #2: Speed, Agility and Stamina

The next three tennis fitness components are speed, agility and stamina. If a program was designed such that a player would work on speed drills (like running sprints) then agility drills (like shuttle runs) and then endurance training (like long distance running), you might think that you would then be already a completely fit tennis player. Not surprisingly, this is not at all the case.

Tennis is a sport that features bursts of vigorous activity followed by periods of rest. And these bursts of activity vary from match to match, set to set and even point to point. You might play a long rally on one point and then a short one on the next.

In either case, after each point, you have to recover, relax and get ready for the next point. So the kind of endurance you need to develop is the kind that will enable you to still run maximum bursts of speed even if you have already spent more than 2 hours out on the court. It makes better sense to create a program that develops a player’s speed, stamina and endurance all together.

Tennis Fitness Components: Footwork Drills

An example would be doing a series of sprints or lateral footwork drills in sets. To illustrate this further, you could run a 25 meter sprint, rest, and then do another sprint, until this whole process has been repeated 10 times.

You could do the same thing with lateral footwork drills, backpedalling footwork drills, shuttle runs and the like. Training for these three fitness components can really take your game up a notch. You can run down more balls for a longer time without getting as tired as you used to. Now you can outrun, outmanoeuvre and outlast opponents.

Tennis Fitness Components #3: Flexibility

The next tennis fitness component is flexibility. It is very important to warm up properly before working out or playing. Dynamic stretching is recommended for warming before an activity. This kind of stretching makes use of speed of movement and momentum to achieve the desired stretch. Examples are arm circles and lunges, as well as the movements used in many dance aerobics routines.

After activity, a player must cool down, and this is where static stretches are performed. These are stretches where the positions are held for a few counts. The proper use of these stretching techniques minimizes the chance of developing injuries. They also contribute to developing strokes that are more biomechanically sound. You will find that you are really now elevating your game.

Tennis Fitness Components #4: Tennis Diet and Proper Nutrition

The last tennis fitness component is diet and proper nutrition. Strength training is related to muscle building so a good amount of high quality protein should be included in the diet. Likewise, before a match, you never know if you will be out on court for half an hour or two and a half hours.

You need to be prepared for the contingency that you will be out there for a long time. A marathon runner or triathlete does what they call carbo loading, where they eat a good amount of complex carbohydrates before their race. This ensures that they have adequate and proper fuel.

A tennis player should also include similar kinds of carbohydrates before playing a match. During a match, a player should also have a few bites of energy bars during changeovers and bananas. These foods provide energy and electrolytes, which are lost when we sweat. Because every person is different, every diet should also be different and tailored to each one’s individual physiology.

As ordinary players, we do not need to follow strict diets because, after all, we should be allowed to enjoy our food. Lindsay Davenport didn’t totally eliminate sweets and pastries from her diet; she just greatly reduced the amount she was eating. She exercised portion control. We can learn from her example by just reducing the amount of sweets and treats we consume, but not totally deprive ourselves.

Getting into shape through proper nutrition and diet goes hand in hand with all the other components. As Davenport showed, you too can take your game to where it’s never been before by working on these tennis fitness components.

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Often times, the tennis fitness aspect of the game is overlooked by club players worldwide. This is a shame, because a player that is in good physical shape can outlast a player who has not yet included tennis agility drills into their training regimen. For any good player, tennis agility drills are a big part of their fitness element.

Below are some of the tennis agility drills that help tennis players develop their speed, balance, quickness and coordination. Specifically, these drills aim to develop the players’ ability to change direction, footwork flexibility, hip extension, etc.

Tennis Agility Drill #1: The skip for height supplemental

The objective of this series tennis agility drills is to help players increase their hip extension. It also helps the players to strengthen their flexion and to develop ankle stiffness. This drill is just one of the tennis agility drills that a player must follow to gain speed and quickness that is necessary to win tennis matches.

Steps:

• Skip with your left or right leg and move forward while doing so. While skipping, you should maintain proper body posture where your spine is in straight position and your body in steady posture. You arm should also be in proper action. When the left leg is up, the right hand is up as well and vice versa.
• Make sure that the knee of the leg that is up in the air is fully extended and fully flexed. Also, the ankle of the raised leg should level off with the knee of the leg on the ground.
• When the raised leg is fully up, your foot on the ground should be on plantar flexion movement or the front portion of your foot and the shin is angled at 90 degrees.
• When your foot lands on the ground, create an explosive but gentle power but never bang it on the ground.

Tennis Agility Drill #2: The 40-yard square carioca tennis agility drill

This is one of the tennis agility drills that aim to develop your ability to quickly change direction. It also helps you enhance your hips and footwork flexibility.

Steps:

• Execute this drill with the use of cones. Simply place one cone on every corner of the court.
• Position yourself at one corner and execute the two point stance. To do this, stand with both of your knees bent and feet staggered (one foot is in front while the other stays back) and put your weight over your front foot. Bend your elbows and then place your arms in front of your chest with your head up.
• From your present position, sprint towards one corner and pivot in reverse manner when you reach the corner.
• After you pivot, execute Carioca instead of sprinting to reach the next corner.
• Then execute another reverse pivot when you reach another corner and go to the remaining corner using Carioca steps. Repeat the drill as many as you can or as prescribed by the coach.

Tennis Agility Drill #3: The quick and wide shuffle with ladder

Same as the other tennis agility drills, this drill help you improve you speed, coordination and balance.

Steps:

• Start with a two-point stance position (as described above).
• Stand in such a way that the ladder is front of you.
• Then step with your left and right feet on the first step or square
• Then move out of the ladder laterally. Say move to your right side by a side step using your right foot first then your left foot follows.
• Then you move in but this time on the next step or square. Move in with your left foot first to be followed by your right foot. As your right foot touches the square, move out you’re your left foot quickly (this time to the left side of the ladder) and your right foot follows quickly.
• Repeat the move in and move out steps as many as you can. Remember to maintain balance when you execute this drill.
• Once you reach the top of the ladder, you can repeat the drill and start again from the first step or square.

Tennis Agility Drill #4: The 15-yard turn agility drill

In addition to other tennis agility drills, this drill helps you improve your ability to change from one direction to another. It will also make you more flexible in your hips and footwork. To complete this drill, put one marker (cone1) at around five yard forward from the starting your point (which is also the finish point) and another marker (cone 2) five yards to the right of the starting point.

Steps:

• Execute the two-point stance posture while you are at the starting point.
• The next step is for you to sprint towards cone 1. Upon reaching the first marker (cone 1), quickly make a right turn towards the next maker (cone 2).
• As you reach cone 2, make a quick left turn and sprint towards the starting point or the finishing point. Take note that cone 1 and cone 2 should be in diagonal position.

Tennis Agility Drill #5: The lateral skaters to sprint agility drill

The purpose of this set of tennis agility drills is for the development of your cutting ability and enhancement of first lateral quickness. In addition to other tennis agility drill, this drill must be done regularly to develop your speed and quickness.

Steps:

• To start with this drill, stand with straight and steady body posture and bring your left and right feet together. Then push off your body using either of your legs laterally. This means that when you are pushing you body towards you right, it is you left leg that pushes you off, but you land with your right foot.
• Once you land on the ground or on the floor (make sure that you land with only one foot), pause for three to four seconds and quickly push off again to the other side. This time, you push your body with your right leg and land on your left leg.
• For this agility drill for be more effective, repeat it as many as you can and at regular basis. After you have completed the reps, sprint around the court.

Tennis Agility Drill #6: The medicine ball agility drill

This is one of the tennis agility drills that enhance your explosive power to help you execute powerful throwing and overhead shots. In this tennis agility drill, all you need is a medicine ball.

Steps:

• Stand in front of a wall with your two feet spread at hip-width distance. Keep your body straight and in steady manner, your head up and knees bent.
• Hold the medicine ball with your both hands and bring it up over your head. With your elbows bent, hit the wall with the ball successively at a very fast pace. Do this as long as possible and do it regularly as well.
• You can do variations in this drill. One variation is the position of your feet. You can have one of your feet in front while the other stays back. You can also execute this drill while you are in kneeling position.

Tennis Agility Drill #7: The sprint/backpedal agility drill

This tennis agility drill aims to develop your reaction speed and quickness. It also aims to develop your quickness in changing directions, which is vital when playing tennis matches. To complete this drill, make markings on the starting point and the finishing point. The distance between the two points should be around 30 yards.

Steps:

• Stand at the starting point and wait for your partner’s or coach’s signal to start.
• Once you hear the first whistle, spring quickly towards the finishing marker.
• When you hear the second whistle, stop and move backwards) at a very fast pace (backpedal.
• The drill continues where you change directions (forwards or backward movements) after each whistle. The coach on one hand should see to it the interval of each whistle varies. So that the player won’t be able to anticipate the whistle and when to stop. In the end, the drill becomes more effective in developing the player’s ability to quickly change direction.
• The player should also not anticipate the whistle and should maintain the same speed all throughout the drill.

Learn to Hit a Forehand Like Roger Federer

If you want to jumpstart your forehand and play like the PROS, check out my 70+ page Tennis Ebook that will immediately show you how you can take your forehand to the next level.

The Modern Forehand Domination Ebook is guaranteed to improve your tennis technique, and increase power, topspin and accuracy of your tennis forehand!

Modern Tennis Forehand Ebook
Learn How to Hit a Forehand Like Federer, Nadal and Djokovic

The post Tennis Agility Drills – Improve Your Tennis Fitness With 7 Tennis Agility Drills and Speed Exercises for Tennis appeared first on Tennis Instruction.

Players today are now hitting the tennis ball with much more power, topspin and depth than in the past. World class tennis players today not only possess finesse, but also incredible athletic ability. Quickness, agility and explosion are just a few factors that pro players on tour possess.

When we watch players such as Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, it is clear that they each engage in fitness training for tennis.

This tennis training program is often done off court and separate from the on court training. The benefits of such a tennis training routine is clear in their ability to move effortlessly around the tennis court with remarkable athleticism during every single point.

Below are some fitness training for tennis exercises that you too can incorporate into your training so you can improve your quickness, speed and explosiveness on the tennis court.

Fitness Training For Tennis Exercise For Quickness and Speed

One of the most important assets a tennis player should have is quickness and speed. To have these two attributes allows you to quickly react to your opponent’s attack and execute the appropriate shots. As a result, your opponent gets hard time in taking over the game. To be successful in acquiring quickness and speed, you need to perform the right training exercises and a lot of practice. Examples of exercises for speed and quickness are:

Fitness Training For Tennis Exercise #1: Triceps Extension with Resistance Band

– In this exercise, you don’t need to hold both ends of the resistance band. Instead, hold one end with your right hand and put our hand at the back of your head. Then put your left hand at your back and hold the hanging resistance band. Then next the step is to raise gently your right hand until it is fully extended but your left hand should be in steady position. Then go back to the initial position. Be sure to complete 10 reps of this exercise and then do another 10 reps with your left hand at the back of your head and the right hand behind your back.

Fitness Training For Tennis Exercise #2: Lateral Rows with Resistance Band –

Before you start this tennis training for tennis exercise, you need to step (with your both feet on the midpoint of the resistance band. Then spread your legs at hip-width distance and then bend your knees. The start position of this exercise is when you hold both ends of the resistance band with your both hands with your palms facing towards your body with your elbows slightly bent. Then slowly raise your both arms upwards until they reach the shoulder level and go back to initial position. Same as the above speed and quickness exercise, 10 reps is needed to complete this exercise.

Fitness Training For Tennis Exercise #3: Resistance Band Squats

Same as the lateral rows resistance band exercise, you need to step the resistance band with your left and right legs. With both of your hands holding each end of the resistance band, bring up your the hands until shoulder level. And while your arms are at shoulder level, start the squat position. From the squat position, return to the initial position but you with your hands should maintain the shoulder level position. Fifteen repetitions are ideal for this fitness training for tennis exercise

The objective of physical tennis training is to develop the players’ stamina, speed, agility and flexibility. The trainings should also help the players develop their racket reaction and coordination. It is also very important to teach the players on the dynamic balance between the body, ball and the racket.

The above objectives are achieved through a tennis training program that include cardiovascular exercises, weight training exercises, speed, agility and coordination drills and practices. At the end of the tennis training program, the players must improve their reaction time and move at a quicker pace. For a physical fitness tennis training program to be successful, it is important that a detailed and specific tennis training program is designed for an individual player. This is very important especially for advanced or professional players. This is the reason why each professional player has their own team of trainers.

Fitness Training For Tennis Exercise For Stamina Building

One of the fundamentals of fitness training for tennis is to develop stamina or the ability of the players to sustain long hours of matches. Thus, stamina building exercises should be included in any fitness training for tennis. Examples of these exercises are:

Fitness Training For Tennis Exercise #4: Skipping

Skipping is one of the simplest exercises for stamina building. For best results, you have to start this exercise slowly at first at regular basis. If possible, do it daily and try to slowly increase the duration of the exercise for you to develop your stamina every day.

Fitness Training For Tennis Exercise #5: Running

Same as the skipping exercise fitness training for tennis, you can also start running at shorter duration in the beginning and try to increase the duration as you progress with your training. But remember that you have to do it at regular interval, if possible in daily basis.

Fitness Training For Tennis Exercise #6: Swimming

Swimming is another way to develop your stamina and endurance. In fact, swimming is considered as one of the best fitness training for tennis for stamina building. Thirty minutes of swimming exercise daily is good enough for you to attain the stamina you need for peak performance on court. This Fitness Training For Tennis is also good for recovery after a long tennis match or a training session.

Fitness Training For Tennis Exercise For Injury Recovery

Fitness training for tennis does not only include the power, speed and quickness, and stamina building exercises. It must also include exercises for injury recovery because injuries do happen even with fit tennis players.

Fitness Training For Tennis Exercise #7: Static squeezes –

to start with this fitness training for tennis, you have to sit on the floor and stretch both of your legs. The next step is to do a full muscle contraction of your quadriceps. With your muscle at full contraction, maintain the position for 10 seconds and then release. To complete the exercise, you have to execute the exercise 15 times.

Fitness Training For Tennis Exercise #9: Side leg raises

To execute this exercise, you have to lie down with your side. You may lie with your left side first. Bring your both legs together while you are on the floor. With your left elbow on the floor, put your left hand on your head to support your body. Then your next move is to bring up your right leg slowly. As you raise your leg, see to it that your heel lead the way and not your toes. Also make sure that your leg is always straight and try to contract your hip muscle when your leg reaches the topmost position. Lastly, you need to lower down your leg in a slow motion and avoid dropping it. Repeat the exercise 15 times.

Fitness Training For Tennis Exercise #10: Calf raises

you need a stair or anything with steps in this fitness training for tennis. All you need to do is to stand on the step and make sure that only your toes are touching the step. In another words, you have to stand with your toes with the rest of your feet suspended. Then from this position, slowly bring down your heels downward and then slowly bring yourself up again. For best results, try you bring up yourself up to the highest possible height you can. When you are at the highest point, maintain the position for several seconds, and then gradually return to the initial position (standing on your toes). Complete the exercise with 20 repetitions.

Fitness Training For Tennis Exercise For Muscle Building

Tennis is a game that requires fitness in aerobics, strength, explosive power and stamina. All these can’t be achieved overnight and if you want to be one of the best tennis players, you need to work extremely hard. Power is needed to hit powerful stroke and that power can be achieved if you have well toned muscles. Thus fitness training for tennis should include the muscle building training. Below are some of the muscular exercises:

Fitness Training For Tennis Exercise #11: Pushups

Pushups is the most common muscle building exercise. That’s because of the fact that you can execute this exercise anywhere and without the need of any equipment. This exercise helps build your chest and arm muscles. To do this exercise correctly, you need to start it from a less intense set up (less pushups) to more intense set up (more pushups). However, always remember to do the exercise regularly.

Fitness Training For Tennis Exercise #12: Alternating dumbbell lunge

Start this exercise by producing two dumbbells, then hold them in each of your hand and position them at your side at arm’s length. Make sure both your palms are facing towards your body and your feet slightly spread. Then move your right leg in front and bend your two legs bringing your whole body down. To complete this stage of the exercise, your front knee should be bent at an angle of 90 degrees. Once you accomplish this, pause for several seconds and quickly go back to the original position and continue the exercise by moving your left and right legs in front alternately. Do 3 sets of 10 reps to complete this exercise.

Fitness Training For Tennis Exercise #13: Alternating dumbbell bench press

In this fitness training for tennis exercise, you need two dumbbells and a flat bench. Then lie on your back on the bench while holding the dumbbells over your chest but do not touch them with your chest. When you hold the dumbbells, make sure your palms are facing forward or towards your feet. Then push the dumbbells up and down alternately. This means that as you lower the dumbbell in your left hand; bring up the one in your right hand. Remember to hold them tightly as you continue with the exercise.

Learn to Hit a Forehand Like Roger Federer

If you want to jumpstart your forehand and play like the PROS, check out my 70+ page Tennis Ebook that will immediately show you how you can take your forehand to the next level.

The Modern Forehand Domination Ebook is guaranteed to improve your tennis technique, and increase power, topspin and accuracy of your tennis forehand!

Modern Tennis Forehand Ebook
Learn How to Hit a Forehand Like Federer, Nadal and Djokovic

The post Fitness Training For Tennis – Exercises for Mastering the Tennis Fitness Component appeared first on Tennis Instruction.