fitness training

Significance of Tennis Fitness Training Components

For a tennis player it is imperative to incorporate fitness components into training. Where tennis training is about learning the right technique for ground strokes, volleys, serves etc.; tennis fitness is to improve your footwork, cardio, speed, reaction, core, strength & power. In order to gain the best results, you will need to do tennis training and tennis fitness altogether. Both are required for all level players, be it a beginners or an expert. A well planned tennis training program helps a player in becoming more efficient and proactive on the court.

There are several components of tennis fitness training that are very helpful for tennis players of all levels to achieve the required swiftness, reaction, force and power for the sport.

Agility Training: Once the level of tennis becomes higher working on the specific movements to rapidly change direction becomes crucial. This is where agility training comes handy. It provides the ability to rapidly change direction, without losing speed, balance, or body control. Agility training helps a player to focus on his tennis footwork technique and strength to become much more efficient while carrying out strokes on the court.

Strength Training: This is the next important part of training for tennis. Strength training helps players to become more powerful and explosive on the court. A strong player is one who is able to hit the ball harder. Apart from power it also improves the ball control. Proper stroke mechanics can be easily learned if the muscles and joints are strengthened. Another important reason that strength training is now imperative for competitive players is that it helps protect against injuries.

Flexibility training: This is another important part of tennis fitness training that needs to be done every day after practice. Flexibility is defined as the range of motion about a joint and its surrounding muscles during a passive movement. An accurate flexibility level allows the players to reach balls in extreme positions as well as helps them to prevent injuries that could occur while playing.

If you want to become a professional tennis player, and reach your maximum potential, a tennis training program alone, is not enough, both tennis fitness as well as tennis training are required.

Individualized tennis training fitness program, should incorporate all the following areas, eg. strength, agility, cardie and flexibility. At a high level at least 1/3 of the total practice time should be devoted to fitness training for tennis. One of the biggest mistakes made by tennis players is stop training for fitness during tournaments. It is very important to do a minimum in order to maintain the current fitness level. Following a correct tennis training fitness program is a must for players who want to excel at every level of the sport.