ANY workout, on the tennis court, or training outside of your sport should ALWAYS start with a warm-up. This helps prepare your body for the activity to come and increases your performance while reducing your risk of injury. Light, full body movements, like jogging, walking briskly, cycling and skipping are all good warm-up exercises. Do this for about 4 to 6 minutes until a light sweat starts or your muscles start to feel warm.
After a light warm-up you should stretch your muscles gently before
more strenuous activity. Do a variety of stretches that you have learnt from your
coach or other people. Stretch the muscles that you are going to use in the following
workout. Move into the stretch slowly and hold it for at least 12 seconds. You should
feel some gentle tension in the muscle being stretched, but never stretch to the
point of pain. Once you have stretched all of the muscles, move onto the next stage.
Be careful, and choose your stretches with care, as some can be dangerous, get some
advice.
After the above two stages you are now ready for the CONDITIONING. In this stage
you are trying to condition your body for improvement. There are two main areas of
conditioning, AEROBIC and MUSCULAR. Aerobic means 'with oxygen' and
includes exercises like jogging, brisk walking, swimming, cycling, skipping, rowing,
and aerobic classes. This type of fitness gives you stamina and enables you to play
for a long period of time. If you are playing in a tennis tournament, then you would
need a good level of aerobic fitness to last the day and still have energy for the
last game. Work on it by doing one of the above mentioned activities at least 3 times
every week for at least 20 minutes each session of aerobic exercise. A structured
programme will give you more benefits. Obtain advice from people who are experienced
in exercise. If you can get to a gym, using their cycles, rowers or steppers are
all aerobic exercises along with the classes, both circuit and aerobic.
Muscular conditioning is done through exercises against resistance. The resistance
may be equipment like weights or machines on a gym, but can also be simple exercises
done at home in front of the TV.
Exercises like press-ups, abdominal crunches ( not sit-ups ), dips and other movements
can over time increase the strength, efficiency and endurance that your muscles have.
This can make you tennis serves and strokes more powerful, and assist in other ways
like injury prevention. Try to do some exercise every day. Any activity is better
than no activity. Playing games other than tennis can allow you to get fitter without
putting the same stress on your body the same way as playing tennis all the time.
After every workout it is very important to do a cool-down that is similar to
the warm-up. Doing some light exercise helps the body recover from your exercise
and may reduce injuries.
After cooling down it is very important to do some stretches, to lengthen out
all those tight muscles that you have used in your workout. The sort of stretches
done are similar to those done after the warm-up.
Apart from aerobic and muscular work there are two more types of training that
you need to do to improve your tennis skills.
Speed work is necessary, especially over short distances like 5
to 10 metres. Practice sprinting as fast as you can over these distances, then stop,
rest for 10 to 15 seconds, and then do it again. Try to complete at least 10 of these
and work on going really fast. Speed is the goal here. Commence this training after
you have warmed up and are fresh to ensure that you have lots of ATP ( energy ) in
your muscles.