Classic Strokes Tennis Lessons

If you are wondering: am I fit enough to play tennis?, a short answer is that if you can walk, you can play tennis.

As with anything physically active, however, the more active and capable you may want to be is helped with increasing levels of fitness.  There are a lot of fun weekend doubles games among friends, however, where they have a great time without even moving very much at all.

There are a few comments and tips on this page, however, that I hope are helpful concerning overall fitness for tennis.  

Fitness Comments

First of all, although overall movement retrieving shots can be a pretty good workout, the most physically demanding aspect of tennis is consistently good footwork on every shot.

Footwork controls your positioning and balance through the hitting zone and needs to be as active as possible so that you can continually react to all the things going on while on a tennis court which includes shot speed, varying spins, and wind.

You need to be up on your toes and very active on your feet to be able to adjust to your opponents shots and vary the types of shots that you hit in return.  Good footwork in tennis is a bit like dancing as you need to dance across the tennis court and be agile in changing how you respond to your playing partner across the net.

Classic Strokes lessons begin with brief footwork drills that are both a good warmup and a good introduction into using consistent technique on every shot.

As for other aspects of fitness, arm strength is a lot less important than you might think (especially when looking at pictures at Rafael Nadal).  In the Technique section, I have already described that power and control results from effectively using your upper body, core section, and legs in a consistent way and those muscle groups provide a lot more power than your arms. 

Beginners are pretty amazed to find after hitting only a few backhand shots using our very simple and compact strokes that they have plenty of strength to hit the ball well out of the court.

Forehand strokes do require some additional hand, wrist, and arm strength as they are only using one hand and do not have the other hand for support.  To help with the forehand, however, we also have an interesting drill with an eight pound dumbell which both builds arm and wrist strengh and shows the perfect pendulum motion with your fully extended hand and arm that leads to consistently repeatable strokes.

Fitness Tips

Flexibility is very helpful for tennis and stretching is very helpful for flexibility.  The following links are for page 1 and page 2 of some stretches that are especially good for tennis.  The stretches are a great warm up prior to playing but would also be a good daily routine as well for overall flexibility and the surprising toning effects that also result from regular stretching.

The stretches are also from a great book (Stretching) that provides stretches for about every activity that you can imagine.  If you think the two pages of stretches are helpful and also might be interested in the full book, this is a link to Amazon's page for the book: http://www.amazon.com/Stretching-20th-Anniversary-Revised-Anderson/dp/0936070226/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238470203&sr=8-1 

As for other fitness related activities that have probably been helpful to keep me fit and flexible for tennis, I would also include both using an eliptical trainer and swimming.

The eliptical trainer has been good for overall cardiovascular fitness and also surprisingly good I think for helping with balance.  Swimming is also good for a cardiovascular workout but has great benefits as well for flexibility and building shoulder strengh which is especially helpful for a better serve.

In any case, the best physical fitness routine is whatever might keep you active and that you enjoy.  Merely just walking is a lot more beneficial than people might think and it burns almost four times as many calories as you are burning while looking at this website.