What Is Strength Training For Tennis?

Strength training is an essential component of a healthy lifestyle. Whether you’re a professional athlete or a common joe, making strength training an integral part of your fitness routine can have some amazing benefits.

From managing one’s weight to increasing bone density, there are a plethora of benefits associated with strength training. In today’s article, we have curated a list of benefits of strength training, especially for professional tennis players.

Why Is Strength Training Important for Tennis Players?

Tennis is a test of agility, flexibility, and endurance. It’s a sport that forces you to use all of your body, making strength training an important part of every tennis player’s daily routine.

Not only does regular strength training enhance physical capabilities but has also been shown to reduce mental fatigue and enhance cognitive abilities for better performance.

Here are some ways strength training contributes to the success of tennis players, on and off court:

Enhanced Strength: For That Perfect Serve

More than anything, tennis is a game of strength. The success of a player is ensured only when they hit the ball with power. That’s why it’s essential for tennis players to build muscles.

The concentration of power relies on endurance and strength of the upper body combined with core strength.

The result is better static endurance and reactive strength which helps create more force in every serve and puts pressure on the ball.

If you’re planning to start strength training for tennis or want to enhance your performance, start your preparation in the gym.

Areas to target include core, upper body, hips, and hamstrings. Since these muscles are most likely to get pulled due to the frequent movement, having an appropriate strength training program in place is important.

Best exercises for static strength are squats, rows, lunges, isometric deadlifts, planks, and bench press.

Stronger Core: For The Right Movement

While playing more matches is a proven method to improve accuracy, it can only produce limited results.

However, when a tennis player has a strong center of gravity, they can use their strength to manage their lower body better, ensuring a better understanding of when to accelerate or decelerate, along with a more formidable sense of movement.

Moreover, core strength helps with better ball and socket joint movement ensuring a higher range of motion in the shoulders, and more stability in the back.

By targeting your core area, you’ll be improving your mobility, trunk and spinal stability.

The best way to build core muscles include sit ups, planks, glute bridge, medicine ball throw, and pallof press.

More Energy: Because Endurance Is Key

Tennis is a game of reactive and explosive strength. But it is also about enduring long games. Being able to stand and use repetitive movements during longer periods of time can be achieved through a custom-built strength training program.

By following a regime that takes into account muscular endurance apart from the sheer strength of the upper body, you can hit two birds with one stone.

To achieve a more well rounded strength training routine, focus on both upper and lower body strength. Back, biceps, triceps, hamstrings, and glutes exercise will help you enhance endurance.

The best way to build more endurance and energy is by following exercises such as bicep curls, tricep dips, push ups, hammer curl, and dumbbell punch.

Minimized Chances Of Injury: Your Body Is Your Biggest Asset

Tennis players are prone to shoulder and elbow injury, along with broken ankles. The single-handed individuality of the sport means that more than often, the shoulder and back take more pressure than other body parts.

Frequent strength training of these body parts along with the surrounding muscles can help to minimize the chances of injury. The hand, biceps, and triceps are more feeble and need regular strength training to be more adept.

While training your muscles for unilateral movements like serve, forehand and backhand, focus on strengthening your arms, glutes, and legs.

You can ensure higher levels of strength by indulging in exercises such as single leg deadlift, split squat, meadows row, single arm pulldown, and single leg hip thrust.

More Speed: Because Being Quick On Toes Is Your Superpower

Speed is a crucial factor when it comes to tennis. Being able to cover the court more quickly ensures that you can hit that shot every time.

This includes being able to move forward and backward quickly, while also extending yourself horizontally.

To ensure optimum performance and speed, you need to train your lower body as well as arms. This includes strength training as well as stretching.

The best exercises for enhancing your speed for tennis are lunges, calf raises, squats preferably with optimum squat intensive equipment, as well as curtsy lunges.

The Grand Slam

Tennis is all about ensuring optimum performance through strength and endurance.

While practice matches are a great way to get in touch with your strengths and weaknesses, strength training is an important way to build power and endurance for the long run.