Sprinting for Tennis Conditioning

[duxx]

@NumberTwo

Likely expand the volume of sprint work, but also incorporate more work with plyometrics (including lateral work - bounds, hops, etc.). But also incorporate more medicine ball throws rounding out the explosive work.

I’m not a big fan of “simulating” on court tennis movements, as most tennis movement is based on anticipatory and reactive movement patterns that are specific to tennis.

I’d spend more time on strengthening lower leg/foot reactive strength and power, as well as torso rotation.

Endurance work would be tempo based with strength endurance circuits interspersed.

I have worked in tennis academy here in Belgrade and we did very similar if not the same program

1. General Strength training
2. Hill sprints and flat sprint from different positions
3. Explosive medball throws and jumps
4. Tempo and MB/Plate/DB circuits and sometimes intensive tempo for older athletes
5. Playing tennis

I remember going into a debate with one tennis coach regarding ‘simulating’ some tennis moves in conditioning workout [he was especially negative regarding ‘plyo-step’ when starting to sprint from parallel tall position], but I didn’t managed to tell him it is context-dependent [read: tennis situation]. There is a great school in psychology called ecological psychology that goes into this perception-movement coupling that you CANNOT and MUST NOT split artificially.

Great work. Thanks!