Archive for the ‘Agility’ Category
A good footwork is essential for playing good tennis. Good footwork means: small steps, ability to change direction swiftly and to always be on balance while performing sprints sideways or forward and backward. Unfortunately, most tennis players don’t give enough attention to footwork. They might go for a run, but long distance running won’t improve the foot work. Good footwork drills should imitate the movements on the court: short sprints and changes of direction. Footwork drills should focus on speed, strength, explosiveness and endurance. It is extremely important to practice your footwork regularly so it would become second nature to you, and you would never need to think about it in your matches. An excellent footwork exercise is jumping rope. It has so many benefits that it is almost hard to believe that such a simple, inexpensive tool could do so much good for you.
In tennis you need explosiveness, strength, balance, stamina, speed and agility. The movements you do on the tennis court are short and fast, so you are using a lot of anaerobic energy. But because you stay on the court for hours, you need a good aerobic endurance as well. Running stairs is a great activity that can give you tremendous results in your tennis fitness training. Running stairs is extremely effective in increasing your endurance and building your lower body strength. And if you want to add the balance and agility element into your stair training, you can do different variations of lunges and jumps, described below.
Agility – the gracefulness of a person or animal that is quick and nimble – is ability to change the position of your body efficiently using all your muscles in harmony, and with combination of balance, coordination, speed, strength and stamina. For a tennis player at any level, fast feet are a huge advantage. On the tennis court, you have to move in a variety of directions with accuracy, speed and coordination. It is extremely important to have strong lower body to train movement effectively. You can improve your foot speed by performing mixture of different movements that require strength, balance and explosiveness. Especially important are single leg movements, because during your tennis game, you have to stop, regain your balance, and then shift your bodyweight to the opposite direction pushing from a single leg.
Footwork is the key to great tennis, and yet, so many players neglect this fact. If you have an excellent stroke technique, but you cannot get to the ball on time and be balanced, it is not going to be a consistently good shot. If you think about it, the time that you spend on the court moving compared to the time hitting the ball is significantly more. If you really want to improve your tennis game, start working on your footwork. This will improve your tennis speed and tennis fitness at the same time, and you will be surprised how much better player you become almost immediately. Improving your footwork will improve also your agility, coordination and balance, which is extremely important for higher levels of play.
