The Best Conditioning for Tennis?

[JuicyLucy]

Hi, I’ve just came across this forum. i didn`t know they had conditioning section.

I would be interested in anybody´s opinion on the best way to condition for tennis.

I have a never ending debate with my coach about this. His opinion is to do 3 times weight training(strength and injury preventive ex.) and 5-6 times a week long distance running (5 km min.), biking or swimming duration 1 hour min.

I find it boooring and feel that this way of training slows me down.

My opinion would be to train 2 times per week for strength, once a week circuits with weights (8 rep. range) for conditioning and 4 to 5 times max. 20-30 mins. high intensity conditioning (Tabatas, suicides, intervals, skipping rope, sprints on the bike, med ball circuits etc.)

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

who is “right” ?

[DuncW]

JL, it’s funny you ask this because I’m a tennis player myself and I have been experimenting with different methods of conditioning over the last few years, so I’ll give you my opinion on what I think is effective, and what is not.

First of all, I am not a very big fan of long-distance runs. I felt that although my stamina on long-distance runs improved significantly, it didn’t help me on the tennis court. It actually made me quite a bit slower and I didn’t feel very agile anymore, so I ditched that.

Then interval running, I think this is a great method of conditioning for tennis. My speed improved and stamina as well. You can do intervals either on the track or on the road, it doesn’t matter, it all works. When running on the track I would normally do 8-10 x 400m and try to run about the same time for every lap, this is of course different for every person but to give you a rough idea, I ran each lap in around 1 minute 15 seconds and rested for 2-3 minutes in between. When running on the road I would just pick a point in the distance and run there as fast as I could keeping my pace constant for the whole distance. Normally I did this for a certain amount of time or a certain distance, and rest periods are about the same as on the track, sometimes a little shorter.

I saw you also mentioned skipping rope, this also helped me a lot, but maybe not so much for speed. It did help my coordination and helped me to stay on my toes while playing tennis which really improved my reaction to certain shots and just made me more agile in general.

Agility and plyometric training on the tennis court were very helpful for my speed on the court especially things like spider drills, line sprints and line hops.

The last conditioning method I used with succes were hill sprints, They really strengthened my legs and made a big difference on the tennis especially when having long rallies. Normally my legs would start to feel heavy after a while but the hill sprints kept them fresh for much longer.

As for strength training I would keep them to 2 days a week, I depends how often you play tennis and how much time you have. The exercises I had great success with were mostly bodyweight exercises such as pull-ups, chins, inverted rows, dips, pushups, hanging leg raises, planks, ab rollouts, Bulgarian split squats, glute bridges, natural glute ham raise and walking lunges.

Keep in mind that playing tennis is actually the most important thing that makes you a better tennis player, so your first priority should be to play and practice as much as you can. I am not saying that you shouldn’t do the strength training and conditioning at all but let’s say you have 3 days on which you can play tennis. If you want to be a better tennis player I would play tennis on all of those days instead of playing on just 1 and focusing on conditioning and strength training on the other 2, but of course if time is not an issue, then incorporating strength training and conditioning into your program is a great way to improve your performance on the tennis court.

I seriously could go on and on about this topic, because this is really something that caught my interest, as there is not a lot of useful information on this topic available. I hope I aswered your question with this post, but if you have any questions. Feel free to ask.

DuncW

[JuicyLucy]

Thanks a lot DuncW. You´re right there isn´t much about conditioning for tennis on the net. At least I can not find anything useful. What I find are bits of information. I really miss a well put program. A weekly layout of volume so to speak. I do play professionally. I´m “hitting” balls on the court 4-5 days a week. My training sessions last between 5-7 hours (warm-up, working on my technik, drills, cool down etc.). I have little to no energy left to do anything afterwards on those days.

What weekly layout would you recomend?

I am doing something like this:

Mon
am. Tennis practice
pm. 30 min. skipping rope (60s followed by 30s rest or abs)
Stretching 1 hour

Tue
am. Tennis practice
pm. Weights: Chest/Back, Legs 12-15 reps x 2 sets
20 min.Recovery Jog
Stretching/ Foam roll 1 hour

Wed
am. Interval Run 400m x 8-10
Stretching/Foam Roll 30 min.
pm. Yoga 1 hour

Thr
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Weights: Shoulders(Rotater Cuff Ex.),Arms, Legs 12-15 reps x 3 sets
Light Bike ride 45 min.
Stretching 1 hour

Fri
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Tabata Protocol 20-30 mins.
Stretching 1 hour

Sat
am. Light Stretching 20 min.
pm. Yoga 30 min.

Sun
am. Tennis practice
pm. Circuit Training, Complexes for 30-45 min.
Stretching 1 hour

What do you think? I need to incorporate more rotater cuff exs.

What am I missing?

Thanks.

[Deorum]

im not a tennis player but i believe strongly that long distance running hurts most atheletes who aren’t long distance runners. (hope there arent any boxers out there calling me an asshole for that lol)

[BIGBOSSTRON]

if you are serious about your sport you need to get adecent coach and have good training partners. why waste time seeing if methods might work, when you can have coach who is guaranteed to give you results.

[DuncW]

[quote]JuicyLucy wrote:
Thanks a lot DuncW. YouÃ??Ã?´re right there isnÃ??Ã?´t much about conditioning for tennis on the net. At least I can not find anything useful. What I find are bits of information. I really miss a well put program. A weekly layout of volume so to speak. I do play professionally. IÃ??Ã?´m “hitting” balls on the court 4-5 days a week. My training sessions last between 5-7 hours (warm-up, working on my technik, drills, cool down etc.). I have little to no energy left to do anything afterwards on those days.

What weekly layout would you recomend?

I am doing something like this:

Mon
am. Tennis practice
pm. 30 min. skipping rope (60s followed by 30s rest or abs)
Stretching 1 hour

Tue
am. Tennis practice
pm. Weights: Chest/Back, Legs 12-15 reps x 2 sets
20 min.Recovery Jog
Stretching/ Foam roll 1 hour

Wed
am. Interval Run 400m x 8-10
Stretching/Foam Roll 30 min.
pm. Yoga 1 hour

Thr
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Weights: Shoulders(Rotater Cuff Ex.),Arms, Legs 12-15 reps x 3 sets
Light Bike ride 45 min.
Stretching 1 hour

Fri
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Tabata Protocol 20-30 mins.
Stretching 1 hour

Sat
am. Light Stretching 20 min.
pm. Yoga 30 min.

Sun
am. Tennis practice
pm. Circuit Training, Complexes for 30-45 min.
Stretching 1 hour

What do you think? I need to incorporate more rotater cuff exs.

What am I missing?

Thanks.
[/quote]

I think you are making it a bit too complicated for yourself especially with all the different methods of weight training like the tabata method and complexes, why not just keep it simple and do 2, max 3 days of full body weight training. I also don’t like the split you made in your weight training, because that tends to make you pretty sore if you do it right and don’t half-ass it, so I prefer to just train the whole body all at once so you don’t use as much volume per body part. I also think that training arms directly is pretty shitty for a tennis player. For me this only lead to injuries, and you just don’t need it when you are already doing your chins, pull-ups, inverted rows, dips and push-ups. If you really want to use actual weights in your strength training then I would mostly stick with dumbells, focussing on exercises like DB bench, DB row, straight leg deadlift with DB, Bulgarian split squat with DBs and front squat with DBs. For your rotator cuff work i would use a tetra band, as this is just for pre/re-hab.

To make it a bit more clear I’ll use your original weekly plan and adjust the things that I would change.

Mon
am. Tennis practice
pm. 30 min. skipping rope (when you need to rest just rest and don’t do abs. Don’t forget to change things up here to work on coordination and keep it fun. What I means by change things up, is that you don’t do the same kind op skipping for the whole of the workout. For example, you can do 50 skips sprinting in place followed by 50-100 double-leg skips and repeat this five times. Then what you could do is single leg hops where you do 5 hops on the left foot, 5 hops on the right, 4 on left, 4 on right and repeat this until you get to 1 and build back up to 5)
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Tue
am. Tennis practice
pm. Weights: full body workout: DB bench, DB row, Bulgarian split squat, Straight leg DL, all for 3 sets of 10-20, just choose. Throw in some planks as well.
20 min.Recovery on bike or swimming
Stretching/ Foam roll 1 hour

Wed
am. Interval Run 400m x 8-10
Stretching/Foam Roll 30 min.
pm. Yoga 1 hour

Thr
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Work with tetra band on rotator cuff.
Light Bike ride 45 min.
Stretching 1 hour

Fri
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Full body training using bodyweight: chins, dips or pushups, walking lunges, planks and/or hanging leg raises. You could throw in some medicine ball throws in as well for your core work.
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Sat
am. Light Stretching 20 min.
pm. Yoga 30 min.

Sun
am. Tennis practice
pm. Swimming for 1 hour
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Make sure that you are properly warmed up for your training sessions and I would advise you to do Joe DeFranco’s Agile 8 which can be found on his website.

Hope this helped.

DuncW

[JuicyLucy]

[quote]DuncW wrote:

I think you are making it a bit too complicated for yourself especially with all the different methods of weight training like the tabata method and complexes, why not just keep it simple and do 2, max 3 days of full body weight training. I also don’t like the split you made in your weight training, because that tends to make you pretty sore if you do it right and don’t half-ass it, so I prefer to just train the whole body all at once so you don’t use as much volume per body part. I also think that training arms directly is pretty shitty for a tennis player. For me this only lead to injuries, and you just don’t need it when you are already doing your chins, pull-ups, inverted rows, dips and push-ups. If you really want to use actual weights in your strength training then I would mostly stick with dumbells, focussing on exercises like DB bench, DB row, straight leg deadlift with DB, Bulgarian split squat with DBs and front squat with DBs. For your rotator cuff work i would use a tetra band, as this is just for pre/re-hab.

To make it a bit more clear I’ll use your original weekly plan and adjust the things that I would change.

Mon
am. Tennis practice
pm. 30 min. skipping rope (when you need to rest just rest and don’t do abs. Don’t forget to change things up here to work on coordination and keep it fun. What I means by change things up, is that you don’t do the same kind op skipping for the whole of the workout. For example, you can do 50 skips sprinting in place followed by 50-100 double-leg skips and repeat this five times. Then what you could do is single leg hops where you do 5 hops on the left foot, 5 hops on the right, 4 on left, 4 on right and repeat this until you get to 1 and build back up to 5)
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Tue
am. Tennis practice
pm. Weights: full body workout: DB bench, DB row, Bulgarian split squat, Straight leg DL, all for 3 sets of 10-20, just choose. Throw in some planks as well.
20 min.Recovery on bike or swimming
Stretching/ Foam roll 1 hour

Wed
am. Interval Run 400m x 8-10
Stretching/Foam Roll 30 min.
pm. Yoga 1 hour

Thr
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Work with tetra band on rotator cuff.
Light Bike ride 45 min.
Stretching 1 hour

Fri
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Full body training using bodyweight: chins, dips or pushups, walking lunges, planks and/or hanging leg raises. You could throw in some medicine ball throws in as well for your core work.
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Sat
am. Light Stretching 20 min.
pm. Yoga 30 min.

Sun
am. Tennis practice
pm. Swimming for 1 hour
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Make sure that you are properly warmed up for your training sessions and I would advise you to do Joe DeFranco’s Agile 8 which can be found on his website.

Hope this helped.

DuncW[/quote]

Looks good. Sounds like a good advice. I do tend to make things a bit too complicated. What sets and reps would you recomend on the Full Body training using my bodyweight?

What about speed training and/or plyometrics do you do any and if yes where would it all fit?

thanks a lot

[BIGBOSSTRON]

[quote]JuicyLucy wrote:
DuncW wrote:

I think you are making it a bit too complicated for yourself especially with all the different methods of weight training like the tabata method and complexes, why not just keep it simple and do 2, max 3 days of full body weight training. I also don’t like the split you made in your weight training, because that tends to make you pretty sore if you do it right and don’t half-ass it, so I prefer to just train the whole body all at once so you don’t use as much volume per body part. I also think that training arms directly is pretty shitty for a tennis player. For me this only lead to injuries, and you just don’t need it when you are already doing your chins, pull-ups, inverted rows, dips and push-ups. If you really want to use actual weights in your strength training then I would mostly stick with dumbells, focussing on exercises like DB bench, DB row, straight leg deadlift with DB, Bulgarian split squat with DBs and front squat with DBs. For your rotator cuff work i would use a tetra band, as this is just for pre/re-hab.

To make it a bit more clear I’ll use your original weekly plan and adjust the things that I would change.

Mon
am. Tennis practice
pm. 30 min. skipping rope (when you need to rest just rest and don’t do abs. Don’t forget to change things up here to work on coordination and keep it fun. What I means by change things up, is that you don’t do the same kind op skipping for the whole of the workout. For example, you can do 50 skips sprinting in place followed by 50-100 double-leg skips and repeat this five times. Then what you could do is single leg hops where you do 5 hops on the left foot, 5 hops on the right, 4 on left, 4 on right and repeat this until you get to 1 and build back up to 5)
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Tue
am. Tennis practice
pm. Weights: full body workout: DB bench, DB row, Bulgarian split squat, Straight leg DL, all for 3 sets of 10-20, just choose. Throw in some planks as well.
20 min.Recovery on bike or swimming
Stretching/ Foam roll 1 hour

Wed
am. Interval Run 400m x 8-10
Stretching/Foam Roll 30 min.
pm. Yoga 1 hour

Thr
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Work with tetra band on rotator cuff.
Light Bike ride 45 min.
Stretching 1 hour

Fri
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Full body training using bodyweight: chins, dips or pushups, walking lunges, planks and/or hanging leg raises. You could throw in some medicine ball throws in as well for your core work.
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Sat
am. Light Stretching 20 min.
pm. Yoga 30 min.

Sun
am. Tennis practice
pm. Swimming for 1 hour
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Make sure that you are properly warmed up for your training sessions and I would advise you to do Joe DeFranco’s Agile 8 which can be found on his website.

Hope this helped.

DuncW

Looks good. Sounds like a good advice. I do tend to make things a bit too complicated. What sets and reps would you recomend on the Full Body training using my bodyweight?

What about speed training and/or plyometrics do you do any and if yes where would it all fit?

thanks a lot[/quote]

get a coach.

[JuicyLucy]

[quote]DuncW wrote:
JuicyLucy wrote:
Thanks a lot DuncW. YouÃ???Ã??Ã?´re right there isnÃ???Ã??Ã?´t much about conditioning for tennis on the net. At least I can not find anything useful. What I find are bits of information. I really miss a well put program. A weekly layout of volume so to speak. I do play professionally. IÃ???Ã??Ã?´m “hitting” balls on the court 4-5 days a week. My training sessions last between 5-7 hours (warm-up, working on my technik, drills, cool down etc.). I have little to no energy left to do anything afterwards on those days.

What weekly layout would you recomend?

I am doing something like this:

Mon
am. Tennis practice
pm. 30 min. skipping rope (60s followed by 30s rest or abs)
Stretching 1 hour

Tue
am. Tennis practice
pm. Weights: Chest/Back, Legs 12-15 reps x 2 sets
20 min.Recovery Jog
Stretching/ Foam roll 1 hour

Wed
am. Interval Run 400m x 8-10
Stretching/Foam Roll 30 min.
pm. Yoga 1 hour

Thr
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Weights: Shoulders(Rotater Cuff Ex.),Arms, Legs 12-15 reps x 3 sets
Light Bike ride 45 min.
Stretching 1 hour

Fri
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Tabata Protocol 20-30 mins.
Stretching 1 hour

Sat
am. Light Stretching 20 min.
pm. Yoga 30 min.

Sun
am. Tennis practice
pm. Circuit Training, Complexes for 30-45 min.
Stretching 1 hour

What do you think? I need to incorporate more rotater cuff exs.

What am I missing?

Thanks.

I think you are making it a bit too complicated for yourself especially with all the different methods of weight training like the tabata method and complexes, why not just keep it simple and do 2, max 3 days of full body weight training. I also don’t like the split you made in your weight training, because that tends to make you pretty sore if you do it right and don’t half-ass it, so I prefer to just train the whole body all at once so you don’t use as much volume per body part. I also think that training arms directly is pretty shitty for a tennis player. For me this only lead to injuries, and you just don’t need it when you are already doing your chins, pull-ups, inverted rows, dips and push-ups. If you really want to use actual weights in your strength training then I would mostly stick with dumbells, focussing on exercises like DB bench, DB row, straight leg deadlift with DB, Bulgarian split squat with DBs and front squat with DBs. For your rotator cuff work i would use a tetra band, as this is just for pre/re-hab.

To make it a bit more clear I’ll use your original weekly plan and adjust the things that I would change.

Mon
am. Tennis practice
pm. 30 min. skipping rope (when you need to rest just rest and don’t do abs. Don’t forget to change things up here to work on coordination and keep it fun. What I means by change things up, is that you don’t do the same kind op skipping for the whole of the workout. For example, you can do 50 skips sprinting in place followed by 50-100 double-leg skips and repeat this five times. Then what you could do is single leg hops where you do 5 hops on the left foot, 5 hops on the right, 4 on left, 4 on right and repeat this until you get to 1 and build back up to 5)
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Tue
am. Tennis practice
pm. Weights: full body workout: DB bench, DB row, Bulgarian split squat, Straight leg DL, all for 3 sets of 10-20, just choose. Throw in some planks as well.
20 min.Recovery on bike or swimming
Stretching/ Foam roll 1 hour

Wed
am. Interval Run 400m x 8-10
Stretching/Foam Roll 30 min.
pm. Yoga 1 hour

Thr
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Work with tetra band on rotator cuff.
Light Bike ride 45 min.
Stretching 1 hour

Fri
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Full body training using bodyweight: chins, dips or pushups, walking lunges, planks and/or hanging leg raises. You could throw in some medicine ball throws in as well for your core work.
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Sat
am. Light Stretching 20 min.
pm. Yoga 30 min.

Sun
am. Tennis practice
pm. Swimming for 1 hour
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Make sure that you are properly warmed up for your training sessions and I would advise you to do Joe DeFranco’s Agile 8 which can be found on his website.

Hope this helped.

DuncW[/quote]

Looks good. I do tend to over complicated things little bit sometimes.

What reps and sets you would recomend on the bodyweight day?

What do you think about doing this kind of conditioning?

Istvan Javorek Athlete Exercise Demonstration

Thanks a lot.

[JuicyLucy]

[quote]BIGBOSSTRON wrote:
JuicyLucy wrote:
DuncW wrote:

I think you are making it a bit too complicated for yourself especially with all the different methods of weight training like the tabata method and complexes, why not just keep it simple and do 2, max 3 days of full body weight training. I also don’t like the split you made in your weight training, because that tends to make you pretty sore if you do it right and don’t half-ass it, so I prefer to just train the whole body all at once so you don’t use as much volume per body part. I also think that training arms directly is pretty shitty for a tennis player. For me this only lead to injuries, and you just don’t need it when you are already doing your chins, pull-ups, inverted rows, dips and push-ups. If you really want to use actual weights in your strength training then I would mostly stick with dumbells, focussing on exercises like DB bench, DB row, straight leg deadlift with DB, Bulgarian split squat with DBs and front squat with DBs. For your rotator cuff work i would use a tetra band, as this is just for pre/re-hab.

To make it a bit more clear I’ll use your original weekly plan and adjust the things that I would change.

Mon
am. Tennis practice
pm. 30 min. skipping rope (when you need to rest just rest and don’t do abs. Don’t forget to change things up here to work on coordination and keep it fun. What I means by change things up, is that you don’t do the same kind op skipping for the whole of the workout. For example, you can do 50 skips sprinting in place followed by 50-100 double-leg skips and repeat this five times. Then what you could do is single leg hops where you do 5 hops on the left foot, 5 hops on the right, 4 on left, 4 on right and repeat this until you get to 1 and build back up to 5)
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Tue
am. Tennis practice
pm. Weights: full body workout: DB bench, DB row, Bulgarian split squat, Straight leg DL, all for 3 sets of 10-20, just choose. Throw in some planks as well.
20 min.Recovery on bike or swimming
Stretching/ Foam roll 1 hour

Wed
am. Interval Run 400m x 8-10
Stretching/Foam Roll 30 min.
pm. Yoga 1 hour

Thr
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Work with tetra band on rotator cuff.
Light Bike ride 45 min.
Stretching 1 hour

Fri
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Full body training using bodyweight: chins, dips or pushups, walking lunges, planks and/or hanging leg raises. You could throw in some medicine ball throws in as well for your core work.
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Sat
am. Light Stretching 20 min.
pm. Yoga 30 min.

Sun
am. Tennis practice
pm. Swimming for 1 hour
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Make sure that you are properly warmed up for your training sessions and I would advise you to do Joe DeFranco’s Agile 8 which can be found on his website.

Hope this helped.

DuncW

Looks good. Sounds like a good advice. I do tend to make things a bit too complicated. What sets and reps would you recomend on the Full Body training using my bodyweight?

What about speed training and/or plyometrics do you do any and if yes where would it all fit?

thanks a lot

get a coach.

[/quote]

Thanks a lot for your input. I promiss that I’ll get a coach when I see one. So far they are all useless. I live in a village and the coaches in Barcelona, Spain are all crap. What they’re doing I can do better.

I am aware that having a good coach makes life soooo much easier.

[DuncW]

[quote]JuicyLucy wrote:
DuncW wrote:
JuicyLucy wrote:
Thanks a lot DuncW. YouÃ???Ã???Ã??Ã?´re right there isnÃ???Ã???Ã??Ã?´t much about conditioning for tennis on the net. At least I can not find anything useful. What I find are bits of information. I really miss a well put program. A weekly layout of volume so to speak. I do play professionally. IÃ???Ã???Ã??Ã?´m “hitting” balls on the court 4-5 days a week. My training sessions last between 5-7 hours (warm-up, working on my technik, drills, cool down etc.). I have little to no energy left to do anything afterwards on those days.

What weekly layout would you recomend?

I am doing something like this:

Mon
am. Tennis practice
pm. 30 min. skipping rope (60s followed by 30s rest or abs)
Stretching 1 hour

Tue
am. Tennis practice
pm. Weights: Chest/Back, Legs 12-15 reps x 2 sets
20 min.Recovery Jog
Stretching/ Foam roll 1 hour

Wed
am. Interval Run 400m x 8-10
Stretching/Foam Roll 30 min.
pm. Yoga 1 hour

Thr
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Weights: Shoulders(Rotater Cuff Ex.),Arms, Legs 12-15 reps x 3 sets
Light Bike ride 45 min.
Stretching 1 hour

Fri
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Tabata Protocol 20-30 mins.
Stretching 1 hour

Sat
am. Light Stretching 20 min.
pm. Yoga 30 min.

Sun
am. Tennis practice
pm. Circuit Training, Complexes for 30-45 min.
Stretching 1 hour

What do you think? I need to incorporate more rotater cuff exs.

What am I missing?

Thanks.

I think you are making it a bit too complicated for yourself especially with all the different methods of weight training like the tabata method and complexes, why not just keep it simple and do 2, max 3 days of full body weight training. I also don’t like the split you made in your weight training, because that tends to make you pretty sore if you do it right and don’t half-ass it, so I prefer to just train the whole body all at once so you don’t use as much volume per body part. I also think that training arms directly is pretty shitty for a tennis player. For me this only lead to injuries, and you just don’t need it when you are already doing your chins, pull-ups, inverted rows, dips and push-ups. If you really want to use actual weights in your strength training then I would mostly stick with dumbells, focussing on exercises like DB bench, DB row, straight leg deadlift with DB, Bulgarian split squat with DBs and front squat with DBs. For your rotator cuff work i would use a tetra band, as this is just for pre/re-hab.

To make it a bit more clear I’ll use your original weekly plan and adjust the things that I would change.

Mon
am. Tennis practice
pm. 30 min. skipping rope (when you need to rest just rest and don’t do abs. Don’t forget to change things up here to work on coordination and keep it fun. What I means by change things up, is that you don’t do the same kind op skipping for the whole of the workout. For example, you can do 50 skips sprinting in place followed by 50-100 double-leg skips and repeat this five times. Then what you could do is single leg hops where you do 5 hops on the left foot, 5 hops on the right, 4 on left, 4 on right and repeat this until you get to 1 and build back up to 5)
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Tue
am. Tennis practice
pm. Weights: full body workout: DB bench, DB row, Bulgarian split squat, Straight leg DL, all for 3 sets of 10-20, just choose. Throw in some planks as well.
20 min.Recovery on bike or swimming
Stretching/ Foam roll 1 hour

Wed
am. Interval Run 400m x 8-10
Stretching/Foam Roll 30 min.
pm. Yoga 1 hour

Thr
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Work with tetra band on rotator cuff.
Light Bike ride 45 min.
Stretching 1 hour

Fri
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Full body training using bodyweight: chins, dips or pushups, walking lunges, planks and/or hanging leg raises. You could throw in some medicine ball throws in as well for your core work.
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Sat
am. Light Stretching 20 min.
pm. Yoga 30 min.

Sun
am. Tennis practice
pm. Swimming for 1 hour
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Make sure that you are properly warmed up for your training sessions and I would advise you to do Joe DeFranco’s Agile 8 which can be found on his website.

Hope this helped.

DuncW

Looks good. I do tend to over complicated things little bit sometimes.

What reps and sets you would recomend on the bodyweight day?

What do you think about doing this kind of conditioning?

Istvan Javorek Athlete Exercise Demonstration

Thanks a lot.[/quote]

The reps and sets on the bodyweight exercises all depend on your relative strength and the level of conditioning you have. If you can do less than 6 reps, I would do 4 sets or more, if you can do more than that i would do 3 or 4 sets with the last set going to failure, and trying to improve every week.

You also asked about plyometrics, and to be honest I just use them before weight training to activate the CNS. You could use things like box jumps, plyo push-ups, short sprints, jump squats, explosive low rep chins or pull-ups and those knees to chest jumps. Remember that you shouldn’t get tired from doing them, they are not supposed to be conditioning exercises.

I have never tried those complexes which they showed in that video, but from the looks of it, I wouldn’t put this in my program. I just keep it simple.

You said in your last post that all the coaches in Barcelona are crap, but that is far from being true. I have trained at the Academia Sanchez-Casal in Barcelona and they have great coaches over there, it is true that the strength and conditioning training is way underdeveloped compared to their tennis training, but they have produced some amazing athletes over the years, so they must be doing something right. Of course they will probably have better athletes if they get more into the strength and conditioning part of training like they do in the U.S., but I hope that this is just a matter of time.

[JuicyLucy]

What players have they produced? Except for Kuznetzova, I don’t know anybody else. Murray only practiced there, his mother taught him to play tennis.

They get tons of players every year to choose from. So far zero. It’s more like a kindergarden IMO.

When were you playing there? Did you like it?

cheers.

[JuicyLucy]

Thank you, DuncW. I´ll give it a try and let you know.

Do you think that back/upper back and external rotator work is a must for striking athletes?

So adding in reverse flyes, facepulls, external rotations, etc for a few sets of 15-20 is good prehab for you and will also improve striking power?

Preparación física 2 (Rafa Nadal)

[DuncW]

[quote]JuicyLucy wrote:
What players have they produced? Except for Kuznetzova, I don’t know anybody else. Murray only practiced there, his mother taught him to play tennis.

They get tons of players every year to choose from. So far zero. It’s more like a kindergarden IMO.

When were you playing there? Did you like it?

cheers.[/quote]

I think all of the players they developed/produced learned to play tennis somewhere else, but their goal is also to develop young talented players, or if they are already professionals, to make them even better, and you can’t get that done when the coaches are crap. To name a few players that trained or train over there: Svetlana Kuznetsova, Juan Monaco, Andy Murray, Hicham Arazi, Magui Serna, Elena Bovina, Gilles Muller, Daniela Hantuchova, Martina Navrotilova and more, so I guess they went there for some reason.

I was there 1 year ago and 4 years ago, and I enjoyed it a lot. The first time I was there was a lot better though, because I was able to train with Stefan Ortega(former coach of Kuznetsova), Angel Gimenez(He was training Hantuchova and Bovina when I was there), and Daniel Sorribas(he trained Canas and Paola Suarez in the past), so that was a great experience.

[DuncW]

[quote]JuicyLucy wrote:
Thank you, DuncW. I�´ll give it a try and let you know.

Do you think that back/upper back and external rotator work is a must for striking athletes?

So adding in reverse flyes, facepulls, external rotations, etc for a few sets of 15-20 is good prehab for you and will also improve striking power?

Preparación física 2 (Rafa Nadal) - YouTube [/quote]

Back and and upper back work is a must for ALL athletes. I have no idea if the exercises you listed will improve striking power or not but especially the facepulls and external rotation exercises with bands are great for your shoulder health. For an increase in your striking power i would just try to get stronger overall, and work hard on your mobility and flexibility.

[BRUCELEEWANNABE]

I’m a tennis pro now for 11 yrs. I’ve worked with many top jrs. since day 1.
One is Chris Mignolet, now attending U. Cali. Another is Andrew Butz who is at U. Fl.

Long distance should be done every blue moon.
Intervals and sprints is the way to go. It’s a power game since the days of Lendl.
Any questions just ask.

[BRUCELEEWANNABE]

[quote]JuicyLucy wrote:
BIGBOSSTRON wrote:
JuicyLucy wrote:
DuncW wrote:

I think you are making it a bit too complicated for yourself especially with all the different methods of weight training like the tabata method and complexes, why not just keep it simple and do 2, max 3 days of full body weight training. I also don’t like the split you made in your weight training, because that tends to make you pretty sore if you do it right and don’t half-ass it, so I prefer to just train the whole body all at once so you don’t use as much volume per body part. I also think that training arms directly is pretty shitty for a tennis player. For me this only lead to injuries, and you just don’t need it when you are already doing your chins, pull-ups, inverted rows, dips and push-ups. If you really want to use actual weights in your strength training then I would mostly stick with dumbells, focussing on exercises like DB bench, DB row, straight leg deadlift with DB, Bulgarian split squat with DBs and front squat with DBs. For your rotator cuff work i would use a tetra band, as this is just for pre/re-hab.

To make it a bit more clear I’ll use your original weekly plan and adjust the things that I would change.

Mon
am. Tennis practice
pm. 30 min. skipping rope (when you need to rest just rest and don’t do abs. Don’t forget to change things up here to work on coordination and keep it fun. What I means by change things up, is that you don’t do the same kind op skipping for the whole of the workout. For example, you can do 50 skips sprinting in place followed by 50-100 double-leg skips and repeat this five times. Then what you could do is single leg hops where you do 5 hops on the left foot, 5 hops on the right, 4 on left, 4 on right and repeat this until you get to 1 and build back up to 5)
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Tue
am. Tennis practice
pm. Weights: full body workout: DB bench, DB row, Bulgarian split squat, Straight leg DL, all for 3 sets of 10-20, just choose. Throw in some planks as well.
20 min.Recovery on bike or swimming
Stretching/ Foam roll 1 hour

Wed
am. Interval Run 400m x 8-10
Stretching/Foam Roll 30 min.
pm. Yoga 1 hour

Thr
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Work with tetra band on rotator cuff.
Light Bike ride 45 min.
Stretching 1 hour

Fri
am. Tennis Practice
pm. Full body training using bodyweight: chins, dips or pushups, walking lunges, planks and/or hanging leg raises. You could throw in some medicine ball throws in as well for your core work.
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Sat
am. Light Stretching 20 min.
pm. Yoga 30 min.

Sun
am. Tennis practice
pm. Swimming for 1 hour
Stretching + foam roll 1 hour

Make sure that you are properly warmed up for your training sessions and I would advise you to do Joe DeFranco’s Agile 8 which can be found on his website.

Hope this helped.

DuncW

Looks good. Sounds like a good advice. I do tend to make things a bit too complicated. What sets and reps would you recomend on the Full Body training using my bodyweight?

What about speed training and/or plyometrics do you do any and if yes where would it all fit?

thanks a lot

get a coach.

Thanks a lot for your input. I promiss that I’ll get a coach when I see one. So far they are all useless. I live in a village and the coaches in Barcelona, Spain are all crap. What they’re doing I can do better.

I am aware that having a good coach makes life soooo much easier.[/quote]

Mrat Safin and Andy Murray trained in Spain, I believe it was Barcelona. Not sure wtf your looking?!

[JuicyLucy]

[quote]BRUCELEEWANNABE wrote:
I’m a tennis pro now for 11 yrs. I’ve worked with many top jrs. since day 1.
One is Chris Mignolet, now attending U. Cali. Another is Andrew Butz who is at U. Fl.

Long distance should be done every blue moon.
Intervals and sprints is the way to go. It’s a power game since the days of Lendl.
Any questions just ask.[/quote]

Thanks. I thought so.

What duration would you recomend? How long the sprints? How many times per week?