‍Congratulations! You are living your dream career. Lawn Tennis has always been love of your life, and luckily you spend most of the time with your favorite activity. Whether the Sports passion was ingrained by your father, coach, friend or by your own instinct, your hard work, athletic aptitude and ofcourse commitment has made you reach where are you today. You must agree that achieving a success is far easier than maintaining it. If you want to prove that Sports does not have shelf life and one can continue playing beyond the standardized norm of age, then it is important that you take care of fitness at most. Thanks to Sports Physiotherapy, that we have a lot of exercise options to keep us fit to play for long innings.

‍Broadly there are 3 exercises that one must follow to play lawn tennis for a longer period of time – Weight training, Power training, Balance & coordination.

Strength training: Strength training is a type of physical exercise that specializes to induce muscular contraction and further helps in building the strength, endurance and size of skeletal muscles.

‍Power training: Power training applies best to enhance overall fitness program and strengthen joint muscles to bring better flexibility and agility to the body.

‍Balance & coordination: Balance & coordination exercises help improve coordination and ability to react to sudden changes of direction.

‍Now, let’s move to the top 6 exercises that must be adopted by Lawn Tennis players:

1. Side planks: Side planks are the foremost choice for tennis players. During this exercise, you need to hold your body without letting your hips drop for the allotted time for every step. You can begin with any of the sides – left or right and then repeat for the other side of the body. Your forearm must be directly below the shoulder. Contract the core and raise your hips, until the body becomes straight from head to feet. This exercise brings greater stability to shoulders, followed by spine and hips.

2. Bench Press: It is the best exercise to increase upper body strength. The more weight you lift, the more muscles get utilized, thus increasing their size and strength. While playing lawn tennis, one needs to make a lot of use of their shoulders. Bench press exercises help strengthen shoulders, their flexibility and reduce chances of injury. Definitely, it’s a phenomenal way to strengthen muscles of shoulders.

3. Pogo Jumps: Pogo jumps are again a good option to strengthen ankle, feet and legs that have huge involvement while playing lawn tennis. Pogo jumps involve vertical jumping, springing up using just the ankles. While performing this exercise, one needs to keep the knees locked, maintaining straight posture and also have to avoid touch to the ground throughout the exercise.

4. Plyometric Lunges: These are another great exercise for strengthening legs. By jumping your legs into a split stance, you can keep your upper body upright and core engaged. You need to lower the back knee towards the floor, and then drive back up through your heels and switch your legs. One must repeat this exercise for 20 reps with 3 sets.

5. Seated dumbbell press: That’s another most fruitful exercise for building muscles and also strengthening the shoulders. It helps build the shoulder muscles. This exercise is particularly great for the front heads of the shoulder. Triceps too receive a great workout. To do this exercise, one needs to first sit on an upright bench holding a dumbbell in each hand at height with the palms facing away from you. Chest needs to be up; core straight and you need to look straight forward throughout the move. You have to press the weights directly upwards until arms don’t get straight and weights touch above your head.

6. Single leg squat: Again the awesome exercise for tennis players, that not only help strengthen the legs, but also bring stability in the balance and stability. You may perform two types of leg squats.

Assisted single leg squat shifts weight to one leg, while keeping the other on rest on the ground for assisting balance and stability.

Whereas, Crank Single Squat holds onto CrankIt straps, lean back slightly, leverage the weight on the straps, lower yourself down into squat with one leg, and then you are ready to go.

So, basically key is to practice more of the upper body exercises because while playing lawn tennis, majorly shoulders, elbows and arms have a lot of involvement. And then the use of calves, ankles and feet come into play. Roger Federer; the Swiss professional tennis player aged 38 who has been ranked as No. 3 in men’s Singles tennis by the Association of Tennis Professionals is doing so well in his career, thanks to its strict fitness regime. Just like him, you can also steal the show on field. Pull up the socks, push your horizon and make a fitness prone lifestyle. Everyday is a chance to get stronger & be the best version of you.

Special thanks to Mr. Deepak Narayan, BCCI employed Sports Physiotherapist representing Arunachal Cricket

Association Team for sharing his inputs, knowledge and experience regarding fitness training for Lawn Tennis players.
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‍Pic Courtesy: Google

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