How to train for tennis — and recover

This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to tennis

Tennis elbow wasn’t the first injury of my middle-aged tennis career. I’d also been briefly felled by a mysterious leg pain, and I injured my other arm when I was running backwards from the net and tried to break a fall with my hand. (“Always fall on your butt,” a Californian told me later, as if this was a Buddhist koan.)

However, tennis elbow — technically epicondylitis — kept me away from tennis for months and was a psychological turning point. I realised that I could no longer prance on to the court, do a few perfunctory stretches and then play merrily for hours. I needed to get serious about preparing my body for tennis and recovering afterwards.   

Some professionals now famously stay on tour into their late thirties and early forties. But as an amateur with a day job, I lack the time, resources and muscle mass to follow a pro-level fitness regime. How can ordinary club players stay in the game longer and avoid getting injured? Here’s the advice I received from experts.

On non-tennis days

Tennis alone won’t suffice. Club players who want to sustain intensity through long matches should do two 45-minute cardiovascular workouts per week, says Anna Tatishvili, a former women’s No 50 worldwide, and now director of tennis at The River Club in New York. This can include swimming, biking, boxing, jogging on soft surfaces or using an elliptical. Pilates helps protect the back, she adds. Older women who are losing muscle mass should train with light weights or elastic bands.

Do tennis-specific training. A general fitness routine alone doesn’t prevent the repetitive injuries that come from playing tennis, says Domingo Roselló, head of fitness at the Rafa Nadal Academy in Mallorca, Spain. Concentrate on the muscles around the shoulders, hips, knees and ankles. When you’re playing, these come under the most pressure.

Don’t forget your butt. “The gluteal muscles are the most important in your body, to give you stability in your swing,” says Roselló. Do squats and split squats, plus forward, backward and lateral lunges. Or stand with an elastic band around your legs, then take turns lifting each leg sideways.

Twice a week, do a full rotation of exercises. Roselló suggests cycling through three to four repetitions of movements for legs, then doing the same for arms, abdominals (such as plank and side plank) and glutes. Go through this four-body-part sequence two or three times, giving each muscle group a chance to rest in between. And try to vary the exercises you do for each body part.

Seek the opposite of tennis, too. Tennis requires pressing forward and downward a lot and repeatedly serving with the same arm, says Roselló. So in fitness training, use resistance bands to do upward and backward pulling motions, and focus on your non-dominant side. Similarly, since tennis relies heavily on chest muscles, work out your back muscles during training. This “compensatory” exercise prevents injuries by making the body more symmetrical, he says.  

Know thyself. Juniors entering the Nadal Academy are given a “functional mobility test” to map how far they can move each joint and limb. Trainers then compare this with the range of movements required for tennis to create a targeted fitness plan. “Avoiding injuries is looking at where the body can fail, knowing the limitations of each person,” Roselló explains.

We plebs don’t have our elbow movements tracked by specialists. But we can pay close attention to any aches and weaknesses, and do strengthening exercises for them. Roselló recommends seeing a physical therapist once or twice a month.

Before playing

The pre-tennis warm-up isn’t about stretching. “It’s to wake up the muscles, wake up the body,” says Paul Vinel, a fitness trainer at one of France’s top tennis academies.

He suggests a 10-to-15-minute rotation of exercises involving the neck, shoulders, wrists, ankles, abdominals, knees and glutes. These can include neck rolls; making small circles with straight arms; pulling each knee up to the chest while standing; bringing your feet up to your glutes; walking on the balls of your feet to warm the ankles; and doing lunges while walking. Don’t spend more than five or six seconds in any one position.

Roselló recommends that, like on non-tennis days, you use elastic bands to warm up the “external rotator” on your dominant shoulder. Use upward, backward motions that are the opposite of serving and hitting groundstrokes.

Remember that tennis is intermittent and explosive. A typical point lasts between 20 and 60 seconds, followed by a brief rest. So in part two of your pre-tennis warm-up, simulate this by doing bursts of cardio, such as running sprints or jumping rope (unless you have ankle or foot issues). “Any tennis player worth their salt has grown up doing jump rope,” says Delio Pacifici, a coach at Flamingo Park Tennis Center in Miami Beach.

You’re also warming up your brain. Pre-match exercises stimulate connections between your mind and muscles, so that you’ll better know what your body is doing on the court. “People who don’t feel this, they’re a bit lost when you give them advice, because they can’t reproduce what the coach is doing. They’re missing feedback from the body,” says Vinel. Stimulating the mind-muscle link also prevents injuries, because it helps you respond more quickly to twists and falls.

Do your warm-up on the court, if possible. This helps push aside off-court worries and “brings you, mentally, into the session”, Vinel says.

While playing

Technique matters. Injuries can come from swinging the racket incorrectly or serving with the wrong grip, so “I try to clean up technique as much as possible”, says The River Club’s Tatishvili. If you’re returning to tennis following an injury, have a coach analyse your strokes.

Pay attention to pain. If you feel a sudden sharp pain while playing — especially in the shoulder, back or wrist — stop and see a doctor, says Tatishvili. If it’s a dull pain from a tight muscle, stop and try to relieve it using stretching, a foam roller and a massage from a physical therapist. If those and rest don’t fix it, see a doctor.

It’s the sneakers, stupid. Wear tennis shoes that are specially made for the surface you’re playing on, such as hard courts or clay. “At the beginner level, I see people on the court with running shoes, risking injury,” Tatishvili says.

After the match

Stretch! Après-match is the moment for long, languorous stretches. Spend 10 to 15 minutes releasing all your key muscles.  

Give yourself a budget massage. The pros get post-match rubdowns. The rest of us can get a deep massage by gliding on a foam roller. “It’s pretty painful — we’re not talking about a feel-good massage at a spa,” Vinel says. (If you don’t like self-soothing in public, it’s OK to wait and do your rolling at home.)

Forgive yourself. Even the experts get lazy sometimes. But your muscles need tending, so slacking off too much catches up with you. “It’s like everything: you can’t just keep pulling the cord,” says Roselló. “You can keep playing tennis, as long as you take care of your body too.”

Do you have any tennis training or recovery tips? Share them in the comments

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