Tennis Drills

Tennis Drills

As tennis is anything but a contact sport, there isn't much need for bulking up on muscle to improve one's tennis game (although a strong arm helps). Tennis drills instead focus on conditioning a player's endurance, agility, and footwork. Endurance is key for being able to maintain long rallies, where the contest can sometimes be who can keep running back and forth the longest. Agility plays into this as well, as it is very important for tennis players to be ready to turn on a dime in order to catch up with a ball on the other end of the court. Alongside this, footwork is very important in order to execute the ideal stances to prepare a stroke.

Besides conditioning, tennis drills also focus on developing skill with hitting the ball and getting the hang of balancing power and control. The nature of such drills can vary widely based on what areas of play one wishes to work on, and on the skill level of the players involved.

Tennis Conditioning Drills

Tennis drills can be one-person endeavors or involve groups of people. On one's own, automated machines that shoot tennis balls can be used as a virtual opponent of sorts. Drills with multiple people often involve repetitions of specific situations in a game of tennis, from serving to lobbing to rallying. If there are enough people, more complex games can be used to try to break the monotony of the average repetitive drill.

Drill Tennis Youth

One example of such a game is one that is known as "bobsled," which has been used as a practice game in high school tennis programs. In "bobsled," the group of players involved is organized into two opposing teams. The teams each line up in single file at the service line, and the gameplay begins with a rally between the two people who are first in either line. After a player has hit the ball, he runs to the back of the single file line to await his or her turn again. When one loses a point, he or she must go have a seat on the floor of the court along the center line that is perpendicular to the net. People who have to sit can be targets for whoever's turn it is to hit the ball in the rally, and a team loses if one of its sitting teammates gets hit. The game earns the name "bobsled" because when enough people are lined up seated on the center court line, their formation resembles that of a bobsled team.