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More Quickness and Agility Drills
Tennis matches are made up of a long series of short energy bursts, up to 500 in a single match. An
average point lasts 5 to 10 seconds, with up to 5 sudden changes in direction.
Because matches elevate your heart rate for an extended period, tennis is an aerobic sport. But the
explosive nature of the points themselves are anaerobic, and this requires an entirely different energy system in the
body.
A key aspect of periodization training then, is doing anaerobic exercises – drills that mimic the
patterns of movement in matches, training your anaerobic system so you can burst to the ball, execute a high level
stroke, change directions, and then burst again.
In the last article we outlined 4 anerobic on court movement exercises. This article adds 4 more, part of
our complete periodization training program for tennis.
These drills will improve your quickness, your agility, your ability to get to difficult balls, and your
balance. They will also allow you to sustain a high quality of stroke production over the course of a long match.
Generally, they should be done at the end of a practice session.
The next three articles…