Running Skillsand Your Game

As a competitive tournament player, improving my running skills has been the source of the greatest
improvement in my tennis over the last 5 years. Although there are obviously many areas of the game in which I feel players
can improve (see Private Lessons with Kerry Mitchell), the changes I made in my running skills have done the most to help me
achieve my own tennis goals.

Although there are many great articles about tennis conditioning, this is the first article I have seen in
which the focus is actual running technique. The changes I made in my technical running led directly to improvement in my
competitive results. My hope is that telling my story and passing along some of the information that I received in the
process will also help others achieve their tennis goals.

When I started playing tennis as a teenager the idea of improved physical fitness to accentuate tennis performance was just evolving at the professional level. I made attempts to improve my fitness in college and again latter in life, but was frustrated with my lack of knowledge and motivation. I did a lot of running, focusing on stamina, which seemed to do very little…