While watching tennis, hockey or soccer you must be wondering what it takes to get to the top position of the game? Today we are going to discuss about some training techniques which can be added to your training session if you aspire to be a sportsperson or are passionate about sports such as Tennis.
There is always a kick in watching athletes performing at their peak that inspires to improve our performance in our own athletic ability. The below mentioned training techniques will help you rev up your sports performance for sports such as tennis. For sports like tennis, you should train your upper body, lower body, abs, core, speed, agility, endurance & strength. So training for tennis, soccer or hockey essentially means everything. Adding these training techniques & following the same consistently is going to help build all aspects of fitness required for sports.
- Agility training: Agility is the ability to move quickly & easily. It is one of the key components of playing tennis, soccer or hockey. Ball hit through a tennis racket/hockey stick(tennis/hockey) or ball kicked soccer) & you have to make it to the ball in time & hit it back in time so that it stays within the area of the opponent/other part of the ground. There is huge pressure on you. We have many ways to improve our agility- ladder drills, spider drills, low hurdles & tire drills (to name a few). Lateral running side to side drill is practiced by those involved in tennis as it helps in improving ankle & knee stability. An exciting way of doing agility training is T-training. This training involves placing cones or any objects you have at home or fitness centre in the shape of T. Once they are in T-shape, you should
- Follow T & sprint towards centre
- Shuffle to one side & then to another.
- Shuffle back to centre of T
- Sprint backwards & repeat
This form of training improves your coordination & dexterity.
- Reaction Time Training: This form of training is used by professional tennis players & tennis aspirants & involves a tennis ball. This involves a training buddy. You stand in front of a wall. Your workout/training buddy stands behind you & throws a tennis ball at the wall. It can be odd or even sided, so predicting where it bounces is all the more difficult & you try to grab the ball after it bounces back to you. You catch it & throw it behind you to your training buddy. You do this for 10 to 15 minutes. This helps you train your muscles & brain to react to new unpredictable stimuli which keeps you physically and mentally sharp for anything that comes to you. This is an excellent piece of training for tennis as well as action sports such as boxing.
- Speed training: In case of almost every sport, the faster you are, better your performance. Speed training involves practicing moving & accelerating faster which assists in strengthening your neuromuscular system which in turn augments firing patterns of fast twitch muscle fibres. Speed training includes workout such as jump squats, weighted squats, parachute running & plyometric running. All these help in improving your speed. If you are already doing weight training, you can add up deadlifts, one leg romanian deadlift & split squats. A great speed endurance training is called suicides. Suicides are high intensity sprinting drills consisting of running to multiple progressive distant lines as fast as you can. So you would
- Sprint forward to 3 metre ,touch the ground & then sprint back to start.
- Then sprint forward to 6 metres, touch the ground & then sprint back to start
- Then sprint forward to 9 metres, touch the ground & then sprint back to start.
Athletes use cones to mark these metered points ahead. You can use anything that helps you mark where you sprint back. Do this 5 times with a break between the sets.
- Cable Resistance Training: We have discussed in detail about resistance training through our workout videos as well as various workout blogs. Briefly, resistance training causes muscle to contract against an external resistance with the expectation of increase in strength, tone, mass &/or endurance. We also call it weight or strength training. This includes a host of exercises both in push & pull types. For tennis, hockey & football players, besides movement & agility, it is important to build strength to improve power of your shots given that the kinetic chain involved in proper shot production starts from ground up. Resistance training helps build extra muscles required when running without a restraint & can strengthen your stance.
- Spinning:Spinning is a common form of workout technique & can be considered as anaerobic exercise. It essentially means it pulls energy from reserves & helps in building muscular endurance over extended time frames. However it also offers aerobic benefits. Spinning training includes both cardiovascular & endurance training. Although a sports person involved in sports such as tennis, soccer & hockey, requires great upper body strength (arms, chest, core), the whole game rests on legs. Having strong legs that can carry from point to point is beneficial to the quality of game & endurance is very important to wear your opponent team down.
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