How much is too much?

A question often asked by developing players is how much tennis should I be playing, and what should I be doing with my time on court? Is a one-hour-a-week group session enough, do I need individual coaching, should I be cramming my schedule full of matches? All perfectly valid questions so let me spend some time breaking things down for you.

The first thing that you as a player need to determine is what do you want to gain from your tennis, this will then tell you what product will suit your needs. Is your goal to get out and socialize? In which case your two-hour Tuesday session (6.30pm if anyone is interested 😉) is the perfect amount for you, and you can add in casual matches around this. Is your goal to get fit on the court? In which case your cardio tennis session, combined with your weekly fitness schedule, is probably a great balance. Or are you looking for continued sustained improvement week-after-week or looking to be an avid student of the game? If this is the case, then maybe a well-balanced coaching and match schedule suits you best. So realistically, this is completely subjective but quite often players fall into this final category of looking for continued tennis development and struggle to work out what type and amount of tennis is necessary. Here are ways to ensure your tennis meets your needs and manage your tennis time.

Variation is key

I like to run… well I force myself to run and tell myself I enjoy it at the time when dying of a heart attack and then enjoy the sense of work and achievement afterwards. With my running I read Runner’s World magazine and if there is anything to take away from that, it is that varying your activity is key. The key to prolonged running enjoyment, improvement, and injury prevention is to vary your workload. To have tough pacey runs one day, have sprint hill runs another day and ensure all these are interspersed with recovery runs. The fact that I always remember, is that Eliud Kipchoge (world record marathon holder) does his recovery runs at a pace of 10 minutes per mile or less. That’s the same as Rafael Nadal having a day serving at half speed and rallying with his chopper grip slicing and dicing until his heart is content. So, we should do the same with our tennis. Have days where we go big and compete until we have no more to give, have days where we play fun games and mess around at half pace… and most importantly have days off, which brings me nicely to my next point.

Listen to your body

‘Ah I have a little twinge in my calf’. ‘Ooo my wrist is a bit achy today’. ‘Hmm my shoulder feels strangely stiff’. All statements that I have heard from players as they chase down a dropshot or cannon down a serve. If the body hurts too much, stop. To continue is potentially heroic in the short term, especially if you grind out a legendary win, but in the long term it’s damaging and tennis ruining. Small niggles that you notice when fully warm will only get worse when you cool down. The next couple of days things get better and then you step back on the court too soon and it is back to square one… worse a trip to the physio. Tennis is a more versatile sport than most, using a varied array of muscles and multi-directional movement. Add in to that the stop-and-start nature of a tennis player during a point means the chance of injury is that much higher so look after your body, and spend more time prioritizing that warm up.

What to do with my precious time?

We all live busy lives these days with studies telling us that we work more and more and relax less and less especially in this post-covid world when spending an extra half hour here and extra half hour there in front of the computer screen working. So, when tennis time comes about, what should you do with it and what should you prioritise? For those of us who are very time limited, just getting on court and playing matches is your best bet, there is a lot to be gained and self-taught from just getting on court and exploring. If you want to go down the coaching route it is important that you factor in time to practice and hone down those skills you get taught in a group session. A one-off group session needs another hour of consolidation on top.

Now at what point should you consider individual lessons? For me an individual lesson allows you to delve further in depth to technique and tactical play, not to necessarily hit more balls… but certainly to hit the balls with a more specific purpose tailored to enhancements in your game. If you think about it in simplistic terms, a group session allows you to develop through quantity, the chance to hit lots of balls with lots of people working on a certain skill. An individual lesson allows you to develop through quality, hitting balls with specific purpose to push development of those skills. Both together will hopefully push that development… but don’t forget, the more coaching you get, the more hours of consolidation are needed.