Becoming the best tennis player "you" can be (Part 1) by: Nick
Hello Mohd,
To become a professional in any sport one needs an enormous amount of training/matches, lots of natural talent and, perhaps most importantly, extremely high motivation.
Training needs to be in the four disciplines of the tennis game: Technical, Mental, Physical, Tactical.
I. Technical: You need the most efficient strokes that deliver the most power with the least amount of effort. You can learn these from watching videos of professional tennis players.
Here is a link to a helpful site with these ===> http://www.playerdevelopment.usta.com/pdmediabooks/players.asp
After seeing what the strokes look like attempt to copy them and after an enormous amount of repetition your body will refine the feel for the stroke.
While copying you have to be VERY careful as to not ingrain any bad habits to your muscle memory. They are a nightmare to fix. If you can videotape yourself playing or have someone watch you play and give you feedback you can help prevent this.
Better yet, hire a tennis instructor with significant knowledge of how to play the game. As a check they should be able to play at a high level and be able to do everything they teach. Watch them play a match to make sure. They will be able to give you feedback on every part of the game because of their experience.
II. Mental: Being able to cope with pressure situations and keep your focus during matches.
Everything at this site is very useful for the mental side of the game (it is called Tennis"Mind"Game after all).
After watching and learning the information from this site, APPLY IT! Focus on one area at a time and constantly look to improve upon different ones.
The most important part of the mental game is to have experience in many match situations. Learn how to get yourself motivated to stay in the game when your down, or how to cope with serving break point down etc.
III. Physical: Tennis is a very physical sport, strength training and conditioning is required to play at a high level. The higher the level the more demanding the training.
When starting to lift weights the most important part is to start slow. Dumbbells are a good way to start because a used set can be bought for very little. Keep the weights low and focus on form. Doing an exercise on low weights with perfect form yields much better results then high weights with shaky form.
Weight lifting for tennis players is focused more on high reps with lower weights.
Focus on agility training with very quick changes in direction. Side shuffling, sprinting towards the net, side stepping back towards the baseline etc. Try to go these as fast as you can (safety is first though, so be careful).
Using a jump rope is also a very good way to stay/get in shape. Focus on very fast jumps for a short amount of time with a short recovery.
Medicine balls are a great method for doing core training. They are invaluable for developing power.
Oct 15, 2009 Rating
Becoming the best tennis player "you" can be (Part 2) by: Nick
IV. Tactical: Knowing what strategies to do on court based on conditions, yourself, your opponent. Also what decisions to make based on the geometry of the court.
Tomaz's Strategy Encyclopedia is an excellent guide for this, I recommend buying it if you can.
Learn your strengths, what game style your best at and many strokes to give you options to play different tactics.
An experienced tennis instructor would be very helpful for this part as well.
Get used to applying different strategies/tactics by playing many matches against a variety of opponents.
--Natural Talent--
This section is going to be a bit of a bummer. Reality is that, although one can train a lot and very hard, there still are natural abilities that people are just born with.
Such as size, reflexes, hand eye coordination, muscle twitch (for speed), and shoulder flexibility (serve), just to name a few.
As players we can compensate for gaps in certain areas. For example Justine Henin is considered small for the women's tour, but she makes up for it with phenomenal timing and speed.
These natural abilities are what makes up a world class tennis player. There are players that dedicate their whole life to tennis, yet never make it to the professional circuit.
--Motivation--
Besides natural ability what I personally think distinguishes professional tennis players most of all is their motivation.
In an interview with Novak Djokovich he stated that he wanted to be a professional tennis player after watching Pete Sampras when he was 6 [!].
He tried to play against anyone that played at the courts and he did this for many many hours.
At the age of 6 "HE" was determined to train and do what it took to become a world class player.
Knowing what motivates you and how motivated you are is vital to being the tennis player you want to be.
Honestly assess what you want from the game, make a list of short term and longterm goals.
Make a list of what it will take to achieve these goals and do it! Keep constant checks about what works and what does not.
Keep a notebook and write down whatever your coach says (if you have one), and/or use it to keep notes about what you want to learn or improve on during practice.
