Tennis is a great way to add some fitness into your life. If you are serious about tennis and want to play at an advanced level in Dubai & Abu Dhabi increasing your overall strength can do wonders for your game play.

We asked a professional tennis trainer from Abu Dhabi for some advice and tips on increasing strength.

Strength exercises to improve your tennis

Question: We know that tennis is a technical sport which requires time and patience to get to a good level. Improving physical fitness does of course help and well as strength training. As a profession tennis trainer in Abu Dhabi what strength training exercises do you do to improve your game?

One of my favourite exercise routine to improve the game is:

Back Squat

Walking Lunges

Pull-ups

Dips

Lateral Side Lunges

Cable Woodchop

Question: How does strength training for tennis help improve a player?

A long-designed tennis strength training program can work wonders for your game. Long gone are the days when coaches believed all forms of strength training were detrimental to sports.

The following are some benefits of strength training in Tennis:

Increased power in serves, forehands, backhands, volleys… in fact every type of shot.

Greater speed and acceleration around the court allowing you to get into position for more shots.

Improved muscular endurance helping you to maintain a high level of performance during tough rallies… even those at the end of the match.

Reduced occurrence of injuries from over-use and muscular imbalances in the body.

Improving muscle strength for playing tennis

Question: When playing tennis what are the major muscle groups used and how can strength training help to improve these muscle groups?

The importance of strength training for tennis cannot be emphasized enough.

Obviously, a strong player is also one who is able to hit the ball harder. Aside from power, ball control can also be improved.

This is because proper stroke mechanics can be more easily learned if the muscles and joints are well-conditioned.

Another crucial reason why strength training for tennis is now mandatory for competitive players is that it helps protect against injuries.

Tennis is a sport that places a lot of repetitive stress on certain joints like the shoulders, elbows and wrists. The trunk and back are strenuously worked out with all the twisting and coiling involved in hitting serves and ground strokes.

Additionally, as the game has become more dominated by long baseline rallies involving a lot of corner to corner movement, the hips and legs have also become subject to more and more stress.

Stronger muscles around the joints ensure greater stability and resilience against the high impact that is involved with hitting the ball as well as the constant start and stop motions on the court.

Nutrition for tennis players and strength

Question: Strength training often includes bulking up the muscles. As a tennis trainer would you say there are any good foods that provide the energy needed for the game at the same time as increasing muscle?

Getting your diet right as a tennis player can be a tricky balancing act. Not only do you have to fuel yourself for a match that could last for an hour to three (or more!), you also have to be prepared for play at different intensities – at some points matches can be slow and at others involve hard fought energy sapping rallies.

Between training sessions or tournaments:

Maintain a balanced diet with regular meals to provide all the main nutrients your body needs to stay healthy and illness free.

Make sure you do not take in more food than you need or you could put on weight.

Before a match or tournament:

You should always start any match with maximum glycogen stores and high levels of hydration.

Breakfast will be your most important meal to set you up for the day so ensure you have plenty of complex carbs, like cereal or porridge.

Whatever time your match is, make sure you eat a meal with carbs and protein at least three to four hours before. This will give your body time to digest and absorb the food preventing sickness and stomach upsets.

Eat foods that you like and have had before training sessions and stay away from fatty and rich foods.

If you have to wait a long time to play, have a small carbohydrate snack such as a cereal bar, banana or sports drink about an hour before to give you an energy boost without filling you up.

Question: Tennis is great for general fitness, cardiovascular health and more but how often should someone who wants to improve their game work on the strength training part?

For any kind of training routine to be effective, it should be done between 2/3 times a week.