Category: Playing

Tennis is a game that takes years of dedicated practice and study for before you can reach mastery. But the good news is that there are some shortcuts that you can take that will cut your learning curve in half.

Although these tips are not guaranteed to work for everyone no matter what, you’ll still be able to get a handle on your tennis game quicker than ever before – but only if you put these ideas into practice.

Top Ten Tweaks To Sharpen Your Tennis Game

Start With Your Goals

Like anything, if you don’t have a clearly defined goal with your tennis game, then it will be very hard to produce the changes that you’d like to see in terms of results.

A good start to getting better at tennis is to write down three big goals you’d like to achieve. Post your goals on your bathroom mirror, or somewhere else you’ll see every day.

Watch Instructional Videos and Tutorials on YouTube

Watching videos on YouTube can be a great way to sharpen your tennis game, especially if you are a visual learner. Watching someone hit a tennis ball with the correct form can go a long way to help you understand how to play better tennis.

There is no shortage of content that can be watched for free on the YouTube platform, so we’re sure you’ll find at least one channel that you like and can relate to.

Get Fit, and Focus on Your Cardio

Any amount of extra fitness activity will make your tennis game better. The sad truth is that tennis by itself is unlikely to get you into incredible physical shape, as it usually burns only a handful of calories compared to more intensive sports and workouts.

The other reason why you should focus on getting into shape is that you can acclimatize your body to working out in the great outdoors. The last thing you want is to be exhausted and too fatigued to continue playing, which is why your physical condition is so important when playing tennis.

Defeat Tennis Elbow with Stretches

Tennis elbow is a nasty condition, and can put a speed bump in the way of your progress. Fortunately, tennis elbow is easy to avoid by doing some simple forearm stretches. You can find a bunch of ideas on how to stretch properly on YouTube.

Draft a Simple Mantra or Saying For Calm and Focus on the Court

Having a mantra is an easy way for you to put your focus in the game. You could say to yourself, “I’ve got this,” “Calm and clear,” and “Just like practice.”

Master the Art of Split-Stepping

Just like the serve, the split-step is a vital part of your game that you should be constantly working on. You can do this in the comfort of your own home, preferably with your racquet for the added immersion and realism.

Eat Fresh Fruit and Vegetables for Nutritious Snacks

Like exercise, what you put into your body in the form of snacks and food will also determine the quality of your tennis game. Eating better will also benefit your health in other ways, helping you keep focused and healthy inside and outside of the court.

Start Squatting

You should be eating healthy and exercising, even if you’re not a tennis player. But if optimal performance is your goal, then squats are by the far the best body weight exercise to strengthen your legs and core muscles.

A great thing about squats is that they can be performed in the privacy of your own home, and without the need to use extra equipment. Try googling some variations of the classic squat, such as sitting against a wall with your back straight, as well as narrow and wide squats.

Reduce Foot and Heel Tightness by Rolling your Foot Over a Tennis Ball While Standing

This may come as surprising news, but using a tennis ball for a foot massage feels fantastic and is easy to use. You should start with one foot at a time, ensuring that you are rolling the ball all around the foot where you experience stiffness and pain.

If tennis balls aren’t your thing, then a foam roller works equally as well for the hard to reach places of your feet.

Buy or Rent a Tennis Ball Machine

In tennis, repetition is the key to mastery, and nothing will make you quicker on your feet than buying a tennis ball machine. These machines are now quite affordable, and you will be able to train yourself to respond to the game in real time.

But if you’re a casual player that doesn’t have room for a tennis ball machine, then visting your nearest tennis court to practice with one is the next best thing.

Conclusion

Tennis is a sport that very few people can say that they have mastered. Even professional players require years of disciplined practice before they can enter the most competitive of tournaments, so don’t feel too bad that you maybe aren’t progressing as quickly as others.

The above tips were chosen as some of the easiest shortcuts for you to take to improve your tennis game in leaps and bounds. However, you’ll still be required to put the hard work in, as well as sacrifice a lot of your time and energy to be a truly competent tennis player.

If you are still struggling to reach the level finness that you deserve, then you try paying for some lessons from a professional tennis tutor. Tutors can give you real-time feedback on how you can improve your tennis game, and they are now an affordable option.

The lob in tennis is one of the hardest shots to master and is usually one that only the more experienced tennis players will achieve when playing someone of good tennis ability. There are two types of lobs – an offensive lob and a defensive lob. The offensive lob is where you are trying to outwit your opponent and score the point, whereas the defensive lob is more about pushing your opponent further back on the court.

Offensive Lob

To give an overview of what is involved in delivering an offensive lob – it is where the opponent is at the front of the court and you hit the ball over them so they cannot reach the ball. It is extremely difficult for a player to return a lob because they will have to cover a lot of ground to get to the ball and running backwards is much harder than going forwards to return a ball.

The offensive lob is best executed when you have enticed your opponent to the front of the court with a dropshot, making it harder for them to get to your ball placed deep in the back of the court. The change of direction slows them down and it is very hard to return the ball if you are facing the other way (towards the back of their own side of the court).

To be able to hit the ball upwards and to the back of the court against a good opponent, you need to get a descent amount of topspin on the ball. This ensures that it bounces quickly out of the court rather than just hitting the ball so it bounces high in the air and then it giving the opponent lots of time to react to the shot and then send it back.

You need to assess the right time to play an offensive lob, to make sure that the opponent is not able to simply smash the ball if you get it wrong. The best time to execute it is when they have just struggled to get to the net and will not have much time to readjust their feet to get to the back of the court.

When you are playing an offensive lob, your arm will be bent and the angle of the racquet should be steep and you play it like a forehand but drive up the back of the ball to get the topspin onto the ball.

The offensive lob is well used in doubles matches, as it is more difficult to find an area of the court that the two players will not be easily covering.

Defensive Lob

This type of shot is used when you are in a bit of trouble and you are short on options, so you lob the ball high and long in order to push your opponent back and to buy a bit more time. This type of shot is more likely to be made whilst you are stretching to reach the ball so your arm will be straight and you will probably not be able to get much power into the shot given your limited time. So you are simply hitting the ball towards the back of the court to make the opponent move backwards for the ball.

Once mastered, the lob is a very important tennis shot that can earn you a great deal of points. The better you get at putting a topspin (or even backspin on the ball when appropriate), the greater the chance of your lobs not getting returned by your opponent. So spend a lot of time in practice trying to improve this shot. To practice, ask a training partner to stand at the net with their racquet stretched above their head. Try and hit the ball so it is going over their racquet, using topspin so that it comes down in time to be in.

One of the reasons that the lob is such a good shot to play is that it is quite easy to disguise that you are playing that shot as your opponent will not realise until late on that you have applied topspin on the ball and will therefore be expecting it to land in a different place.

 

If you’re trying to decide whether or not to take up tennis, the most important question should always be whether or not you enjoy the game. Tennis is fast-paced, exciting and surprisingly cerebral; it’s almost as much about understanding your opponent and staying mentally strong as it about physical skill. If dashing about the tennis court with a racket in your hand, whilst squaring off one-on-one against another player, sounds like a great way to pass the time, then tennis might well be the sport for you.

That being said, here are some other factors to consider:

Pro: Exercise

First off, tennis is just great exercise. As well as practising your hand-eye coordination, and giving yourself a good muscular workout with all those heavy swings, tennis is characterised by short periods of waiting followed by intense bursts of vigorous exercise as you sprint across the court. That’s going to keep you fit and burn a lot of calories at the same time; think of it as gamified interval training.

https://www.shape.com/fitness/workouts/interval-training-short-workouts-really-pay

Most studies now agree that everyone ought to be doing some sort of exercise to raise their heart rates at least once a week, and scientists at Harvard established that just a few hours of tennis can increase your life-span. If you’re not currently involved in any sport at all, tennis is a great choice.

Con: Health Risks

Of course, any exercise comes with health risks and tennis is no different. There are obvious risk factors to take into account when performing any activity that requires you to dash about on a hard surface: you could sprain your ankle or fall and cut yourself, just as with any number of activities such as jogging or football.

There are a few specific risks associated with tennis, too. More than a lot of other sports, Tennis is extremely repetitive alongside being physically demanding. You will be repeating motions like serving or your forehand swing dozens, potentially hundreds, of times every match, with the aim to be as consistent and perfect as possible. Tennis players are therefore prone to a number of respective strain injuries, such as tennis elbow or plantar fasciitis.

If you have any chronic issues with physical activity or joint pain, it would be wise to consult your doctor to make sure that tennis is the best sport for you.

Buying the right tennis racket can really help with these potential problems, but that leads us to…

Pro: Mental Benefits

The health benefits of tennis aren’t limited to just the physical. Dr John Murray, a sports psychologist, has identified a whole raft of mental benefits that are associated with playing tennis. There are a variety of possible reasons for this: sport, in general, is known to release endorphins, which can help elevate your mood, whilst the exercise improves an individual’s body image and increases various positive associations. Tennis, in particular, is a very psychological game, and squaring off regularly and assertively against an opponent may well lead to improved feelings of autonomy, confidence and self-esteem.

http://www.tennisserver.com/mental-equipment/me_00_03.html

Con: Costs

Unlike five a side football or a pickup basketball game, tennis has quite a few associated costs. An amateur player doesn’t need professional gear, but a cheap racket will definitely hold back your performance. If you’re particularly concerned about mitigating the risk of injury and are looking for a good pair of tennis shoes and a racket with a high-quality shock-absorbing handle, it’s very easy to find that you’ve sunk hundreds of pounds into equipment and clothes before you even step foot on the court.

You also need to think about where you’re going to play because you can’t organise a quick tennis match on a field in the same way that you might set up a knock-about game of football. A lot of parks or community sports centres will have tennis courts, and not all of them require you to pay, but free courts can sometimes be poorly maintained. A real tennis enthusiast may want to join a tennis club and membership can be pricey. The costs here aren’t as excessive as a sport like golf, but they can still be significant.

Tennis, perhaps more than other games, also really benefits from coaching. Any tennis player is only really as good as his or her service game, and that’s a really hard skill to practice by yourself. If you’re looking to get into tennis as an adult, and you’re a complete novice, then it would be a great idea to look into group lessons or one on one coaching.

Pro: Social Benefits

Playing tennis will get you out of the house and, by its very nature, acting with at least one other person (and you’re not going to want to play the same person forever). You can socialise with your friends, if they like tennis too, join a tennis club, or get involved in local group classes and make new friends. If you enjoy playing the odd doubles match, then you’re even practising your coordination and teamwork.

Con: Social Drawbacks

Whilst the apparatus around tennis can be quite social if you have a local club or class to join, it’s also quite an isolated game. There are only two players at a time, and your opponent stands several metres away from you for most of the match, trying desperately to beat and out-think you. You’re never going to get the feeling of social inclusion from tennis that you might feel with a team sport like football, cricket or rowing. Playing a lot of tennis involves spending an awful lot of time inside your own head, and you’ll need to enjoy that.

Tennis: Yes or No?

Tennis is a classic game, with a long history, enjoyed by millions of people around the world. Like any sport, it can have its drawbacks, but if you find it appealing to you, the best thing that you can do is jump onto a court and have a go for yourself!