Physical tennis training, is it important?

With so many training ideas out there, how does one decipher what works and what doesn’t?

One strategy is to find someone getting the results you want, find out what they are doing, do the same thing.  Sounds simple and obvious but very few people use this strategy, or they model people getting mediocre results.  For example if you want to increase your speed on the court and you find someone who is already very fast on the court but is constantly injured, they may not be the best person to model.

Fitness is an essential component of a world class tennis player.  No champion is without a certain level of physical fitness.

Physical tennis training is about nutrition, endurance, strength and body composition.

Your body composition is affected by the other three (nutrition, endurance, strength)  you want to carry only the weight necessary to do what you need to do on the court effectively.  Having  a low fat percentage. Not carrying additional muscle that is not usable in tournament conditions, can go a long way toward building a lightweight endurance machine.

Nutrition, the fuel on and off the court.  This comprises of what your are eating and what you may be drinking.  You cannot go wrong with as natural as possible, whole grains.  High quality protein sources organic if available, organic is not absolutely necessary however as some would have you believe, it’s an ideal. Make sure you take in proper fluids and if you’re in tournament conditions of over an hour, think about electrolyte replacement.

Endurance exercises should be related to what you experience in a tennis match.  Being able to sprint for 25-35 seconds  with a rest of 25 seconds would serve you better than long distance running.

Strength should be developed mostly on the court through  tennis specific exercises.  There are many new training tools used.  Some examples: Cones, elastic bands, medicine balls and many more.  These can be best used with actual tennis motions for developing core muscles which are extremely important in physical tennis training.  Later you may want to lift some weights for maximal muscle strength but it should only be a very small part of training, some coaches even go so far as to say it should not even be used.  Many pro fighters use only body weight exercises and medicine balls.

What physical tennis training methods have worked for you or someone you know personally?