How To Play Tennis

All it took for my friends to lure me into tennis was to suggest that I join the team with them sophomore year. At first it started out as something to do with my friends, but soon became a hobby and passion of mine as I learned more about the game. Tennis is a sport that involves two players hitting a ball back and forth across a net to each other using a racquet. It may sound simple, but decades have passed since the game was created and has given people time to turn the game into a highly competitive, fast-paced battle between two extraordinary athletes at the professional level. In order to reach such a high level of tennis, athletes require to help of personal coaches, training camps, and expensive equipment to improve their skill. Tennis …show more content…
According to Mark Hendricks, a trainer at Equinox Fitness in New York and co-creator of the "Game.Set.Match" conditioning class, “The more you condition yourself, the greater your ability to recover so you’re ready for the next point” (Shaffer). In tennis, recovery speed is essential to outlast your opponent during a match. In competitive tournaments, matches are played to best out of five sets that can last for hours so excellent stamina is needed to be able to play at one hundred percent for the whole match. One must be able to fully recover in between points, which only gives them about 15-20 seconds to physically and mentally prepare themselves to win the next point. If not, the opponent will have the upper advantage regarding energy and can win the next point easily if you cannot run to the opposite side of the court quickly for each ball. Popular drills and exercises that condition one’s stamina and endurance involve sprinting to stimulate explosive movements that can be applied to tennis. “Since tennis involves side-to-side movement, you need to include lateral moves in your training […] sprinting drills are essential to preparing joints and muscles for the unexpected movements of tennis” (Shaffer). In tennis, quick and