Speed and Quickness
by Dr. Michael Yessis

Many tennis players train for additional strength in order to improve their performance. Strength is needed and it plays a very important role. But the main physical qualities needed by tennis players are speed and quickness. Speed is not limited to only running; it is involved in movement of the limbs and body in different actions. For example, it is the speed of the arms coming through holding a racquet that determines how fast the racquet is traveling and how hard the ball is going to be hit. Quickness refers more to the ability to change directions while in motion or when getting started from the ready position.

Speed and quickness cannot be developed by themselves. Even though they are separate qualities, they are directly related to each other and to other physical qualities. For example, additional levels of strength can improve speed and quickness, but only up to a certain point. This is especially true for youngsters and seniors and players who have never before weight-trained. For those who are already involved in weight training, especially intense weight training, additional strength gains in which you must use heavier weights with slower movements develop slowness in the nervous system. This, in turn, equates to less speed and quickness. Because of this, in order to increase your levels of strength, there must not be a slow down in speed of execution.

In addition, neuromuscular coordination, muscle resiliency and reactiveness must be taken into consideration in order to improve speed of execution. Strength is only the beginning stage for greater speed and quickness as you must literally convert the strength to speed and quickness to improve your performance. To do this, you must do speed-strength or explosive training, i.e., exercises in which you display strength with speed.

Speed-strength training can take various forms. You can do strength exercises in an explosive manner, as for example, execution of the knee drive with rubber tubing as in the Active Cord set. When done explosively (as quickly as possible) it increases the speed of your first step which improves your quickness and acceleration as well as enhancing your ability to run faster to get to the ball. Also important at this stage, are plyometric exercises to increase the ability of the leg to straighten as quickly as possible as needed in the push-off and medicine ball exercises to get a quicker shoulder turn to increase the force of your hits.

To make the training more effective and to see even greater improvement in your movement on the court, the exercises should be very specific to the tennis actions encountered. In other words, the strength and explosive exercises should duplicate the same neuromuscular pathways as exhibited in the competitive tennis skill. In this way, you will see fast and dramatic improvement in your abilities. For more information on this topic, read Explosive Tennis: The Forehand.

tennistrainer@tennistrainer.com