A tennis week already contains demanding work. Gym preparation needs to fit around your court time, help you develop useful physical qualities and leave you ready to practise your game.
This guide is for adult recreational players. It describes strength and conditioning alongside tennis. Court booking, stroke instruction and a tennis-coaching service are not included. Discuss your aims and current schedule with Julian before agreeing a personal-training plan.
One-to-one coaching · Fitzrovia
Make gym work fit your tennis week
For adults who play recreational tennis and want to discuss physical preparation alongside their court time.
The proposed support covers gym exercise, training workload and progress reviews. Tennis technique and court coaching stay with your tennis coach.
Start with a conversation about your goal, training history and available days. Confirm current session options and costs before agreeing a plan.
What should tennis conditioning cover?
The LTA recommends combining strength, cardio fitness, agility and tennis-specific movement. That gives a useful set of areas to plan, rather than one workout that tries to do everything. Read the LTA's tennis fitness guidance.
- Lower-body strength: squat, hinge and single-leg patterns, with attention to hips, thighs and calves.
- Movement: starting, stopping and changing direction under control.
- Trunk and upper body: pushing, pulling and controlling rotation, including the demands on the shoulder and forearm.
- Conditioning: enough capacity to repeat efforts while still managing the rest of your week.
Developing these qualities can support preparation, but gym numbers do not guarantee a faster serve or more match wins. Technique and tennis practice remain separate parts of the task.
A simple gym-session framework
The following is an example for a healthy adult, to adapt to training experience and court load. Begin with easy movement, then practise the patterns with lighter resistance.
- Movement practice: a few controlled starts and stops in a suitable clear space, if these are already comfortable. Keep the first attempts easy.
- Strength: choose a squat or supported split squat, a hip hinge, a row and a suitable press. Two sets of 6–10 controlled repetitions per exercise are a possible starting point, with some good repetitions left available.
- Calf and trunk work: add a small amount that you can perform well without rushing.
- Review: note how the session affects your next court session before adding more work.
A beginner may first need stable strength exercises and simple movement practice. Faster jumps, throws and hard change-of-direction work are later options when they fit the person and setting. Do not turn every session into a fatigue test. The ACSM resistance-training guidance supports adapting the programme to the goal and training level; the exercise choices and doses here are illustrative.
Two, three or four total training days
These examples include both tennis and gym sessions. Choose the pattern that matches your actual diary. They show how to organise time, not a universally optimal weekly dose.
Two days: one gym session and one court session
Tuesday: a full-body gym session. Saturday: tennis. This is a limited-time compromise. It creates a place for strength training without pretending one gym session covers every fitness goal.
Three days: one gym session and two court sessions
Monday: full-body strength. Thursday: tennis practice. Sunday: tennis. Keep the gym session recoverable and adjust it if matches become more demanding.
Four days: two gym sessions and two court sessions
Monday: full-body strength A. Wednesday: tennis. Friday: full-body strength B. Sunday: tennis. Use a different emphasis in the second gym session rather than repeating the hardest possible workout.
If you already play on more days, those sessions count. Add them to the plan before deciding what gym work you can recover from. See our guide to combining strength and cardio.
Change the emphasis through the season
During a quieter period, establish exercise skill, build regular attendance and gradually progress resistance. As important matches approach, keep familiar strength work and reduce avoidable fatigue. In a busy match week, maintaining a few useful exercises may be more practical than trying to set personal bests.
Progress one main element at a time: repetitions, load, sets or the difficulty of movement drills. Review court performance, next-day response and sleep alongside gym records. A return after a long break needs a different starting point from a settled training week.
Conditioning, warm-ups and mobility
Start by counting what tennis itself adds to the week. If more conditioning is useful, a manageable bike, walk or easy run can be easier to dose than another hard circuit. Hard intervals should have a clear reason and a recovery cost you can afford.
Before court time, build from easy movement to controlled lateral steps, direction changes and progressively quicker tennis actions. Use mobility work where it helps the movement you need. These are preparation options; they are not promises of injury prevention. The mobility and stretching guide explains that distinction.
Shoulder or elbow symptoms change the decision
Tell your coach about current pain, a diagnosis, surgery and any clinical instructions. A generic tennis workout cannot decide how an injury should be treated. Read returning to strength training after a shoulder injury for questions to discuss with a suitable clinician and your trainer.
Use this at your next review
Map your court and gym week
Write down the tennis first. Then decide where useful gym work can fit.
- Court commitments: practices, matches and any important dates.
- Gym time: the days you can actually repeat, including travel and work.
- Recovery: which session could be lighter if court demands increase?
- Review: did the gym work leave you able to practise well?
Keep these notes for your own planning. Nothing here needs to be submitted online.
Discuss your tennis preparation in Fitzrovia
Use the same goal, plan and review process described in Tempo’s coaching method. No specialist tennis client result is presented here.
Bring your normal court schedule, upcoming events and current gym experience to a conversation with Julian. Tempo provides one-to-one personal training at 1 Cavendish Mews North, Fitzrovia. The consultation establishes whether this coaching arrangement fits your needs.
Visits are by appointment at 1 Cavendish Mews North, with the entrance off Hallam Street. See contact and arrival information before your first visit.