When I was 15, I began stepping up my fitness training. I gained a great deal of muscle and strength. My USTA coaches, Junior Fed Cup, and Davis Cup teammates noticed how I got fitter and my arms got bigger. In May 2005, we played the North America Cup in Mexico to qualify for the Junior Davis Cup. After winning the team event, I traveled to Italy, Belgium, France, Germany, and Austria on the ITF junior tour. At the time, I thought I needed to conserve energy during tournaments and avoided strenuous fitness exercises. It worked in the past when I played one tournament that lasted no more than 5 days. After the short trip, I would return home to train.
However, during the two-month-long adventure in Europe, I practiced and occasionally jogged. But I did not continue the fitness training to maintain my strength. The result was that I lost nearly all of my physical strength and endurance gains and returned to my prior baseline. It was a setback.
Fitness maintenance for competitive athletes: If you’re traveling for several weeks playing tournaments, you should incorporate strength and fitness training into your routine. The pros do it. It’s easy to neglect the fitness gains you made leading up to your tournaments. Some players will get stuck thinking they must remain in conservation-only mode, as I did. However, your body is efficient; so, if you’re not using certain muscle groups, it will break down those muscles.
And playing tennis is not sufficient to maintain the all-around body strength necessary to ensure that you have maximum control over your movements. So, incorporate fitness before your stretching and after resting from your match. Don’t spend long hours, but make your body work for 30 to 45 minutes.
You should also consider making a routine of reinforcing your strengths and closing gaps in your game by completing a short tennis session after you’re done with matches for the day. This means you will need to expend more energy, but the long-term payoff is tremendous.
During my second year in college, I had an 18-1 win-loss record. A big part of it came from spending an extra 45 minutes training after our matches. All but one of my teammates would go back to the hotel. My friend, a victim of my desire to train more, was convinced to stay and train with me. In most cases, we had already been on the tennis court for about five hours. But that extra 45 minutes of training was where I was able to clean up my game and develop mental focus and strength. If I was feeling extra tired, I would cut the extra training session to 20 minutes. It might sap you at first, but you’ll eventually feel stronger from the extra post-match training.
Your mind and body need to be worked on. It’s not a one-and-done process. It’s continual. So, educate yourself on getting enough sleep and nutrients so you can handle training a lot during tournaments. Eventually, you will be a super athlete.