Tennis is a sport where players aren’t reaching top running speeds very often, if ever.
Most movements in tennis are short in both duration and distance. Some older stats point towards 3 metres as being the average distance a player moves during each shot. But averages don’t really tell us the whole story.
And if you’ve played tennis at a decent level, you very well know that sometimes we don’t move much at all (i.e. if the oncoming ball is traveling towards us), while other times we may have to cover one end of the court to the other.
So yes, most tennis movements occur within a small zone…but there’s no denying that a range of distances exist.
The question becomes, what should we do about it?
Personally, I always urge coaches and players to make sure there’s enough speed and acceleration training in their programs. A while back, I even wrote an article that highlighted the importance of speed/accel training for tennis.
But I don’t think that article was convincing because many in tennis still aren’t doing enough linear sprint training - in other words, running in a straight line!
Maybe it’s not sexy enough, or doesn’t ‘look’ enough like tennis.
Truth is, we need it. And in this post, I’m going to make a few arguments why I believe that to be the case.
Please note - I’ve already written about the physiological benefits of sprint training (see link above) - i.e. neural, muscle fiber type, tissue stiffness etc. This post will look at the benefits of sprint training from a slightly different lens.
Tennis Court Dimensions
A brief reminder; the dimensions of a singles tennis court are 78ft long (close to 24m). That’s about 12m from baseline to net. In terms of width, we’re looking at 27ft (just over 8m). But when it comes to sprinting, we must take into consideration the space located behind the baseline.
A typical outdoor court is recommended to have an additional 21ft behind the baseline and 12ft outside the doubles line (see image below). This amounts to a total of about 60ft (or 18m) long by 50ft (15m) wide.
But those are straight lines we’re talking about. What about when you’re stretched deep and wide and have to track a drop shot or an angled groundie on the other side of the court? In the absolute worst case scenario, the court is 90ft (or 27.4m) long diagonally. And while you won’t cover that distance exactly, you might be close to the 20-25m range!
Let’s not forget that that’s on a standard size court. What about at Roland Garros’ main court, Philippe Chatrier?
It’s reported that Chatrier has an additional 32ft (9.75m) behind the baseline and 21ft (6.4m) on either side of the doubles lines. In the worst case scenario, the court is 105.5ft long diagonally (that’s 32m!). Players won’t reach that exact distance but again, it’s not uncommon to run longer distances these days than ever before.
I mean, how many drop shots do we see at the French Open (or during clay tennis in general)?
On top of that, one of the biggest complaints I hear from colleagues (and players) during clay season are in the realm of hamstring and adductor issues...players are often not accustomed to running 10, 15, 20, (maybe even 25m) distances...20, 30 (or more) times per match!
I believe Novak hit over 40 drop shots during one of his matches at the French…imagine the amount of linear sprinting a player must do!
I know most of us won’t be playing on centre court at a grand slam anytime soon, but whether you like it or not, the game is continuously evolving. It’s not just one or 2 players that are now able to hit high and heavy; it’s nearly every player that has this ability.
Tennis Has Evolved
While on a recent tour with a female player (playing on red clay), I was shocked at how much variation the girls were also playing with. This wasn’t the case 10 years ago when I was coaching a top Canadian player. Now it’s the norm to see both males and females playing with spin, hitting drop shots and trying to angle their opponents off the court.
We haven’t even spoken about players with big games that follow-up their serves by coming forward - it’s a trend that is becoming more prevalent. And if you work with doubles players (or play a lot of dubs), there better be some straight-line running in your program as most serve & volley on every 1st delivery.
So even though players don’t reach maximum running speeds during a tennis match, the game is evolving...big time. Court dimensions have been getting larger. Players are capable of creating more rotation on the ball - which allows it to jump and push players both back deep or wide and off the court. Many are forced to sprint forward to chase down drop shots because they play so far back and others move up more out of their own volition.
The Case for Linear Sprint Training
Then why is it that I still see so little linear sprint training in tennis players’ programs? Almost 20 years ago, Kovacs wrote that most movements in tennis occur in the 3m range. Ok, that’s fine and while I don’t have the stats, this number is probably a bit larger today. But even if it isn’t, and even if most movements are still in this range, there are just too many occurrences during a tennis match where a player might have to cover a significant distance.
In a 3-set match, I’d say there are probably 50+ occurrences where a player runs 5m to 20m+ (if you have GPS data, selfishly, I’d love to see it).
So is acceleration training (and speed training) in tennis important? Damn right it is!
Now it’s up to coaches to plan these sessions appropriately, based on the time of year and the player’s on-court practice schedule. But it’s my belief that we can get a lot of these types of workouts in as part of an extended warm-up.
This is what many experts in sport science call ‘microdosing’.
It’s actually the way I personally train myself. Instead of doing 3 big workouts a week, I spread out the workload and hit 5-6 smaller workouts. Three of them will still likely be a bit more intense/demanding but I find that this allows me to get more work done than if I did only 3 long workouts (and it’s way more practical given my work + family schedule). I do the same with my players - especially during a cycle where they’re on court more.
So a typical session will start with sprint training (this is key as we don’t want to perform sprint training under a fatigued state). We’ll progress our warm-up in a way that allows us to do some acceleration work over 5m, 10m, 15m and 20m distances - varying the starting positions and the stances - so that there’s some direct carry-over to the tennis court.
How Else Can We Apply Sprint Training to the Court?
Use of ladder drills (not the typical ladder that most see in tennis settings) is a great way to attack a variety of distances while simultaneously being an easy way to get linear sprints done in a relatively short period of time.
Some general guidelines include:
Use a variety of distances and start with short + progress to longer ones.
My go-to ladders are 10, 20 and 30m distances
If I’m on the tennis court, I like doing baseline to service line (5.49m), baseline to net (11.89m) and baseline to opposite service line (18.29m) - note, if I only have access to 1 court, I don’t go beyond that distance for maximal efforts because there isn’t enough room for a properly executed deceleration.
Speed training should be done at distances of 35-45m for tennis players because they hit top end speed (max running velocity) sooner and can’t hold it for longer than 10m (like more advanced athletes who are more accustomed to this type of training). These can be done over 3 courts (if you have that luxury).
Now, I do still believe that agility work is relevant - and just because I’m advocating linear sprints, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t train multidirectional running + change-of-direction speed… But oftentimes, it’s overkill as players are already getting a ton of that work done during actual tennis practice + play.
On top of that, when we run in a straight line, we can produce more power output. Here’s what a mentor of mine once said about training:
“You can either be fancy or you can be intense, but you can’t be both”.
This applies to movement based training extremely well - if you run in a straight line, at longer distances (to a point), you will be able to produce higher speeds, higher ground reaction forces and more tension throughout the body - compared to running short distances with multiple changes of direction.
So in the worst of cases, linear sprint work will simply act as a high-powered training stimulus - like throwing med balls for rotational power or performing plyos for elastic power.
In Summary…
I’m essentially arguing that linear sprint training (both acceleration + speed work) - at distances of 5-45m - are essential for tennis because of 3 reasons (there are others but for the sake of this post, we’ll stick to these):
Because court dimensions are larger, players are playing further back, and we’ll actually encounter some of these distances during matchplay.
Because we’ll be covering these distances in matches, we need to make sure that our training includes them - for injury mitigation purposes - in other words, beyond performance-based reasons.
Because it’s an unbelievable training stimulus - not just for tennis, but for any court or field based athlete.
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