You don’t have to be a tennis pro like Maria Sharapova or Roger Federer to be fit. Even as you hold the tennis racket and enjoy the peppy music in the background with a couple of friends, you can attain tennis star-like fitness.
“An ideal session of cardio tennis continues for about 45 minutes and the action-packed fun-training consists of three segments — warm up, cardio and cool down,” says Krishna Kumar, a Bengaluru-based tennis instructor.
Bucking up
Cardio tennis is organised in group sessions and a warm-up aims to prepare everyone for cardio drills.
“We start with tennis-based exercises. The participants hold tennis rackets and practice the moves but do not hit a ball. All this happen while people interact with each other. It helps in getting used to the racket and preparing the muscles for exhaustive moves without too much strain,” he says.
High-intensity drills
The drills practiced here are the same ones that professionals practice. The objective is to mimic the game of tennis. While professionals do the drill to enhance their performance on court, we make people learn the moves just to stay fit. We let intricacies like angles and leg movements pass.
Props such as ladders and cones are used here. Similar to an obstacle course, you run on a plastic ladder that is kept on the ground and jump between the steps and also hustle through the plastic cones strategically placed on the ground. This improves one’s agility.
“The training involves running, sprints, squats, side-to-side shuffles which are great tummy strengtheners with the different strokes. You’re moving the whole time, so it makes for a great workout session,” he adds.
Cool Down
After the power-packed drills, it’s now time for fun games to lower the heart rate with a relaxed cool-down session. “Measuring the heart rate is an important component of this workout. We aim to raise the heart rate to the ‘target rate’ and once that is achieved, we aim to bring it to normal,” explains Krishna.
The relaxed session commences with some stretches and fun games in-sync with the music played in the background. It involves easy volleys or practice serves, and then stretching.
Cardio tennis was first started in the United States and is now catching up in India. A session of proper drills help burn around 600 calories and works well with people of all age groups.
Tennis coach and ace player Ramesh Krishnan agrees that tennis is an ideal game to tone the body and keep it fit. “The underlying theme is tennis, a game of quickness and tennis enthusiasts have to keep that in mind. Though tennis provides a good exercise for the body, it is more fun with a ball and an opponent,” he smiles.
The sessions are well designed and the muscles and mind get enough time to recover, leaving very little room for injuries.