3 Simple Tennis Fitness Tests

Today we want to give you 3 FREE Tennis Fitness Tests and a practical aerobic training program to compliment it! These are some tests we do with our tennis players.

1 Mobility Test
2 Change of Direction Test
3 Aerobic Test (MAS)

You will have access to the free specific tennis aerobic program after you have completed your free tests.

At tennis fitness we believe it is very important to assess an athlete and measure where they are at. This gives us the ability to know their current level and establish what level they need to be at (their goal) We firmly believe, if we put all our athletes through a movement analysis, whether that analysis is agility based, speed-based, aerobic-based, or all three. Then incorporate a strength tennis fitness test, we then get a clear cut starting point and an end goal. This is how you educate and motivate an athlete. Check out the tests and give them a go.

If you are lacking motivation this is your starting point. 

"What Gets Measured, Gets Managed"

So if you know where they are currently at, we can actually program to where they want to be and track their progression. This is a very important structure on how our tennis programming works. This also helps athletes with their injury resilience and everyone's main goal is staying on the court longer. 

What we have found over the years is that it is imperative that tennis players follow some form of tennis testing protocols.

These tests should cover; Strength, Power, Balance, and in today’s case (this email) Flexibility, Agility Aerobic testing. 

It is important to test in order to determine your current strength and conditioning and give you some clear cut goals. 

3 x Tennis Fitness Tests

1. Flexibility and Mobility Test - Overhead Squat 

This test is so simple but so effective. This is the first thing we do with every athlete we see. It is imperative all athletes have a good range of movement within their joints.
Teaching players how to prepare their bodies for performance is crucial for long term injury prevention and constant physical development. 

After performing 100s of tennis fitness assessments, postural screens, and flexibility assessments we have found most young athletes are falling short with their flexibility and mobility ranges. What is important to realize is that players, no matter how good they are, if they don't have healthy flexibility and mobility range it is only a matter of time before they hit an injury wall. Try this test and work out what you score.

2. Change of Direction Test - 6 Point Drill

There are two types of drills you can perform to improve court movement:
a-   Change of Direction (COD) - is used to describe a pre-planned drill or movement, whereby athletes change movement direction and velocity without the inclusion of perceptual-cognitive processes. They know what they are going to do.  

b- Agility –is used to describe a “rapid whole-body movement with a change of velocity or direction in response to a stimulus” (Sheppard & Young, 2006). There are multiple ways of doing this - Verbally, Auditory, Visually.

Try this change of direction drill below in the video and time yourself. Go all out and give 100% and try to beat your time. Let’s be honest if you’re not performing your agility or change of direction drills at 100%, you are really not getting the benefits from it. Rather than just running through the drill, without any goal or purpose. We always like to get our players running against each other or timing each drill. We find we will get an extra 20% out of the players for that session if they have some incentive or something to chase. Which in the long run adds up… Give it a go! 

3. Aerobic Test - Maximal Aerobic Speed (MAS)

To go for a 20min run once a week, running the same distance at the same speed won’t cut it. We see this happening all the time! Many players are getting it way wrong when it comes to their aerobic conditioning. Below we are giving you a practical aerobic test and an Aerobic Program to compliment it! This test is a Maximal Aerobic Speed Test (MAS). We designed it so it is specific for tennis players incorporating change of direction components. We have found it is the best way to determine someone’s aerobic capacity and their top speed they can maintain whilst using their aerobic energy system. It is a great testing tool. 

Check out the video for your instructions on how to set up and complete the test.

Make sure you record your time. You will need it for the program that follows the test. 

To get your FREE Aerobic Test and Program - Click Here to download