Nov 9, 2026 · @Ranilharshana
TennisBPM | Coach Ran
Over the decades one question comes up again and again from tennis players and coaches we work on the strokes every day, so why does the technique fall apart in the third set, or come back wrong the next week?
Very often, the answer is not the stroke. It is the body underneath the stroke. A player can only learn, repeat and keep a technique that their body is able to hold and activate. This article explains why a tennis fitness foundation matters for learning technique, and shows the base to apply it in practice, from Red Ball to the pro tour and in wheelchair tennis.
What a TENNIS fitness foundation means
A fitness foundation is the set of physical qualities a player needs before technique can work well: mobility, balance and stability, strength, power, speed and agility, and tennis-specific conditioning. It is not bodybuilding and it is not long-distance running, cross training , latest hype on social media etc. . It is the physical base that lets a stroke be produced in the right position, with the right timing, ball after ball.
This links directly to the S.A.I.D. principle. A review of training specificity concluded that adaptations to high-performance training are relatively small and highly specific [1]. In plain words: the body gives you the qualities you train, and the stroke can only use the qualities the body has. See my article on the S.A.I.D. principle for tennis players.
The principle I coach by is simple. Build the engine, then tune the stroke. I teach it the way I teach everything: Tell, Show, Do. then work along side with tennis coach to improve the tennis player .
Why the body decides how well technique is learned
What the evidence says. Tennis combines very short, explosive efforts with short recoveries. Kovacs reports that the average point lasts under 10 seconds, work-to-rest ratios range from 1:3 to 1:5, players need speed, agility and power on top of a high aerobic capacity, and fatigue has been shown to greatly reduce hitting accuracy [2].
Fatigue does not only lower performance. It changes the technique itself. In prolonged simulated match play, twelve highly trained players lost serve velocity and groundstroke velocity and accuracy, and the acceleration phase of the serving arm slowed [3]. Over four consecutive days of 4-hour match play, players hit more “stretch” groundstrokes, made more unforced errors by day 4, won fewer second-serve points and showed more emotional outbursts [4].
Fatigue can also slow learning. In a series of experiments, muscle fatigue impaired motor-skill learning beyond its effect on performance, and the learning deficit was still visible on later practice days when the fatigue was gone [5]. The authors suggest the common practice of training while fatigued, or beyond it, should be reconsidered [5].
The stroke itself depends on the whole body. The kinetic chain links the legs, trunk and arm so that force and motion are transferred from the ground to the hand. Breaks or deficits in the chain can lead to injury or reduced performance [6].
| Technical goal | What the research shows | What the foundation must provide (my coaching experience ) |
|---|---|---|
| Repeat the stroke, rally after rally | Points under 10 s, work-to-rest 1:3 to 1:5; fatigue reduces hitting accuracy [2] | Interval-based conditioning that matches the rhythm of points |
| Keep technique late in matches | Prolonged play reduced stroke speed and accuracy and slowed the serving arm [3]; consecutive days increased errors and stretch strokes [4] | Tennis-specific endurance and a planned recovery routine |
| Learn new patterns | Muscle fatigue impaired skill learning on later days [5] | New technique taught fresh; hard conditioning placed after or on another day |
| Produce power without forcing the arm | Legs and trunk generate energy transferred through the chain [6] | Leg and hip strength, trunk rotation power, scapular and shoulder control |
| Reach the right positions | Elite junior players showed less total shoulder rotation on the dominant arm than the non-dominant arm [7] | Regular mobility for shoulder, thoracic spine and hips, with screening |
The foundation in action: three tennis examples
- The serve. In a randomized trial of 30 nationally ranked 13-year-old boys, six weeks of core strength, elastic resistance and medicine ball work, three sessions a week, improved serve velocity, while the control group did not change and serve accuracy was not affected [8]. A meta-analysis of 16 randomized trials found significant effects of resistance and multimodal training on serve speed, while core training on its own did not reach significance [9]. In my coaching practice, the serve improves when the body work matches what the serve asks: legs, trunk and shoulder together. See my article Does Core Training Really Help Your Serve?
- Juniors and ranking. In 902 German junior players aged 11 to 16, serve velocity and upper-body power were the physical qualities most closely linked to national ranking [10]. In a second group of 1,019 elite juniors, physical and body-size measures explained 41 to 66% of the variation in serve speed in boys and 19 to 45% in girls. The authors underline that technical factors also play a strong part [11]. That is the point of this article: fitness and technique work together.
- The shoulder. In 117 elite male junior players, total rotation of the dominant shoulder was 149° against 158° on the non-dominant side [7]. A shoulder that cannot rotate fully cannot reach the positions a coach is asking for, and the player will compensate somewhere else. In the 13-year-old trial above, shoulder rotation range improved alongside serve speed [8].
Stroke by stroke: where technique meets the body
What I see: Many faults that look technical have a physical root. A coach changes the swing for weeks, the player gets it right for ten balls, and by the third basket the old stroke is back. Before I change a grip or a swing path, I check the body.
This table is my coaching practice, built on the kinetic chain evidence above [6, 7]. The foundation work are the basics it should be personalized based on players profile and training cycle.
| Stroke | What the coach sees | Common physical root | Foundation work |
|---|---|---|---|
| Serve | Low trophy position, arm-only swing, little leg drive | Limited thoracic rotation and extension, weak leg drive, reduced shoulder rotation | Thoracic mobility, band external rotation, squat jumps, overhead medicine ball throws |
| Forehand | Contact behind the hip, collapsing elbow, upright arm swing | Weak hip loading, poor single-leg balance, low trunk rotation power | Split squats, lateral lunges, rotational medicine ball throws |
| Two-handed backhand | Late preparation, little shoulder turn, falling away | Limited trunk rotation, weak core stability | Anti-rotation holds, half-kneeling band or cable chops |
| Volley | Swinging instead of blocking, unstable split step | Weak deceleration, slow reactive balance | Split-step drills, land-and-hold jumps, reaction starts |
| Movement and recovery | Late to the ball, slow back to position | Low acceleration, poor change of direction, limited repeat-sprint fitness | Short sprints, lateral shuffles, change-of-direction and interval drills |
What to do: Test before you rebuild. A simple single-leg balance hold, a shoulder rotation check and a rotational medicine ball throw tell you a lot. If a junior cannot hold the outside leg steady for 20 seconds, the forehand loading cue will not hold either. Build the base, keep the technical cue simple, and very often the contact point moves forward by itself.
Practice: learn fresh, condition later
Can fitness work help practice? Yes. Can it get in the way of technique? Also yes, if it is not planned.
What the evidence says. A systematic review of interventions for groundstroke speed and accuracy in post-pubertal and adult players found mixed results. A six-week programme with medicine ball throws or heavier rackets improved forehand speed but reduced hitting accuracy. High-intensity interval training that included hitting drills raised maximal aerobic power but did not improve stroke accuracy and temporarily reduced stroke speed and efficiency during the sessions. Motor imagery during recovery periods helped maintain on-court performance, and the authors note that proper periodisation leads to better adaptations [12].
In young female players, four weeks of flywheel or machine-based training was enough to improve jump, sprint, change of direction and throwing measures. Continuing the same programme without adjusting the load could stall, or even reduce, some of these measures from weeks 4 to 8 [13].
What I see: Coaches finish a session with hard drills and then ask for one more technical change. Players add gym sessions on top of tennis without changing anything else. Both teach the body the tired pattern.
What to do (my coaching practice):
- Put new technique early in the session, after a proper warm-up, when the player is fresh [5].
- Put hard conditioning at the end of the session or on a separate day.
- Use quality-window baskets: count only the technically correct balls. When three in a row break down, stop, recover for 60 to 90 seconds, then go again. During that recovery, ask the player to picture the correct stroke [12]. See my article Calm & Pressure: Mental Tips for Tennis.
- Change the fitness programme every four to six weeks, progressing the load and varying the exercises [13].
- Plan the fitness work around the technical work. Do not simply add it on top.
Six best TIPS for building technique on a fitness foundation
- Test the body before rebuilding the stroke. Balance, shoulder rotation and rotational power first [7]. This one is my coaching practice.
- Build the kinetic chain. Legs, hips and trunk produce the force, the arm directs it [6]. See my article Heavy Weight Training for Tennis?
- Match the conditioning to the game. Short explosive efforts with short recoveries, not long slow runs [2]. See my articles The Match Burn: Tennis Endurance and Tennis Aerobic Edge.
- Teach technique fresh. Fatigue lowers performance and can slow learning [3, 5].
- Progress and vary the fitness work. Adjust load every few weeks so gains do not stall [13].
- Be patient and measure. Track serve speed, a medicine ball throw, single-leg balance and shoulder rotation under the same conditions every few weeks [8, 10]. Nothing happens overnight. See my article Why Proper Coaching Beats “Banana Open” Copycat Training.
Four things to avoid
- Fixing the swing when the problem is the base. A cue the body cannot hold will not last. This one is my coaching practice.
- Drilling new technique on a tired body. You teach the tired pattern [5].
- Adding heavy or weighted-racket work without a plan. Speed may rise while accuracy drops [12].
- Expecting core work alone to fix the serve. On its own, core training did not significantly improve serve speed; resistance and multimodal programmes did [9].
Five court drills that join fitness and technique
These are from my coaching practice.
- Balance-and-hit forehand. Feed to the forehand. The player holds the finish on the outside leg for two seconds. If they cannot hold it, the base was not set.
- Medicine ball to racket. Three rotational medicine ball throws against a wall, three shadow forehands, then three live forehands. The body learns the rotation first, then the racket copies it.
- Split-step reaction volleys. Quick feeds to random sides. The player must land the split step balanced before each volley.
- Serve from the legs. Three squat jumps, then three serves focusing only on leg drive. Keep the arm relaxed.
- Quality-window baskets. Count only correct balls and stop when three in a row break down (see the practice section above).
The fitness foundation across the ages
This is my coaching practice, built on the evidence above. The 2014 international consensus supports supervised, well-designed resistance training for children and adolescents [14]. Always consider chronological, biological and training age together.
| Player | Main focus | Watch-outs |
|---|---|---|
| Red and Orange Ball | Fundamental movement: running, jumping, throwing, catching, balance and agility games | Keep it play. Good movers become good stroke learners |
| Green Ball and U12 | Body-weight strength, coordination, landing skills, light medicine ball work | Teach exercise technique before load |
| U14 to U16 | Mobility, supervised strength and speed, shoulder care, load adjusted to growth | Growth spurts, rising serve volume, back and knees |
| U18 and college | Strength and power in development blocks, short sessions during tournament clusters | Travel, sleep and fitting fitness around the calendar |
| Pro tour | Keep strength and power all year and manage load across the season | Accumulated fatigue in long seasons and consecutive match days [4] |
| Recreational adult | Mobility, balance, leg strength and shoulder health | Sudden jumps in playing volume |
My articles on LTAD for tennis players and the S.A.I.D. principle explain these stages in more depth.
The fitness foundation across the week
For coaches and players you can use this as a sample. Adjust it for age, injury history and calendar. For planning across the season, see my articles on training load for tennis players, the tennis calendar problem for juniors, post-tournament recovery and travelling tennis players.
| Week type | Tennis | Strength and speed | Technique focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Develop week | Technical sessions early, interval-style on-court conditioning at the end | 2 to 3 sessions, heavier strength and fast movements | New patterns, taught fresh |
| Competition week | Matches and short practices | 2 short sessions, low volume, keep the intensity | Simple cues only, no rebuilds |
| Reset week | Light hitting only | Mobility and light activation | Video review and mental rehearsal |
The fitness foundation in wheelchair tennis
Wheelchair tennis follows the same principle with a different body, different equipment and different movement. The foundation is still what lets technique hold.
What the evidence says.
- Match demands. An ITF review reports points of about 4 to 10 seconds and work-to-rest ratios of 1:1 to 1:4, with values varying by impairment, surface and level of play [15].
- Serve power. In nine of the best nationally ranked Spanish male players, a medicine ball throw that copied the serve was the main predictor of serve speed (r² = 0.847), and the authors recommend medicine ball throws in training [16]. The serve is played seated, so the leg drive used by standing players is not available.
- The shoulder. For wheelchair users the shoulder is the main source of mobility, not only a joint for hitting. A scoping review names overhead movements, repetitive use of the internal rotators and unbalanced load among the risk factors [17]. Shoulder complaints have been reported in 16% to 76% of wheelchair athletes, though study quality was low [18].
| Technical goal | What the research shows | What the foundation must provide (my coaching practice) |
|---|---|---|
| A powerful seated serve | Serve-pattern medicine ball throw predicted serve speed [16] | Trunk rotation power and medicine ball throws from the chair |
| Clean strokes after pushing | The same arms push the chair and hit the ball [17] | Balanced upper-body strength, pulling as well as pushing |
| Early contact and good positioning | Short points with short recoveries [15] | Chair sprints, turns and stops in short efforts |
| A healthy hitting shoulder | Shoulder complaints are common [18] | Scapular and rotator cuff work, careful progression of volume |
What to do (my coaching practice): Start with the individual: impairment, trunk control, seating position and chair set-up shape what technique is possible. Teach chair skills and trunk control alongside the strokes. Work as one team with the coach, S&C coach, physiotherapist and doctor.
The limits
The link between physical qualities and technique is well supported, but each example has limits. The serve trial had 30 boys [8], and the meta-analysis pools programmes that differ widely [9]. The ranking and serve-speed studies show associations, not proof of cause [10, 11]. The fatigue-and-learning study used a laboratory task, not a tennis stroke [5]. The simulated and consecutive-day match studies had 12 and 7 players [3, 4]. The training review found mixed effects on accuracy [12]. The wheelchair serve study had nine male players from one country [16], and the shoulder reviews were based on low-quality studies [18]. The stroke-by-stroke table and the drills are my coaching practice, not tested programmes. Always individualise.
As an S&C coach working with tennis and wheelchair tennis
Technique is the steering wheel. Fitness is the engine. You can have the best steering in the world, but without an engine the car goes nowhere, and it certainly does not win the third set. To coaches: test the body before you rebuild the stroke. To players: the gym is not time away from tennis. It is where your next level of technique begins.
Tell. Show. Do. Now it is your turn to do it.
This article is for general education and is not medical advice. Anyone with pain, injury or health concerns should consult a qualified doctor, physiotherapist or registered dietitian.
Go deeper
- TennisBPM: Coach Education Level 1 (The Performance Foundation) and Level 2 (The Tour-Ready Coach), plus player coaching. See the Coach Education page for current dates, and the TennisBPM Tennis Blog for more articles.
- Books: Tennis Fitness and Tennis Wellness & Performance. More on the TennisBPM books page.
References
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- Kovacs MS. Tennis physiology: training the competitive athlete. Sports Med. 2007;37(3):189-198. doi:10.2165/00007256-200737030-00001
- Hornery DJ, Farrow D, Mujika I, Young WB. Caffeine, carbohydrate, and cooling use during prolonged simulated tennis. Int J Sports Physiol Perform. 2007;2(4):423-438. doi:10.1123/ijspp.2.4.423
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- Branscheidt M, Kassavetis P, Anaya M, et al. Fatigue induces long-lasting detrimental changes in motor-skill learning. eLife. 2019;8:e40578. doi:10.7554/eLife.40578
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- Ellenbecker TS, Roetert EP, Bailie DS, Davies GJ, Brown SW. Glenohumeral joint total rotation range of motion in elite tennis players and baseball pitchers. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2002;34(12):2052-2056. doi:10.1097/00005768-200212000-00028
- Fernandez-Fernandez J, Ellenbecker T, Sanz-Rivas D, Ulbricht A, Ferrauti A. Effects of a 6-week junior tennis conditioning program on service velocity. J Sports Sci Med. 2013;12(2):232-239.
- Deng N, Soh KG, Xu F, Yang X. The effects of strength and conditioning interventions on serve speed in tennis players: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Front Physiol. 2025;15:1469965. doi:10.3389/fphys.2024.1469965
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- Sánchez-Pay A, Torres Luque G, Sanz Rivas D. Analysis of competitive wheelchair tennis. ITF Coaching & Sport Science Review. 2014;22(63):22-25. doi:10.52383/itfcoaching.v22i63.502
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