Tennis Tools for Winter Training

Tennis Tools for Winter Training (updated)

Balance Trainer: Dynamic Balance

Balance is super important in tennis. If you can make small, minor adjustments to your body position - it is extremely hard for your opponent to wrong foot you. Moving laterally with your feet, while swinging forward with your arms is crucially important as it happens continually during a match.

How to Develop Better Balance
I just got this and love this little blue balance trainer! It's basically like an under-inflated cushion that you try to keep your balance on for as long as possible.  The wobbling nature of the tool forces you to keep your core balance stable in order to stand.  You actually use a lot of muscles to counter-act the forces that are tipping you over.

Creative exercises for tennis
It's actually kind of fun to see how long you can keep your body balanced and centered.  After 5-10 mins with the rubber band drill, your legs will be burning. When it's cold outside or you're limited in space, you have to be creative to stay "fit to hit"! Another drill to try is to side-step on a treadmill while simulating a swing motion with your arms (both forehand and backhand). Here are a few other tennis exercises you can do at home.

Agility Ladder: Foot Speed and Quickness

Great for doing indoor footwork drills with limited space. Just lay it out in the basement or living room and it folds away nicely! Just under $25, you can take anywhere with free shipping from Amazon!

Drills:
Check out some of these great tennis-specific drills on YouTube anyone can do.

SKLZ Ladder:
I highly recommend getting an Agility Ladder that will not snag easily and sturdy enough to last, plus this one even comes with a DVD and carrying bag.

PracticeHit: Master your swing indoors

This little device helps you simulate proper contact and timing on ground strokes, both forehand and backhand.

Easy to use, long term pay-off
Best of all it doesn't take much space and helps you with your balance and coordination tremendously.  In home or gym, all you need is a little corner to put it and just do a few mins a day with it.

You can also build core strength and stability with all these cool workouts you can do with it.

Bosu Ball - Jumping and Split-step exercises

Also featured at www.atpworldtour.com - here are some Tips for the Bosu ball too

As a professional tennis instructor, I can feel how much better my balance is now on one foot or when I get stretched out wide.

The Bosu Ball tool does a great job of isolating muscle groups and keeping you "light on your toes". These exercises can be combined with small dumbbells to add to the intensity of squats, etc.

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