Is Aerobic Training Appropriate for Tennis?

Adapted with pemission from "Scholastic and Academy Tennis: Planning the Season."

Tennis is an anaerobic, alactic sport, which can be explained with an analogy comparing a tennis player to a car.

When you turn on the ignition in a car, the spark plugs provide a spark, which ignites the gasoline which powers the car. A byproduct of gasoline burning is exhaust, which is discharged through the tail pipe of the car.

Spark Plug -- Gasoline -- Exhaust

When you play tennis, a chemical called adenosine trio-phosphate (ATP) can be compared to the spark plug of a car. ATP is necessary for muscle contractions, and your muscles contain limited stores of ATP (roughly enough for two or three muscle contractions).

ATP can be compared to a spark plug in a car.

Once the stored ATP is gone from your muscles, your body has to burn glycogen (how the carbs you eat are stored) to make more ATP to allow your muscles to contract.

Glycogen (or carbohydrates) can be compared to the gasoline in a car.

A byproduct of glycogen burning is lactic acid, a "bad" chemical which contributes to muscle fatigue and cramping. As you burn more and more glycogen during a tennis drill, workout or match, you produce more and more lactic acid.

Lactic acid can be compared to the exhaust created when gasoline is burned.

As soon as you stop a tennis point, your bloodstream begins to remove lactic acid and other anabolic wastes away from your muscles, similar to an automobile's tail pipe taking exhaust out of a car.

Spark Plug -- Gasoline -- Exhaust

is similar to

ATP -- Carbs -- Lactic Acid

Tennis is an alactic sport, because an activity does not become primarily lactic (produce lactic acid) until after 30 seconds, and most tennis points last fewer than 10 seconds; however, burning glycogen always produces some lactic acid, and the longer the match goes on, the more lactic acid your muscles will contain.

Here is why this is one of the most important pieces of sport science information you will ever learn...

The article continues with an explanation of how to properly train and drill, on and off court, for tennis players, and why traditional training methods to promote conditioning often interfere with or degrade motor skills.