Strength training and tennis

Strength training makes you immobile! You lose your feel for the ball when you do strength training! Big muscles use too much oxygen! A friend of mine had sore muscles for 10 days and only then was he able to play again! Only Assis go pumping and inflating themselves!

At least I have often heard the statements above in conversations. With sympathy and benevolence, I can still pass the statements off as dangerous half-knowledge. If you look at it soberly, they tend to make excuses and ignore things. Strength training and tennis are always associated with fear. Some people have a similar fear when they fear that they will look like Arnold Schwarzenegger after a few units of strength training. Each of us tends to make misjudgments about things we don't know or have never tried. Before the blog post gets too philosophical, I'll talk about a topic that I know very well. Play tennis and do strength training at the same time.

You can see how I got into tennis. I got into strength training when I was a teenager. I went to a few youth tennis tournaments and often trained, but in retrospect I would describe my youth as quite classic. I didn't move to an academy or abroad when I was young, I lived at home, did my A levels, went to parties and tried different sports. A lot of it was about tennis, but not everything. A fact that was certainly very good from a human perspective, but not beneficial for my tennis. (More on this in a future blog post). And as a normal teenager, at some point you become interested in strength training. I was extremely skinny as a teenager, and a friend once said he'd never seen biceps thinner than mine. 2 weeks after this statement, I joined the gym and wanted to change my body. I wasn't thinking about wanting to play better tennis, I was a lanky teenager who wanted to get stronger. Films like Gladiator, 300, Rocky, Pumping Iron inspired me, and like any male teenager, I hoped for a lot of attention from women. I trained for a while without making any progress and was fascinated by the feeling that strength training gave me. It has become a kind of meditation for me; there are only a few other things that can create focus on the moment so well. Many young tennis players are advised to avoid strength training or only do it under the supervision of a trainer. I trained voluntarily and mostly alone, it never felt forced. That's why I have a different relationship with strength training than other athletes; for most it's torture. I see it as a means to be strong, balanced and injury-free.

Due to my affinity for strength training, I also read up on the topics of nutrition and athletic training. This helps a lot today to advance my career as a tennis player. When we look at the world's top tennis in 2023, you don't have to be an expert to see that the top athletes are doing strength training. In order to build up the required athleticism, you can't avoid lifting weights. During hypertrophy training (bodybuilding) you build up an enormous body feeling and build muscle mass that protects tendons and joints. Only when this foundation is in place should you move on to more dynamic training sequences. As is often the case, the dose makes the poison. You shouldn't try to set your bench press record 10 minutes before a match and then immediately serve it at 200 km/h. Too much muscle mass can actually cause high oxygen consumption. Unfortunately, we often confuse fat with pure muscle mass. Strength training is a highly complex topic, and due to certain clichés it is often dismissed as a “dummy” sport. Anyone who is familiar with strength training gets to know their body and its functions. If you have any questions about strength training in combination with tennis, feel free to DM me on Instagram or email me.

With sporty regards,

Hendrik