Whenever I tell people a story of how this player stopped playing, or this other player quit they always say something like, “Oh that’s such a shame.” People assume that if an athlete can keep playing professional tennis, an athlete should do so. Also, an FAQ I get is, “How much do you train?” Obviously not everybody is privy to the information about how much players train, and what kind of a physical toll professional competition takes on the body, so in this blog post I will try to explain.
Let’s start with the whole purpose and reasoning behind training in the first place. A competitive tennis match can range anywhere from 1 ½ hours to 3 hours. Doubles matches, with the no-ad scoring put in place a couple of years ago, range from 1 to 1 ½ hours long. Now, in a tournament if a player wins each day they can be playing a singles match and a doubles match in one day for 4 days in a row potentially, or any combination of spreading out four doubles matches and five singles matches in a 6-day stretch. Grand Slams are great because they give rest days in between, but doubles are full matches in Grand Slams. To be competitive, you have to run faster than the other player, have better aerobic capacity, be strong enough not to get injured, and be able to recover and play again the next day, against the highest ranked players in the world.
What kind of training can prepare an athlete for these kinds of physical demands? To give you a better sense of the sheer amount of physical activity necessary for competition I will describe a good warm up.
I would bet that anybody reading this has gone out on any particular day to exercise, hopped on a treadmill, jogged for 15 minutes, gotten off and thought to their self, “Alright that was good exercise for the day.” A good warm-up for pro tennis, either in practice or for a match, and before you even start hitting balls, is about 15 minutes long. First you have to run around for five minutes just to get your heart rate up. Then you stretch for about two minutes and then the remaining time is doing short little exercises like butt-kicks, arm circles or knee-ups to really get you sweating before you even pick up a racquet to practice.
A good hitting warm-up then takes at least 20-30 minutes. The reason is this; an athlete HAS to warm up to the point where they can start swinging with maximum effort on court, they can’t just step out and run around as fast as they can-the body doesn’t work that way. There are exceptions to this, and how much you need to warm up depends on how much an athlete has been exercising in the previous days, but it takes a lot in the previous days to decrease the need for a good warm up.
In terms of off-season (December) non-tournament training, every athlete is different in what they like to do and how much, but I will say that most every athlete must get out and train EVERY DAY with maybe one day of rest per week, regardless of how much they do each day. When you are a pro athlete training you are forced to exercise hard every day, and workouts are much longer. The hard workouts can vary in type-one day it is a hard sprinting workout, core workout, or weight lifting, and then the tennis workout must land on top of the training. Tennis is not easy on your lungs; it ALWAYS lifts my heart rate up and gives me a super hard workout. If I don’t try as hard as I can then I don’t practice good habits and my game doesn’t improve, so I HAVE to give it my all on the practice court every time I step on a court. If my other training has not been grueling enough I know I can always count on the tennis practice part of training to work me hard.
How many hours are we talking about? Well, at least 2-4 hours every day (other training and actual tennis practice combined) for 5-6 days a week, depending on how I feel. There are definitely players out there who train more than me, and it’s probably one factor that has held me back, because I actually get fatigued easily even though I take vitamins and eat extra protein. Every player’s physiology is different- I like to sleep a lot, and I get tired quicker than normal when I am really training hard. Training also affects my mood, and I get a bit snappy past a certain fatigue point. It’s all in the details and everybody has their own cocktail that is their self that they have to manage.
The training regimen for a pro tennis player is not an option, it is a must. The biology of the human body is not something that would allow an untrained person to go out and play strong tennis for 4 hours at a competitive level. If you want to be able to play strong for 4 hours a couple of days in a row you must gradually accustom your body to that amount of physical activity—which is the point of the whole training process, besides game, stroke, speed and strength improvement.
Many tennis players are quite strong, big girls when they compete and then when they stop they lose weight and actually become skinnier. In my opinion this is because the kind of exercise required by tennis builds muscle because it’s a bit over the top in terms of training. When the player stops training, they lose the muscle weight that the tennis regimen forced on them. Other players gain weight from the lack of activity when they stop playing—again, everybody’s physiology is different.
Truthfully, the younger a player is, the better they recover-and that’s a huge factor in tournament competition. I think that women reach their recovery peak from ages 17-20 and it’s kind of downhill from there. I felt at my physical peak when I was 16 years old, and when I reached age 22 I felt much older.
Anybody who says, “Oh it’s a shame that so-and-so quit,” is unknowingly condemning anybody who has the ability to play a high level of tennis to a life of above-normal physical activity, along with the emotional and physiological toll that goes with it. Training affects your sleeping habits (you sleep more, or if you train too hard you can’t sleep at all), your social life (it’s really tough to make it out to salsa night with your friends on a Saturday-all you can think about is a good night of rest), and your everyday life schedule more than you could ever imagine. You have to arrange all of your training activities around competing, and managing rest and activity for peak performance- taking a jog just for the joy of it is not really something that we get to do until we retire.
Once such a high level of training is reached injuries occur, and it can be very frustrating to have to pound your body to the point where it breaks down. I could write a whole book on tennis injuries but suffice it to say that planes and athletics don’t mix, PLEASE WEAR SUNSCREEN, HATS, AND SUNGLASSES, hard courts are much worse on the body than clay courts, and imagine how much stress a 120 mph serve puts on a person’s wrist, elbow and shoulder?
On one hand professional tennis is a passion, a consuming love, a joyful ride and it feels amazing to be one of the best in the world at something. On the other hand, once the life the life you have to lead in order to be a successful competitor starts distancing you too much from other things you want from life (if you want children, marriage, stability, physical health, or whatever it is you desire) even the most beautiful, talented players will quit.
The money factor plays a role also. To be working so hard and barely scraping even is not quite the envisioned life of a professional athlete right? Well, sorry, but it’s the reality for most of us. Only the very best of the best get to buy the houses, make $400,000 in a year and receive $100,000 just in appearance fees for one event.
I hope that maybe now people won’t be so judgmental of athletes with great careers who decide to give it up for a family, or even simply leave competition for a different life. The toll that the lifestyle of professional tennis takes on a person can be enormous, and the money and prestige earned through that lifestyle are sometimes not enough to justify that toll.
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