10 Week Tennis and Fitness Program for High School Students.

(Basic framework)

By Brad Properjohn

This plan is written with the presumption that children are available Monday to Friday for about 2 hours. It is expected that general weekend activities might include some tennis club play / competition, involvement in other sports and interests such as swimming, walking and bike ridding.  

Recommended Tennis sessions 1.5 hours (30 min fitness work)

(not including Fridays match days)  

15 minutes on court drills / workouts, scrambling, leaping for overheads, lunging for passing shots at net. Etc  

15 minutes serving. 10 serves to each corner (= 40) plus 20 second serves (60 in total).  

30 minutes Singles play or 2 against one (single person receives to speed up the game.

ie when one person is serving the other is picking up balls and getting ready to serve. 2 points on 2 points off rotate with single player after they have won 5 points from the servers combined (keep the rotations pretty even). 

30 minutes Doubles match play / points  

Long run Schedule Week 1 to 10 Tuesdays

Week 1.    15minutes

Week 2.    20minutes

Week 3.    25minutes

Week 4.    25minutes

Week 5.    30minutes

Week 6.    25minutes

Week 7.    20minutes

Week 8.    20minutes

Week 9.    15minutes

Week 10.  15minutes  

Note: long runs (20 min +) are at medium pace. In other words you should not be exhausted at the end of them.  The shorter 15 minute runs should be timed and run at ¾ + pace. These times will give you a good indication of general endurance.  

Standard Sprint work all weeks on Monday & Wednesdays  

  Agility Sprint work (on court) all weeks on Thursdays.

Shuttle run x 4 (break between each); 10 meters up and back snaking through 5 cones.

Skipping 3 x 100 (alternate skipping steps each 100)

Plyometric’s (jump training) Star jumps, burpies, vertical jumps, singles ally line to dubs ally line etc 

On court sprints (“the lines” “suicides”) slide training on clay.  

Match play Fridays all weeks

15 minute warm up

5 minute jogging increasing gradually (take as much time as needed to warm up to be fully able to sprint.

General limbering up combining stretches and exercises.  

1 Set against weaker opponent

1 Set against stronger opponent

1 Set against doubles.

You can use short deuces to quicken the matches. You will get about 12 games per hour.  

This is a general all year round program that is designed to get players to their peak at the end of the 10 weeks in time for holiday tournaments.  Some school terms / semesters will not run to 10 weeks so the program will have to be condensed to fit your parameters.  

Also if competition play is mid week your Monday schedule will start 2 days after the comp days (depending on the duration and heat).  

As it’s almost imposable to develop a program that suits everyone you will have to tailor your program from the above.  The general rule is heavy work load / high impact then light work the following day.  Light days are followed by heavy workouts with one day active rest and one day free (Sat-Sun) per week.  Light workouts the day before competition and no long runs (25-30 min) 2 days before comps.  

Any weight training would need to be properly supervised by a professional fitness instructor and would have to be worked into this program.  

NOTE; Monitoring of all students performance and cross referencing them to scholastic output would give any trainer a good incite as to whether or not the training was overloading the individual.  

Due to the vast differences in body size and shape with teenagers, group training session’s can cause some apprehension amongst students.  However, once the initial hurdles have been overcome it can be quite a galvanizing experience for any team.  

Good Luck and enjoy your coaching experience

Brad Properjohn