Tennis fitness after 40: seven principles, not a copied programme

You are over forty. You want to improve your tennis. How should you organise the physical side of it? Should you run three times a week? Should you do interval training? Should you lift weights and bench press?

This is not about the fancy exercise you saw on Instagram that nobody actually does. It is not about a special concept either. It is about understanding the principles, because once you have those, you can find your own exercises and select what is best for you.

That matters more than any specific movement, because it is what lets you personalise. Every player I put a programme in front of gets a different one.

There are seven categories. The first one is the elephant in the room.

1. Do not get injured

Everything else depends on this. Daily, you need work that does two things: release tension, and increase range of motion. Those are the two questions to keep asking. How do I release tension? How do I open range of motion?

Releasing tension. Use a massage ball to ease the knots in your fascia and muscles. Start with your mobile point. If you are dissociated, as I am, that sits in the upper back, roughly where a bra strap crosses. If you are associated, like Roger Federer, it is lower, around the belt line. Place the ball there and breathe deeply into it.

Then work the spots tennis players reliably build up. The glutes: place the ball, lean into it, hunt for the knot, stay there, then move the leg slightly to release it. The calves matter just as much. Find the spot, then stack the other leg on top for more weight, and use your foot to work back and forth. That last part is active release, and it does more than simply pressing.

Opening range of motion. Yoga movements work well here, or a band. Squatting matters. Hanging from a bar is excellent: it decompresses the spine, and you can lean side to side and rotate while you hang. If you live a modern life you sit a great deal, so decompressing the spine and opening the hips back up is not optional.

Every day. Non-negotiable.

2. Build lower-body strength, one leg at a time

You need strength, and particularly in the legs. Squats are fine. Deadlifts with a bar will not hurt you.

But if you only have room for one exercise, choose one performed on a single leg. Tennis is played on one leg. You could argue about the split step, but the efforts themselves are overwhelmingly single-legged, so that is where the transfer is. Step-ups work. Single-leg squats work, going down and back up, and adding weight in the hands as you progress will not hurt.

More strength gives you more power in your movement, and it also gives you more endurance, because every step costs you less energy than it used to.

For sets and repetitions, three to five sets of three to five repetitions organises a session well. What matters more than the exact numbers is that volume and intensity climb gradually over time.

One thing that belongs here and is almost always skipped: your feet. Train them barefoot. Stand on something steady and do calf raises, but continue past the normal finish and press out through the big toe. Look up work for grasping a towel with your toes as well. Strong feet make changing direction dramatically easier, which puts this somewhere between strength and reactivity.

3. Learn to decelerate

Deceleration means arriving at the ball and stopping without wasting energy. The wasted energy has a name: leakage.

I once asked an amateur player to do some lunges. Every single one had instability in it. He could not lunge and simply stay there. That is leakage, and it is expensive.

At base level, the lunge itself is the exercise. As you improve, the goal becomes arriving faster and faster and still stopping clean. Watch Jannik Sinner for this. He barely moves once he arrives. Federer was the same. It looks like walking on water.

To train it: hops, then jumps, then sprints, each finishing with a stop on one leg. Jump sideways, stop, and hold, then extend the distance. Sprint and stop on one leg, and ask whether you can hold your posture without drifting. Then add height, dropping from a step, two legs first, eventually one, and only once you control the landing.

Get this right and your footwork improves on its own, because you have stopped paying for every change of direction.

4. Build a core that does not leak

This follows directly from deceleration, and it serves the same purpose: stop losing energy.

Find a cable machine and do the rotation Djokovic favours, cable at your side, rotating through the trunk, because tennis is full of rotation. Then the Pallof press: take the weight, hold it at your chest, and walk sideways against the resistance so your core has to resist rather than produce. Finally, carries. A kettlebell in one hand, then walk, adjusting constantly to keep your posture square.

Together with the deceleration work, this is what stops the leakage and makes your footwork efficient.

5. Train acceleration with plyometrics

The opposite side of deceleration. Plyometric work means bouncing, and bouncing is the thing to keep in mind throughout.

Pogos are the simplest version: stay tall and bounce through the ankles, forward and backward, two feet at first and one foot later. Any exercise where you rebound belongs in this category. The deceleration drills convert too, arriving and then exploding out rather than arriving and holding.

The principle is always the same. Spend as little time on the ground as possible, then bounce back.

Skipping rope belongs here as well. Boxers have used it for a hundred years for good reason. One tip: keep the heel as high as you can. You do not want it dropping and rising. Stay up on the balls of the feet and bounce.

6. Build endurance without three hard runs a week

Once a week, do a zone two session. Zone two means genuinely easy, the pace where you could hold a conversation with a friend. Forty minutes of jogging. That is it.

It is excellent for recovery, for clearing waste, for how quickly you recover between points and across a match, and for your general health. Once a week is enough. If you already play two or more hours most days, that is largely built already, and built specifically for your sport.

If you want more, add interval training. There are many ways to do it. Professionals often use a VersaClimber, because it loads arms and legs together and drives the heart rate higher than anything else. Some players run 200 metre repeats with two minutes rest, six to eight times, and then need serious recovery afterwards.

One of the best work-to-rest structures is ten seconds of sprint every minute. Ten seconds on, fifty seconds off, repeated. Keep going until your speed or explosiveness drops, and end the session at that point rather than pushing through.

Some people prefer thirty seconds on, thirty seconds off. That produces far more lactic acid and it is much harder. If you do it, take at least two days afterwards. Past forty, training on top of that is an injury risk. It is also the session that leaves me most wrecked the following day. It hits the nervous system hard enough that I sometimes want to cry, which may simply mean I need it more than most.

7. Optional: upper body

If you want to work your upper body, because it feels good or because you want more behind your serve, it is not a bad idea. Posture benefits too.

Pull-ups. Presses, particularly the military press or a kettlebell press. None of that will hurt you. And anything involving grip helps: the carries from the core section already do it, and pull-ups do it too. Grip work protects your shoulders.

Where this actually leads

That is how to organise your training if you are over forty. Seven categories, each one a principle rather than a prescription, so you can choose the exercises that suit your body and your week.

Fitness is not the core of my coaching, though. The core is organising your training so that you play in a way that fits you, which is what I call your natural tennis. We are all different and we all move differently, so the goal was never to copy one correct forehand or backhand. It is to find what matches your own motor signature.

That, and the mental side, so you stop spending energy on negative self-talk you never chose.

Frequently asked questions

How often should a tennis player over 40 train off the court?

Mobility work is daily and non-negotiable: releasing tension with a massage ball and opening range of motion, which takes only minutes. Around that, one to two strength sessions a week built on single-leg work, and one easy zone two cardio session of about forty minutes. Interval training is optional on top. The common mistake is inverting this, doing three hard runs a week and no daily mobility, which is how players over forty end up injured rather than fitter. Volume is rarely the limiting factor at this age. Recovery is, so sessions should climb gradually in volume and intensity rather than starting hard.

What is the best cardio for tennis?

One zone two session a week, meaning genuinely easy running at a pace where you could hold a conversation, for about forty minutes. It improves recovery between points and across a match, helps clear waste, and is good for general health. If you already play two or more hours most days, much of your endurance is already built and built specifically for the sport. If you want to add more, interval training works well, and one of the best structures is ten seconds of sprint every minute, meaning ten seconds of work and fifty seconds of rest, repeated until your speed or explosiveness drops. Stop the session at that point rather than pushing on.

Should tennis players lift weights?

Yes, with the priority on the lower body and on single-leg work. Squats and deadlifts are fine, but tennis is played on one leg, so if you only have room for one exercise, choose a single-leg one such as a step-up or a single-leg squat, adding weight in the hands as you progress. Three to five sets of three to five repetitions organises a session well, with volume and intensity climbing gradually over time. More strength gives more power in your movement and also more endurance, because each step costs less energy than it used to. Upper body work with pull-ups and presses is optional and mainly helps the serve and posture.

Why do I lose energy every time I change direction?

That is leakage, and it is a deceleration problem rather than a fitness problem. Leakage is the instability that appears when you arrive somewhere and cannot simply stop and stay. A simple test is a lunge: if you cannot hold the bottom position still, you are leaking. Training it starts with lunges, then progresses to hops, jumps and sprints that each finish with a stop on one leg, then to sideways jumps held on landing, then to dropping from a step. Core work supports the same goal, particularly cable rotations, Pallof presses and single-arm carries. Fix the leakage and footwork improves on its own, because you stop paying for every change of direction.

How do I avoid getting injured as I train more?

Injury prevention is the first category of training, not an afterthought. Daily work should do two things: release tension and increase range of motion. Use a massage ball on your mobile point, which sits in the upper back for some players and around the belt line for others, and on the glutes and calves where tennis players reliably build up. Then open range of motion through yoga-style movements, band work, squatting, and hanging from a bar to decompress the spine and reopen the hips. Modern life means sitting for most of the day, which is what creates the stiffness that eventually becomes an injury. Strong feet matter too, since they make changing direction far easier.

What equipment do I need to train for tennis at home?

Very little. A massage ball and a resistance band cover most of the daily mobility work. A bar to hang from is valuable for decompressing the spine. A step handles both step-ups and depth drops for deceleration. A skipping rope covers the plyometric work. Beyond that, a kettlebell is useful for presses and carries, and access to a cable machine helps for rotation work but is not essential. The barrier is almost never equipment. It is having a routine short enough to actually complete in a normal week, which is why a few minutes of mobility performed daily beats a long session performed occasionally.