How often should one practice for general improvement as a rec player?

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Daniel Andrade

Hall of Fame
I'm trying to a start a goal for tennis improvement that will last a year from today. I will tackle general areas of my game where I'm lacking, HOWEVER I'm trying to choose the time I can practice wisely since I have other things to do. How much time is enough for improvement as a rec player, as long as practice is of quality and deliberate? 4 hours a week? More?
 
I think this is highly dependent on your level, athleticism and other factors. With the right coaching you might learn a lot from a single lesson, and then not learn much for the next few weeks, it's quite random.
 
Most rec players never practice. They either warm up for 5 minutes and play sets or they hit cooperatively from the middle for 2 hours!
Don’t waste time. Hit cooperatively no more than 5 minutes. Go straight to working on patterns commonly seen during points.
 
2x week sets against various opponents, (about 4 hours total) and 2x week practice (self feed or drills, about 3 hours total).
 
Depends on how good your fundamentals are relative to the level you want to achieve ultimately. Also depends on how effective is your training. To me, somethings can't be learned in matches. Other things can only be learned through serious competition. I try to alternate between different tasks, like 2-3 months matches only to identify problems. Then several months mostly training with practice sets to engrain new skills. Also depends on the specific problem you are trying to deal with. For learning kick serve, it took several iterations over couple of years. For learning the most basic footwork patterns, it took couple of months.
 
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I take one weekly lesson and also have one other practice session on another day with focused drills. The lesson is more of a hitting session these days with my coach although we do some hand feed drills sometimes. On the other five days, I play matches - these days it is a 60/40 doubles/singles mix whereas it used to be be more singles for many years.

In my case I’m just trying to keep my game tuned up and in good shape as I learned tennis as a kid more than forty years ago. If you are still within the first 3-4 years of starting tennis and still learning fundamentals, I would recommend practicing a lot more than I do.
 
If I were you, I would determine what exactly I want to improve to achieve actual Goal. There’s pointplay and matchplay, which (unless you have 6-day per week tennis regiment) is best improved by … playing points, matches, and simulated situations. While being aware of things like your typical issues. Nothing beats mindful experience in short/mid-term improvement.

You may also want to analyze your game for glaring gaps and issues. Technical, tactical, physical. You may want to address them first in like 3-6 month period before going deep into matchplay again.

You may also be after significant improvement, which may require all-around work: where you are good you can get better, get to next level; where you lack you can improve. Technique, fitness, focus, match-toughness and smarts, choices, understanding opponents’ games… here you can accommodate 10+ hours per week on court + extra fitness hours + good recovery regiment + reading some books and looking some tennis for the level you aspire for (not pro), and learning how they loose, how they win there.

But whatever you wish to afford, an on-court coach is an x5 multiplier, if not key requirement. Not because he mandatorily knows better than anyone on the internet, but because he can see you immediately from the side and give instant feedback. It’s totally invaluable!
 
A rec player should think carefully about what goals he is trying to achieve in terms of improvement if he has already plateaued at a particular level of tennis for many years because his entire social calendar of tennis might be at his previous level. If you improve in level well beyond your social circle and become one of the better players in your city for your age group, you will get competitive matches regularly only if you travel to tournaments or play on a lot of league teams which usually involves a lot of driving around.

I trained hard during the COVID years in my mid-fifties with my coach and suddenly found that I improved enough where many of my long-time opponents didn’t want to play singles against me anymore as the results were getting one-sided. I couldn’t get players my age to play regularly because they were getting outmatched from not training as hard as me under coaching supervision. Players much younger than me who had college experience also didn’t want to play much if they incurred a few losses because it hurt their egos too much to lose in singles against someone old enough to be their dad - if they won, they just beat a guy old enough to be their dad and there wasn’t much bragging rights about that either at the club. So social singles started drying up at my club and I had to start playing more doubles. A solution would have been to play tournaments or join more league teams, but I like playing only at my club and rarely have more than 2 to 2.5 hours open on my schedule to play tennis on any given day - so, driving around in the traffic of Southern California all over the county is not practical or a priority for me. It is easier to just play more doubles which is what I am doing now and I look back fondly at the last decade when I averaged 125 singles matches a year.

While my experience might be an extreme case, there are a lot of anecdotes of people who improve suddenly beyond the level of their social circle or get bumped up above the level of the team in which their friends play and then they end up playing less tennis which was not the outcome they wanted when they started on a rapid course of improvement. Be careful what you wish for!

Also as you get older, fitness matters more and more to stay at an advanced level even if you have the technique for it. So unless you are willing to invest in training your fitness in the gym, your level will not stay at your highest level for a long time. At lower levels, you can plateau and stay there for most of your adult life.
 
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socallefty said:
many of my long-time opponents didn’t want to play singles against me anymore as the results were getting one-sided. I couldn’t get players my age to play regularly because they were getting outmatched from not training as hard as me under coaching supervision. Players much younger than me who had college experience also didn’t want to play much if they incurred a few losses because it hurt their egos too much to lose in singles against someone old enough to be their dad - if they won, they just beat a guy old enough to be their dad and there wasn’t much bragging rights about that either at the club.
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Wow. While I understand the logic behind situation, it totally doesn’t gel with my altitude towards tennis. How can I not love getting my a… wooped regularly by better player! Facing a senior to me who actually plays great game is fascinating. Ego — well yeah, it hurts, but it fuels my tanks for more training. And the crowd around the tourneys I play is mostly the same.

There’s that guy who complains about trained youngsters who c’mon at him drilling full-power FHs left and right after he paid participation fee… but he’s like alone, and overall still fun competitor to face every now and then.

But I live in big city, and you hardly ever have a chance to get better than everyone… you can get into ProAm doubles for example, including mixed ProAm doubles, where you get you coach-trained ego destroyed by young ladies :-D

Club dudes still love you as you improve, they just pair you with the weakest hack around and love to try to beat you by hitting to your partner…

Singles — yeah, need to sign up for higher-level tournaments and leagues to play. But still enough depth in this sea, unless you are 5.5+

Again, I see how smaller town may have too shallow waters for you to find competition. But all that “they don’t want to play you once you’ve improved” situation is believe-able, but weird to me. Play handicapped after all, if you 6:1 6:2 them start 0:15 every game and see where it ends.

(PS I got suggested 15:0 advantage on games and it hurt my ego then, I preferred to loose 1:6 or even get bageled… but if we played regularly with that guy, I would eventually accept!)
 
Dragy said:
I see how smaller town may have too shallow waters for you to find competition.
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It is not even my town I’m talking about - I play only within my tennis club and don’t venture anywhere else to play tennis. But I can still play tennis every day as long as I’m willing to play a lot of doubles these days. That is why I qualified my comments by saying that you have be willing to play tournaments and leagues if you improve a lot and that involves travel that you have to be willing to do. Many rec players are like me and typically play out of only one venue whether it is a private club or public facility.

Out of 20 million players that the USTA claims play tennis at least once a year, only 250K play USTA leagues and probably even less play tournaments. So most players are dependent on their social circle to get to play tennis regularly.

There are also cliques at tennis clubs for each level. If you break out of your clique and try to enter into the ones that were 1-2 levels above you a couple of years ago, it is not so easy as you would have been ‘branded’ already as a lower level player and it is hard to get the invites to prove yourself at a higher level. Tournaments and leagues are the ways to easily get opponents at various levels otherwise.
 
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socallefty said:
have been ‘branded’ already as a lower level player and it is hard to get the invites to prove yourself at a higher level.
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That sounds sick to me... why on earth, passions and hobbies are uniting, not dividing.

I also get that "250k out of 20m", but we are not playing lottery, we are free-will individuals who can choose who we approach and share courts with. It's cool to have a club in a neighborhood where you can get in 10 min every day and get a good play, but having scheduled practice sessions with coaches and hitting partners, as well as weekend drive like twice a month to compete with higher level opponents is also not something unreal!
 
I find a mix of playing competitive match and spend time toning your strokes with hitting partners without scoring works best for any sports including tennis
What your percentage mix is up to you. Generally I like to play matches first Find out what I need to improve in
Then Practice acquiring those skills. After developing new way of playing Play a few matches testing if those changes hold up in competition. Also fitness is very important. Grinding out a match with a top competitor I have be in top shape requires non tennis workout too. I do weights, breathing exercises, treadmills. They help build up muscle endurance and breathing exercises calms the mind down when playing critical points in a match.
 
Daniel Andrade said:
How much time is enough for improvement as a rec player, as long as practice is of quality and deliberate? 4 hours a week? More?
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25% of the time you spend for tennis for practicing strokes or on court stuff.
25% of the time for general agility and tennis specific strength training.
50% for matches

The important factor is that it depends on how much time you plan to spend for tennis. And generally the above ratio gives you a good stable improvement, at the same time by keeping things fun (recreation. duh).


ohh wait I forgot ..... then where do you find time to spend on TT :)
 
Morch Us said:
25% of the time you spend for tennis for practicing strokes or on court stuff.
25% of the time for general agility and tennis specific strength training.
50% for matches

The important factor is that it depends on how much time you plan to spend for tennis. And generally the above ratio gives you a good stable improvement, at the same time by keeping things fun (recreation. duh).


ohh wait I forgot ..... then where do you find time to spend on TT :)
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I plan on practicing at least 4 hours a week.
Hey, would you care to help me with my serve? I made a bit of a long post. I would appreciate your feedback. (If you have some 15 minutes to spend)

Day one of a year of (deliberate) tennis training (looong post)

So as I said on another post I decided to give myself of a year to improve a lot in tennis. Since I don't have that many people to play with, most of my training will have to be serve training (Don't worry I still play at least once a week with someone else, either practice or matchplay, and in...
tt.tennis-warehouse.com tt.tennis-warehouse.com
 
Once a week will typically maintain standard. Twice and above will see improvement. It also depends on the quality of your opponent.
 
Daniel Andrade said:
I'm trying to a start a goal for tennis improvement that will last a year from today. I will tackle general areas of my game where I'm lacking, HOWEVER I'm trying to choose the time I can practice wisely since I have other things to do. How much time is enough for improvement as a rec player, as long as practice is of quality and deliberate? 4 hours a week? More?
Click to expand...
Depends on whether you have grooved strokes or not (since that's job #1). If you do, identify how you're losing points and work on that. If not, you've got to possess grooved strokes.
 
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