Here's where I start to expand my discussion from simply "NTRPers who want to improve their level" to "tennis players, at large, who want to get better." And here, I will say that I'm still going to stay somewhat within the NTRP model, because it provides at least a semi-objective measurement of a player's skill. If I *think* I improved a ton in the last year, but I didn't have an NTRP rating to start with...how do I know I really improved? To me, this is one of the best advertisements for NTRP...you have a tool to track your progress on the court.
So you want to get better...what's the first step? Okay, let's pretend I'm coaching everyone listening in out there in radioland, and I have Total Control of the situation. I'm the coach, and you get to do what I tell you, just like my coaches used to do to me in high school. So here it is, campers. Drop your tennis rackets, and pick your running and biking shoes, because you aren't going to see a tennis court for at least two months. I want to see you putting in at least 75 miles a week on a road bike, I want to see you pumping iron for two hours twice a week, and you're also going to be doing a ton of agility exercises like running tires just like the football players do. Keep a journal, we'll meet once a week or more often to chart your progress, and if I like what I see in two months or so, we'll talk about getting back on the tennis court again.
Collectively, as tennis players, I think we forget that tennis is both a game and a sport. And to play any sport well, you have to be an athlete. I'd love to take an accomplished triathelete out on a tennis court and basically teach him or her the game from ground zero. I'll bet it would take about a week, two hours a day, and her or she would be a 4.0, minimum, at the end of that two weeks. So that's my sermon for this morning: You want to be a better tennis player, become a better athlete.
This forum is about NTRP, which is irrespective of age, but I don't think I'm making any rash assumptions when I say that most of the posters are probably 30 somethings or older. There are age groups in tennis, well, there you have it. Most other sports have Masters competiton programs, ski racing, my winter sport, being one of them. I just finished my season with the tech races (SL and GS) at the US National Masters Championships at Copper Mountain, Colorado. One of the male competitors was something like 86 years old, and he didn't get any slack from the course on race day. He raced the same course I did, which one of the Austrians in Men's Class 9 (65 plus) said was as tough as any World Cup course he'd ever skied.
This 86 year old gent was strong, limber, and fit, and he didn't get that way, I'm sure, just from skiing. Every Masters racer I know is basically doing dry land all year long, more in the summer than in the winter, but it's still a required activity any time. For me, in the summer, two hours twice a week of weights, 50 to 75 miles a week on the road bike, 4 to 5 days a week of hard tennis two hours a day (tennis and skiing are excellent cross training for each other).
If you're not putting in time cross-training off the court, you're not the athlete, or the tennis player, you could be. It's also, I believe, a good thing to do other sports. I know people who play tennis all year, 12 months a year. That's burnout city for me. If you get away from the sport and do something else, you come back fresher and more motivated. When I was teaching skiing, we used to say "We learn to ski in the summer, we learn to play tennis in the winter..." Words to live by...
