Running drills: do them with a racquet?

[Pirc Defense]

Should you do your agility/speed/quickness drills with a racquet in your hand? Why or why not?

I vote for yes, for what I think are obvious reasons.

 

[Marius_Hancu]

both without and with.
you need balanced development, but you need specialized too.

 

[joe sch]

Should you do your agility/speed/quickness drills with a racquet in your hand? Why or why not?

I vote for yes, for what I think are obvious reasons.

I agree with you. You need to do sprinting drills on the court with your racket so that it almost feels like your rackets is part of your body. One of the alltime greats, Ken Rosewall, had beautiful court coverage and it looked like his racket was part of his arm. You need this kind of smoothness going side to side and forward and backward if you are going to be able to hit baseline winners on the run and play allcourt tennis where you can volley and backpedal smoothly to put away overheads. Nice post, I love when players start thinking of ways to improve advanced tennis skills.