Team sports improve tennis skills
Marcin Bieniek explains how playing team sports can help to improve your tennis skills.
Tennis is an individual sport that requires complex skills. Tennis players must develop the skills needed to play successfully, and unpredictable factors like weather, audience, or courts make it even harder. In team sports, you have teammates who can help you when in trouble on the playing field, whereas in tennis, winning or losing is up to you.
Teammates' support is vital because it creates a friendly environment and more enjoyable training. Let us analyse how particular sports can improve the tennis court. Tennis players can enhance their on-court performance by participating in team sports because sports like soccer, basketball, or volleyball have many standard features for tennis.
Soccer
As we can see, both sports require similar physical, tactical and mental skills. In soccer, the critical physical skills are reaction, agility, speed, coordination, dexterity, endurance, and balance. The soccer player must also have excellent tactical skills like positioning, ball perception, quick decision-making, and an opponent's position. They also require good mental skills like concentration, control, commitment, and confidence. Unfortunately, there is also a disadvantage of playing soccer – injury - which can occur due to a collision with another player. In conclusion, soccer is an excellent opportunity to have fun and improve many of the skills we use in tennis.
Basketball
Basketball is a friendly game that can be played in teams or one-on-one. Basketball players have to be quick, agile, confident, and calm. Skills like endurance or reaction must be at a reasonable level to perform well. As we all know, the best basketball players are strong, precise, and can jump high. Tennis players can improve many physical factors (quickness, footwork, endurance, reaction) by playing basketball. However, two things are of the utmost importance: jumping and accuracy.
Why do I choose these skills? Practicing jumps is helpful for a great service (going up higher and further forward), precise overhead (better ball-body position), and effective net game (reaction to wide balls like a spring). Because of the specifications of this sport (contact), there are possible injuries due to a collision. Knees and ankles are also exposed to a more significant workload because of the jumping factor. However, friendly games with a calm attitude can benefit more than damage. Tennis players can take a lot from playing basketball.
Volleyball
What can tennis players develop? Like soccer and basketball, Volleyball can bring a lot of advantages to tennis players. Watching a volleyball match, we can observe great movement, reactions, jumps, and powerful attacks. Volleyball players perform potent attacks with the dominant arm, which would allow the tennis player to develop a more robust and faster dominant arm. In Volleyball, the attacking action involves jumping and arching the back, which can help improve tennis strokes, such as the service (more flexibility in the back, which can result in a bigger kick serve).
Volleyball players always have their knees bent to react quickly to the opponent's return. Tennis players need to develop this position to respond in the same manner on the tennis court. There is the possibility of injuries in Volleyball (knees and ankles), but it is the nature of every sport. Volleyball is another example of a team sport that can help one become a better tennis player.
Summary
Team sports provide an excellent opportunity to have fun and improve our tennis skills. As I have shown above, team sports have much in common with tennis, so we should not limit our development to just tennis court activities. I hope this article will encourage more tennis players to participate in team sports as it will result in better athletes on the tennis courts.
Page Reference
If you quote information from this page in your work, then the reference for this page is:
- BIENIEK, M. (2012) Team sports improve tennis skills [WWW] Available from: https://www.brianmac.co.uk/articles/article116.htm [Accessed 30/7/2025]
About the Author
Marcin Bieniek is a tennis coach from Poland and a former professional player (Polish National Juniors Team). He is a certificated tennis coach by the Polish Tennis Coaching Association and the Professional Tennis Registry. Marcin has worked with many of the top 20 Polish Juniors and 150 players worldwide.
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