Tennis Footwork Exercises - Agility Drills for Tennis <br /><br />Mazin Hadi Kzar<br />Physical Education and Sport Sciences Department, Al-Mustaqbal University College, 51001 Hillah, Babil, Iraq<br />[email protected]<br /><br />Tennis footwork exercises and agility drills can benefit every tennis player regardless of age. Many players make mistakes in their tennis footwork because they fail to do the proper training with tennis footwork exercises. <br /><br /> <br />In professional tennis, tennis footwork is considered as one of the most important for execution in matches. <br />Proper footwork in tennis will allow you to get into the right position to execute the stroke in balance, leading to a better overall shot. In addition, proper tennis footwork will also allow you to recover after returning a ball. Thus, if you want to play tennis effectively, a player must learn and practice not only the correct movements but also engage in agility drills to improve their performance on court. <br /><br />Below are some tennis footwork exercises for you to develop and improve your footwork execution. <br />Jumping rope tennis footwork exercise<br />The objective of this tennis footwork exercise is for the players to improve their alertness and endurance. This is also important to develop the players hand and body coordination and also timing. <br />Everybody is familiar with how to do execute this jumping rope exercise because it is a very old exercise. This exercise may be outdated, but it is a very good way to tone up all the muscles in your body and develop your footwork. If you have not done this exercise, it might be a bit difficult for you in the beginning but as you practice it every day it will just come naturally. <br />This exercise should be done in a hard surface that is free of any movement when you do the jumping part of the exercise. You can also do the exercise in a soft but stable surface like grass. This is ideal especially for beginners because it is less hard on your feet and ankles. <br />For beginners or for players who have not done any jumping rope exercise before, you can do a short interval first. A 20-second rope jump followed by a 5-second rest interval is ideal. As you go along, you can increase your time interval between the rope jump and your rest period. Once you have mastered this tennis footwork exercise, you can do a three-minute rope jump and 60-second rest period interval, for at least four sets. You can do many sets as you can but remember not to overdo it. <br />Key words: Tennis, Footwork, Exercises – Agility, Drills <br /><br />