Cardio Tennis For Fun and Health

Cardio Tennis is the new fun way to health. The program is set up as a group activity for players at all ability levels. It features warm-up, cardio drills, and cool down. Players experience a fun high energy workout. Best of all, you’re having fun and working on your health and longevity. Go to United States Tennis Association or Cardio Tennis  for more information and to find a program in your area.

Tennis At Active.com

There’s a great new website that promotes a healthy active lifestyle. It’s called Active.com and it covers all sports from baseball to triathlon. The site provides featured articles with helpful information and it also lists activities and events like 5K runs and marathons. There’s also a section called “Get Fit in 2008″ with expert advice from Active health experts. The section on tennis provides training tips, features and profiles. Everytihing from nutrition and hydration to video tips for improving your game. Log into Active.com and see how you can get fit and make 2008 a great year.

The Mental Game of Tennis

The mental game of tennis is probably the hardest thing to control for many players. Unlike other sports, you don’t have team mates out there in the court with you patting you on the back and reminding you to focus (unless you’re playing doubles).

Mental control is harder to master than the other areas of your game. This is true because you have to admit to yourself that this is an area of your game that requires fixing. Frequently the player that wins a match is not necessarily the better player but the player that is mentally strong. Fortunately, several authors have written “How To” books to help us out. If you think or know that this is something that you need to work on don’t worry, you can work on that with books and tapes.

Click Here to learn about: Tennis: The Mental Game

Tennis Instructional Videos For Beginners

Tried Tennis And It Was Harder Than You Thought? It ’s Hard To Keep That Yellow Ball In The Court When You Have No Control. Right? Belive Me, It Can Be A Lot Of Fun Once You Start Learning The Game. Don’t Give Up. Learn The Right Way. Instructional Videos Is A Great Way to Learn Tennis The Easy Way.

Click here to view videos.

Tennis Telivision Coverage

Tennis coverage in the USA is very limited. The only tennis matches that are televized are limited to grand slams and a few other tournaments. I know the Tennis Channel coverage is 100 percent better than the prime TV channels but everyone does not have access to the Tennis Channel. It is not available in all areas of the country plus you must have a cable or satilite tv provider that offers it. ESPN2 probably provides the best coverage of tennis matches. However, there is so much great tennis that is not shown. Year round there are junior tennis players competing at the highest levels at USTA National Tournaments but the events are not televized. That is a total shame. You can watch rediculous sports on TV but not the USTA Nationals! On ESPN you can  watch food eating contest, poker tournaments, spelling bees, video gamers, and other non-sport competition but they won’t show junior tennis players, true athletes, competiting and giving it there all. Shame on the TV networks and shame on us for putting up with their nonsense.

Tennis Injuries

Tennis is great for your health but skipping a proper warm-up can put you on the sidelines instead of the court. Tennis requires fast actions and movements from one direction to another. These movements are great for developing agility and working your cardiovascular system. The USTA has addressed this and they provide a great regiment of warm-up exercises on their website. You can find this at http://www.playerdevelopment.usta.com/news/fullstory.sps?inewsid=249182. The title of this article is Strength Training and Conditioning for Tennis. The section on Dynamic Warm Up provides you with written information along with pictures so you can follow and do the warm-up properly. The exercises may look dorky but it beats the heck out of pain, injury, and recovery. The other sections in the Player Development page include Run Form Drills, Movement Training and Tennis Specific Conditioning, and Strenght Training Exercises. Applying all of these training areas to your tennis development will not only help you avoid injury, but it will probably get you in the best shape of your adult life.

Tennis Recruiting

When I take my daughter to tennis practice I see something in the surrounding park around the tennis courts that is very interesting. I see kids very young fully suited up in their football outfits running around doing drills to learn the game. Some of these kids are so small that they look like the characters in South Park with their huge helmets and shoulder pads. But what is happening? Recruitment. The parents and the coaches are getting these kids interested in a sport that they probably played or wanted to play at some point in their life. Now they want their kids to play. Even though the kids are practicing next to the tennis courts they have no idea of the fun they could be having in the tennis courts. Why? Because the parents have no idea how much fun tennis is. There are usually about 20 to 50 kids out there playing football. That’s a bunch compared to only 3 to 10 kids in the tennis courts. The same is true with the kids playing little league baseball, basketball, and soccer. They all start recruiting at a very young age.

I remember when there was no such thing as a soccer mom in the USA. Americans noticed soccer when the great Brazilian soccer player, Pele, came to the United States to play and promote the game. Maybe that’s what we need to do to promote tennis and recruit at an early age before all the young athletes are playing other sports. Do we have to bring in a famous player from another country to do that? No, of course not. We have famous American players in the USA. We also have famous players from all over the globe that live and train here in the US.

Another thing that would help is more tennis facilities. If the parks and recreation departments in different cities and states built and maintained more public tennis facilities the game would surely grow in the US. All high schools should have tennis courts also. They have facilities for all the other sports. I can only imagine what impact tennis would have had in my neighborhood in Brooklyn if tennis courts were available. How many kids would have something to do besides getting in trouble. These are my thoughts.