Before your first serve, join the resistance

Despite its proverbial showers, April is a celebratory time of year for tennis fans. For those of us who aren’t part of the diehard tennis community that plays during winter (either turning out for clubs or at exclusive indoor courts), the warmer weather and lighter evenings mean a return to clay, grass or AstroTurf to hit some balls. If, like me, you are a fairweather player, you’ll know how frustrating those first few games can be. Our strokes are just as rusty as our rackets; our servevolley has as good as disappeared; and our cross-court forehand feels disappointingly alien. Yet it’s not motivation we lack: we’re desperate to improve, and fast, so we hit the court (and miss the balls) several times a week. The more time on court the better, right? Not necessarily – and certainly not for those who haven’t leapt for a smash since last September. Even the friendliest game of tennis can involve stop-start and multidirectional movements – the stuff of hamstring and calf tears, particularly among those who don’t train these movements year round – not to mention lots of stress on your shoulders. So while I’d never dispute that you need to play tennis regularly to get better at tennis quickly, it’s also good to take a longer-term view: be patient and build up court time slowly over April and May. You may still not, come June, be able to eradicate the English summer rain, but it’s less likely that injury will stop play. It’s not just a calm approach to court time that will keep you in check this tennis season but also the incorporation of resistance training (where muscles are strengthened via the process of working against resistance, such as barbells, dumbbells or just body weight) into your weekly schedule. Not only has Andy Murray attributed much of his success over the past few years – not to mention his defined, muscular physique