Most tennis players who hit the court three or four days a week never actually improve. They play recreational sets, hit some balls, then after an hour they feel tired and go home. But half a year later, they’re still shanking the same shots and losing to the same players. It’s not for a lack of trying; it’s the lack of a system. A random week of hitting over and over, without a clear purpose, is just going to make you a really good hitting partner. But you won’t be better at matches because hitting partner is different than doubles partner. All it does is reinforce what you already do.
Improvement requires a week that spirals through different practice modes: strokes, movement, weights, match play, rest and recovery. There’s no one way for everyone to do it, just like there’s no one perfect player. But there is an optimal you, playing your A-game, and here are some ways to find it.
Why “Just Hitting” Stalls Your Progress
Purposeful practice involves practicing with a specific goal in mind and receiving feedback on your performance. This type of practice is much more effective at improving your skills than simply going through the motions. For example, instead of mindlessly hitting the ball back and forth over the net during a tennis practice, you might focus on your forehand technique for 20 minutes with the help of your coach, making sure to follow through completely and keep your eye on the ball.
You would then receive feedback on your performance and make adjustments as necessary. This targeted, goal-oriented practice is much more effective at improving your skills than simply hitting the ball back and forth for an hour.
It also tends to feel less fun in the moment, which is part of why so few players stick with it. Rallying casually is relaxing precisely because nothing is being demanded of you – there’s no target to hit, no count to keep, no failure to notice. Purposeful practice asks you to fail on purpose, over and over, until the correction sticks. That discomfort isn’t a sign you’re doing it wrong; it’s usually a sign you’re doing it right.
The Weekly Blueprint
A good training week isn’t one long grind – it’s several short, focused sessions that each do a different job: sharpening technique, building the serve, moving without the ball, testing it all in a real match, then letting your body recover. Here’s a simple structure for four to five days a week, adjusted to fit your own schedule.
- Day 1 – Technical practice. 60-75 minutes drilling one specific fault (e.g. cross-court forehand). Track consistency.
- Day 2 – Serve only. 45+ minutes: flat first serves, spin second serves, serving under pressure.
- Day 3 – Footwork, no ball. Ladder drills, cone sprints, lateral lunges, side shuffles.
- Day 4 – Match play with a focus. Play a real set with one tactical goal (e.g. attack every short ball). Losing is fine – you’re testing whether the work transfers.
- Day 5 – Strength and cross-training. Core, rotator cuff, and leg work; swimming or cycling for low-impact cardio.
- Day 6 – Rest or active recovery. Light stretching or a walk. No tennis, no gym.
None of this has to be followed to the letter. What matters is that the week has variety built in, rather than the same hitting session repeated five times – that’s the difference between a week that actually moves your game forward and one that just keeps you busy. Miss a day here or there and don’t stress about rearranging the whole week around it; consistency over a month matters far more than hitting this exact structure every single week.
If you’re short on time, don’t just chop days off the end of the list – cut the volume within each day instead. A 30-minute version of Day 1 focused on one fault still beats skipping technical work entirely, and a rushed 20-minute serve session still beats none at all. The order matters less than making sure every category gets touched at some point in the week, even if some days shrink down to their bare minimum.
Structured Feedback Beats Guessing
Here’s the part that trips people up: you can build a technically perfect weekly schedule and still not improve, because you can’t always see your own flaws. A lot of technical issues feel correct while they’re happening. Your brain has adapted to compensate for a flaw so thoroughly that the flawed version feels like the natural one, and the correct version feels wrong the first dozen times you try it. This is where self-coaching hits a ceiling.
Video analysis helps here – recording your serve or forehand and watching it back often reveals things you’d never catch live, like a dropped elbow or a late split-step. But video alone doesn’t fix anything; it just shows you the problem. Turning that footage into a corrected motion, and then grooving that correction is where a second set of trained eyes speeds things up enormously.
Working with a coach or a structured program like Roseville Tennis by Evolve Tennis Academy takes the guesswork out of which technical flaw actually matters most right now, and gives you drills matched to your specific game instead of generic advice pulled from a video. The weekly blueprint above works with or without a coach, but it works faster with one, because someone else is watching for the thing you can’t see about your own game.
Match Your Training To Your Game Style
It’s important to understand that not all players should go through the same training regimen. For instance, a baseliner who relies on winning points with rally tolerance (meaning you construct and play long, high-quality rallies over and over again) should practice consistently and avoid serve-and-volley footwork patterns during practice.
On the other hand, a serve-and-volleyer should make a large investment in the serve session and should also focus on footwork drills where you practice the split-step timing at the net instead of accounting for baseline-to-baseline recovery. An all-courter needs a bit of everything, which usually means the six-day structure fits them most cleanly and without much adjustment.
Before you lock in your weekly plan, figure out whether you’re trying to win matches with a serve-and-volley game or by being a grinding baseliner. Training a serve-and-volley game as a grinding baseliner – and the reverse – ensures you’re building skills that don’t match how you actually try to win points. That mismatch is one of the quieter reasons players train hard for months and see almost no change in their match results.
Track It, Or You’re Just Guessing
Maintain a simple training log. Nothing complex – a notebook or a phone note where you write down what you practiced, how many repetitions or minutes, and how your body responded. After a few weeks, you will be able to identify some trends: perhaps your elbow starts hurting whenever you start a heavy serve session after taking a day off, or maybe you perform much better during games in the weeks when you consistently practice your footwork. But without a log, all you have is a hunch. With one, you have actual data that you can use to modify your training.
A log will also protect you against progressive overload done wrong. You want to gradually increase the volume and intensity of your practice if you want to become stronger and more resistant, but the keyword is “gradual”.
A log will quickly highlight if you may have increased your hitting volume too much during a week, before your elbow painfully reminds you of that fact.
Don’t Skip The 10 Minutes On Either Side
Most players warm up by hitting a few practice serves and calling it done – and cool down by walking straight to the car. Both habits quietly undercut everything else in the week.
A proper warm-up is dynamic, not static: leg swings, arm circles, walking lunges, a few minutes of light jogging or skipping to raise your heart rate, then some shadow swings before you ever pick up a ball. This gets blood into the muscles you’re about to load and primes the exact movement patterns – split-step, rotation, the serve motion – you’ll use in the session. Static stretching (holding a stretch for 20-30 seconds) is better saved for after you play, when muscles are already warm and stretching won’t temporarily reduce their power output.
The cool-down matters more than it gets credit for. A few minutes of light movement to bring your heart rate down gradually, followed by static stretching through the shoulders, hips, and hamstrings, helps clear the metabolic waste that built up during the session and keeps you from waking up locked up the next morning. Skipping it doesn’t cost you anything today – it costs you two days from now, which is exactly why it’s easy to skip.
Build In The Calendar, Not Just The Week
A single week’s structure is only half the picture. Periodization – varying intensity and volume across the month and the season – is what keeps you improving instead of plateauing or breaking down. In the weeks before a tournament or a big match, shift the balance: cut back on high-volume technical drilling and increase match-play reps instead, so your game feels sharp and tactically ready rather than fatigued.
After a heavy competitive stretch, take a genuine deload week – lighter sessions, more rest, less intensity across the board – roughly once a month. Players who skip this and just push volume upward indefinitely tend to hit a wall, either through injury or through a flat, stale game that stops responding to practice at all.
A good tennis week isn’t about cramming in more hours. It’s about making sure each session has a job to do, that your body gets the recovery it needs to actually adapt, and that what you drill on Tuesday shows up when it matters on Saturday.
