The Heart Rate Of A Tennis Player

Tennis players reach different heart rates throughout practices and matches, based on their fitness and skill levels and whether they are playing singles or doubles. Played at highly competitive levels, tennis is anaerobic, keeping your heart rate at more than 80 percent of your maximum heart rate. Understanding how tennis affects your heart rate can help you create workouts and play matches that won’t fatigue you to failure.

Energy System

Tennis calls on your body’s anaerobic energy system because of the repeated, high-intensity, short bursts of activity throughout practices and workouts. This requires you to burn much more glycogen than fat for energy and raises your heart close to its maximum capacity to work. If you play a more recreational level of tennis, including doubles or practices with long rallies and less running, you may engage your aerobic heart rate, burning more fat than during an anaerobic exercise. Unlike anaerobic training, aerobic workouts don't train your heart, lungs and muscles to recover after points.

Heart Rates

General estimates for anaerobic and aerobic exercise put you between 80 percent to 90 percent of your maximum heart and 70 percent to 80 percent of your maximum, respectively. Depending on your resting heart rate and weight and the amount of intensity you use during workouts, you might engage your anaerobic and aerobic thresholds at slightly higher or lower heart rates. During extremely intense tennis points, especially those that last a long time, you are near your maximum heart rate. You can sustain activity above 90 percent of your maximum heart rate only for very short periods and should train this way only under the supervision of a health or fitness professional.

Managing Heart Rates During Practice

Many players are so focused on their strokes, shots and footwork during practice, they don’t build in recovery to their practices and drills. Create practices that mirror the intensity of your matches so you work your heart and lungs the same way they’ll work during a match. For example, you don’t hit hundreds of balls standing on the baseline without taking more than two steps during matches, so don’t practice this way. Take 10 or more seconds after each practice rally and a take a 90-second break every five minutes to simulate the pace of a tennis match and let your heart rate rise and fall the way it does during a match.

Managing Heart Rates During Matches

Managing your heart rate during a tennis match is important if you want to reduce your risk of getting fatigued — even temporarily — during matches. An inability to recover after points can lead to double faults, weak serves and returns and a lack of mobility during a long point. The rules of tennis do not allow you to use the time between points to regain condition. This means you can’t go back to the fence and wait until you catch your breath. Even though you have 20 seconds between the time a point ends and the time you must start the next point, you must play to the reasonable pace of the server, which can be as little as 10 seconds after you end a point.
If you are playing a long match, don’t rush the start of points because you feel it gives you momentum. Without breaking the rules, take time to recover after each point, breathing deeply, taking some breaths through your nose, toweling off if it’s necessary, straightening your strings, planning your next point and bouncing the ball before you serve. Take a deep breath, hold it for a one or two seconds, then release it slowly to help lower your heart rate.