Kettlebells are great for your off-court tennis fitness training. They will improve your explosive strength, balance, stamina and coordination. The basic kettlebell swing improves your endurance and hip strength, and is very easy to learn. In addition, you will burn a lot of calories and get nicely lean.
When you want to focus more on your hamstrings, you can add a stiff-legged deadlift into your training routine. It is less explosive than the kettlebell swing, you can do it inbetween the swings to get your heartrate down a bit. It will greatly challenge your balance and focus. You will feel all the muscles in your standing leg's hamstrings, feet, calves, glutes and outside of the hip. Make sure to
- keep your lower back straight and bend in the hips rather than rounding your back.
- Focus on pushing your heel up to the sky behind you, and that will bring your upper body down, hinging in the hip.
- Keep your standing leg as straight as possible, but don’t lock or overextend your knee.
- Connect with your hamstrings and glutes on your standing leg when performing the movement.
- Stay always connected with your core
- Breathe deeply through the movement
To add variation, you can use one hand only and switch the hands on the top of each movement. If you have a good balance, make the exercise more difficult by never putting the moving leg to the ground. If you want to learn more about kettlebells, read the kettlebell training for tennis articles on TennisFitnessLove.com.
If you need to purchase kettlebells, I highly recommend my favorite onlines store, powersystems.com. The kettlebells are of great quality and good price. Often, they offer a free shipping, and that's the best time to buy, or you would a shipping that is almost the same price as the kettlebell. Check here for the free-shipping codes (scroll whole way to the bottom). You can find kettlebells at other online or physical store, if you prefer.
Keep working on your legs, glutes and core, and you will see your tennis game improve rapidly.
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