Strength and Conditioning Practices in Tennis: A Narrative Review of Contemporary Evidence.

Purpose

To provide a pragmatic synthesis of contemporary strength and conditioning evidence in tennis, integrating match demands, neuromuscular performance and injury-risk management, and practical testing/monitoring to support applied decision making from academy to professional settings.

Methods

This narrative synthesis includes peer-reviewed primary studies and systematic reviews addressing tennis match demands, neuromuscular training and injury prevention, and monitoring/testing, with priority given to contemporary evidence available up to February 2026.

Results

Tennis exhibits an intermittent high-intensity profile in which mechanical load is dominated by frequent accelerations, decelerations, and multidirectional changes of direction, while mean internal load is moderate but highly variable with repeated peaks during rallies. Evidence supports the relevance of lower- and upper-limb strength-power, stretch-shortening cycle function, and trunk control for performance and robustness, with practical implications for on-court intermittent conditioning, strength-power/robustness strategies, and low-burden monitoring.

Conclusions

We propose a 3-domain applied framework: (1) on-court conditioning guided by rally structure and movement demands; (2) year-round strength-power and robustness training targeting the lower limb, trunk, and shoulder, with dose adjusted to tournament density and athlete history; and (3) concise monitoring combining a compact performance battery with low-burden internal/external load indices to support readiness and availability.