On tennis
What I learnt from my 1-year relationship with tennis (no it's not a technical blog, rest assured~)
It’s been a little more than a year since I started playing tennis.
One of the questions I get asked most often is: “Why tennis?”
It’s simple.
I wanted to get my *ss out of the house on a frequent basis. To move my body frequently. Exercise is good for you - who wouldn’t understand that, right?
But it also needed to be fun. I knew there would be days when self-discipline wouldn’t be enough, and external motivators would help. That’s where a combat sport like tennis became handy. You have friends to practice with, and sometimes they are the motivators too.
To many people’s surprises, I only started actually “playing” tennis recently (i.e joining tennis games), despite starting learning 1+ year ago. Most of the times I practiced in tennis classes. The more I play and practice, the more I realize how much tennis has taught me.
So this is dedicated to celebrate my one-year milestones with this sport.
#1 On perseverance
Tennis has a learning curve, and it takes time.
Imagine picking up a badminton racket or a pickleball paddle - most people can still hit the shuttlecock or the ball and play for fun without taking a class. For tennis, it’s harder to do that safely without learning some basics.
The reason? The ball is heavy, the racket is heavy, and the court is larger than you might think (at least it was for me when I had to run across the courts to catch the ball).
Once you’ve picked up a few basics and practiced for a while, you’ll see yourself improve rapidly, then plateau.
At that point, you might ask, “What happened to me? I thought I had it already”.
It’s normal. From what I’ve learnt, improvement requires a combination of more practices + more fine-tuning your technique. Technique here includes not only your on-court skills - how you hit and return the ball, how you swing, how you change your direction quickly (i.e footwork), how you read the ball’s trajectory - but also what you do before and after every practice, every match. The warm up exercises and the post-games stretching are the must-haves to keep yourself “in good condition” and play sustainably.
You’ll learn to accept the plateau, keep practicing, fine‑tune your skills, and continue to level up.
#2 Patience and knowing your goal
During my first 7-months, I encountered injuries for a few times. They were minor and recoverable, but still very inconvenient. That led me, around the 8th month, to slow down and refocus on the basics—my posture and movement, warm‑ups, and stretching—rather than playing matches.
In tennis in general, how long you’ve been playing often indicates your skill level, and so when you say you have “one year of experience”, people may have expectations of how well you play. Luckily, I didn’t place that pressure on myself as my objective was clear: to play tennis well and for a long time. Thus, I took my time fixing the basic postures and the pre-post workouts and now can proudly say I have improved 70% compared to how I was before - in techniques, strengths and endurance.
There’s still a long way to go. When one technique reaches a certain level, maintaining it also takes time, practice and patience, not to mention the advanced variations you can learn. For example, with the “forehand” (i.e. hitting the ball with your dominant hand), once you can hit it over the net and inside the court, the next step is increasing racquet head speed and ball pace to return more effectively to your opponent. That takes a lot of practice too.
As I’m in no rush, it’s extra exciting for me every time I get more skillful with a technique - old or new, basic or advanced. That, to me, is the joy of playing tennis.(And of course, winning too, but let’s do it one step at a time haha).
#3 Breaking the limits little by little
Unlike a marathon where you run long distances, in tennis you also run but mostly in short bursts, with quick changes in direction and speed (if you’ve heard of the term “sprint”, it refers to practices to help improve this ability).
Even though the distances aren’t long, those quick changes can make you breathe heavily and your heartbeat really speed up.
When I practiced with my coach, I measured my improvements by I could go continuously with those short runs. Starting with as small as 10 minutes, I gradually reached 15, 17, 20, then 30+ minutes after days of practice.
What was interesting to me was that there was almost always a point as early as the first 10-15 minutes when I clearly felt my heartbeat spike and my breathing gets heavier. But if I pushed past that point without stopping, I would gradually settle into the pace and keep going for a long while. That small realization allowed me to continue pushing myself over my limits little by little, day by day.
I’m lucky to have found a sport I really like.
Next goal to achieve: to join a small-scale tournament and pass the 1st round!
You are such a rock star! Love your journey. Can't wait to see you playyyyy! Great lessons, too! Thanks for sharing!
Loved reading this 🫶🏼 My last post is about my readers’ thoughts on picking up tennis as an adult, the learning curve, and their ‘why.’ Big ups to you all bc I cannot imagine starting in my 30s, I would crumble!!