Doubles Only Tennis Podcast

5 Training Tips to Improve this Offseason

• Will Boucek • Episode 208

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0:00 | 22:19

It's the offseason, a time to reflect and prepare for next year. How will your training or practice improve in 2025?

In this episode, I share 5 tips for improving your doubles game through more effective training this offseason.

  • You cannot improve without tip #1.
  • A common mistake in practice made by club-level doubles players.
  • My favorite training tools (links below).
  • What off-court training has helped me the most.

If you can implement these tips, you'll be a better doubles player in 2025!

My favorite training tools:

Members get discounts on all the items above except the ball machines. Become a member or sign in here.

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Offseason Training Tips for Doubles Game

Speaker 1

In today's episode I'm going to cover five training tips to improve this offseason. So I'm recording this in early December and, whether you're an ATP or WTA player or a club-level player, this is probably the offseason for you and a lot of people try to kind of re-evaluate their game and reassess where they're at and figure out where they can improve their doubles game. So I feel like if you get you know even two, maybe three of these five tips right during the offseason and then going into 2025, I think that you can really improve your game. Number one is going to be actually non-negotiable. The other ones maybe pick one or two that you want to really focus on and I feel like, in combination with tip number one, you can definitely improve. So before we get to these five tips, a couple of quick announcements. Number one the membership launch was a few weeks ago. It's still available, but just not at a discount right now.

Speaker 1

Thank you to everyone who signed up. We got a lot of signups. We had our first member-only webinar in November on tactics for how to beat pushers. We've got our next member-only webinar coming up in a couple of weeks. I'll be announcing that shortly. I've already added a few member only premium video lessons as well, and I'll have more content for you all soon. So thank you all who were able to sign up and then, also going into 2025, I've started to kind of plan out my schedule. So if any of you are going to be at any of these uh pro tournaments, then reach out to me. I'd love to meet you. Um, I always like uh really enjoy meeting uh podcast listeners, watching doubles at these tournaments, um, and kind of analyzing some of the top players in the world.

Speaker 1

So I'll be in Melbourne, uh, for the Australian open. I'll be in Dallas for the Dallas open. Austin, texas, for the ATX Open. I'll also be at Indian Wells this year in March. If you're interested in a mini doubles camp, I'm considering doing that. If I get enough people who are interested, I may do something on one or two courts with maybe six to 12 people. So email me if you are interested. If you're going to be at Indian Wells and you want to do maybe a two or three day doubles camp, you can email me. Will at thetennistribecom, and then I think I'm going to be in Charleston as well. So, again, if you live in any of those cities, if you're going to any of those tournaments, reach out to me. I would love to meet you in person.

Speaker 1

So let's dive into these five training tips. So the off season is definitely a time where I like to kind of reassess my game and set some new goals for my tennis game and then my business and just personally as well, and I feel like these five things can really help you improve. So let's start with number one. It's definitely a non-negotiable If you don't do this, you will not get better, and it's a very simple one it is hit enough tennis balls. So I'm going to break down how I think about this. But I first thought about this when I was watching a video from Jorge Capistani on a particular doubles drill and he talked about how many volleys you're able to hit in this particular drill and how many volleys you typically would hit in a match, and he talked about how, during this drill, you're able to get so many more touches and that word always stuck with me in terms of improvement being able to get enough touches. So if you're trying to improve during the offseason, or even during the season, you need to be playing matches, either I would say probably four times a week or more or, if you don't have that much time, then you need to set aside the matches for now and focus on drills, and that could be in the form of group drills or group lessons would be like a level below matches probably, and then private lessons or hitting on a ball machine would even be like the best way to get or to maximize touches to hit enough tennis balls. So if you're signed up for the newsletter, you got my lesson earlier this week about me, about my one hour training session, and I used a ball machine. So I have a Spinfire Pro 2 ball machine which I'll link to in the show notes if you wanna check that out. But the ball machine has a 150 ball capacity. I have 120 tennis balls and I went through it five times and did different drills all five times and I was able to hit 600 balls. So 120 times five, 600 balls in one hour.

Speaker 1

Now the question is, how many tennis balls do we hit in a given doubles match? So your typical doubles match is around 150 points. Let's say it takes an hour and a half to go through those 150 points. The average rally length is less than four. We'll round it up to four just to be generous. So 150 times four is 600. So 600 balls are being hit in the course of a doubles match. Now with my ball machine I hit 600 balls but there's four players on the court so you're hitting a quarter of those. So now we're back at 150 balls that you hit. That's in one doubles match. So in an hour and a half you're hitting 150 balls. With my ball machine I was able to hit 600 balls in only an hour. So I'm more than 4x-ing my efficiency in terms of touches, in terms of the number of balls that I hit by using the tennis ball machine. I had the ball machine feeding pretty quickly. I think it was every two or three seconds, so we were on a pretty good pace. But the point is you have to hit enough tennis balls.

Effective Offseason Training Techniques

Speaker 1

I had Greg Moran on the podcast earlier this year I think it was in April and he wrote a book called the Truth About Tennis. He's worked with club level doubles players for 40 plus years. He's one of the best coaches in the country and it's one of the best books you can buy to improve your doubles game or improve your tennis game at the club level. But he talks about how you have to have enough on court time to actually get better. And that's where he starts with all of his students. And I've kind of broken that down even further because on court time's not enough, right? If you're playing matches twice a week, that's going to be very different than if you're going out and hitting on a ball machine twice a week because, like I said, you're hitting a lot more balls if you're hitting on a ball machine. So, however you want to break that down, you have to manage your time and make sure you hit enough tennis balls to actually improve All the drills that I've been doing on the ball machine the past several weeks. I've definitely noticed I have better feel on the court, my footwork's a little better because I'm just getting so many reps in. And I'm actually going to be releasing some videos for members soon with me kind of explaining the drills that I'm doing and showing you some examples so that you can replicate those as well. So, again, if you're not signed up for the membership, I'll link to that in the show notes if you want access to those videos.

Speaker 1

So, tip number two tip number two is to practice like you play. So when I watch a lot of club doubles, players practice, they go out with their doubles partner or a hitting partner and they'll hit through the middle of the court just like singles, and that never actually happens in doubles. So we really want to have a specific, focused practice. Make sure when you're out there whether you're working with a private coach or hitting with a partner, or even doing drills with four or six players make sure you're doing things that actually happen in a match. So hitting through the middle of the singles court is not something you're ever going to be doing in a doubles match. So why are we practicing that way?

Speaker 1

One question you should be asking yourself is why do I lose points? Do I double fault too much? Do I have a bad backhand volley? Do I miss too many forehands from the baseline? Do I miss in the net too often and work on that specific thing? So if you're double faulting too much, for example, we've got to work on second serves. The next question would be where are you missing your double faults? For me, I tend to double fault in the net. So I am always trying to aim long when I'm practicing my second serves and you want to try to simulate in-match pressure as best you can, especially with things like double faults or serving. So you can just create some kind of stakes this is something a lot of pro players have talked about on the podcast before but create some kind of stakes where if you double fought then you have to buy your doubles partner a beer or buy their dinner, or think of something you really don't want to do.

Speaker 1

When I talked with Jonathan Stokey earlier this summer on the podcast, he talked about one of his players at Duke when he was coaching there really liked to do sprints. So when they set stakes for him to do sprints, every time you miss a second serve you have to do a sprint. It was no pressure for him because he actually enjoyed sprinting, so instead they had to change it and make it. If you miss the second serve, you have to leave practice and you're done for the day, and that applied way more pressure to him than it did to a player who maybe hated sprints or didn't really care for practice as much. So you have to figure out something you hate and put that on the line to simulate that in-match pressure. So again, tip number two the point is here is to practice like you play. Think of things that happen in your matches and ways you lose points and figure out how to work on that specific thing. The cross-court rally is a great example. You want to really work on winning that cross-court battle.

Speaker 1

Tip number three for training and improving this offseason use training aids and training tools. This is something that not a lot of us do. It's something I've been doing more and more the last several years. I'm going to mention a few things here and I'm going to link to them all in the description. You can get discounts through each of those links. If you are a Tennis Tribe member whether you're a recreational or club player member you can actually get bigger discounts through the membership. So don't use the links in the description. If you're a member, go to the membership page, which I'll include that link in the description as well, and then go to the members only area to find all the discounts for some of these things.

Speaker 1

So number one for me recently at least, has been a ball machine. I don't have a member discount for that. So if you want to check out the ball machine that I use, it's called the Spinfire Pro. I'll include a link to all the top rated ball machines that we've reviewed, but the SpinFryer Pro is a really high end ball machine. It's got custom drills and all sorts of bells and whistles, but if you want something a little cheaper, there's definitely other options out there. Again, I'll include a link with reviews. You don't necessarily need something that can do a bunch of custom drills, but you do want something that can feed a ball that you're typically hitting in a match. So make sure it can feed at the right pace for your skill level. If it can vary the spin and oscillate a little bit left to right, that's nice to have as well. But I'll link to some ball machines that you can check out. So that's one that's helped me a lot recently.

Speaker 1

Number two is a simple one targets and lines. I like to use these dots and then these yellow lines that I got from Tennis Warehouse, which I'll include a link to as well. I use these just to create that visual on the court. So when I'm practicing my angle volleys or when I'm practicing my forehands cross court from the deuce court or approach shots through the middle, I'll set up these dots just to have something to hit towards. Now, of course, you can use a ball hopper, you can use your tennis bag, you can set a racket down. It doesn't really matter what you use, but using targets is super important so that you have something to kind of shoot for. And then I like to use lines actually on serving, so to divide up the service box, both left and right and short and deep. So I've talked about this in the past. When you're serving you want to be able to hit all that line, so between the service line and that line that you just created, so it's within about five to six feet of the service line, and creating that depth is going to make your second serve a lot less vulnerable.

Speaker 1

Another great training aid there's actually two here that are my favorites and they're really the only two main ones that I recommend on a consistent basis. Number one is the Topspin Pro. I'll link to that in the show notes. That is one that you can get a discount or a steeper discount if you are a member. I actually have a friend from Oregon named Jennifer recently who bought a Topspin Pro and she said she used it from home, so you can set it up in your house and just do it for five minutes every night, and that's what she told me she did with her forehand because she was working on her forehand topspin. And a few weeks later I didn't ask her, but she just happened to text me because she had been playing a match earlier that day and she said now her forehand was more consistent than her backhand. So that sounds like a made up story, but I promise you that that's true. The Topspin Pro is absolutely an awesome training aid to generate topspin and consistency on your ground strokes and, again, you can use it from home for several minutes per night.

Speaker 1

And then the last one is the functional tennis saber. I had Fabio Mollet, who invented the functional tennis saber, on the podcast earlier this year. It's basically a tennis racket with a really tiny head, so it basically gives you immediate feedback on whether or not you're hitting the sweet spot. I really like to use this for my volleys because I tend to miss, especially my forehand volley on the bottom part of the racket, a little bit closer to my body, and I get away with it when I'm playing with my full-size 100 square inch Headspeed Pro tennis racket because it's got a larger frame. But when I use the functional tennis saber, I hit the frame, so it gives me better feedback and I cannot make the volley unless I hit it in the center. So if you volley with it for five or 10 minutes and then you go back to your other racket, you're going to hit a lot cleaner volleys. You can also practice your serves with it returns. I mean, you can play a full match with this thing and it is, like I said, one of the very, very few training aids that I do recommend on a consistent basis. So again, check out the show notes for a discount on each of those and then, if you're a member, the targets and lines from Tennis Warehouse have a steeper discount. The Topspin Pro and the Functional Tennis Sabreennis Warehouse have a steeper discount. The Topspin Pro and the Functional Tennis Sabre for members all have a steeper discount in that area as well.

Speaker 1

Number four off-court training. You should be doing some type of off-court training, especially as we get older. Using tennis as your only form of exercise is probably not the best idea. So over the last several years I've been in the gym a lot more and I've noticed it's helped me a ton. On the tennis court I don't have to swing as hard because I've gotten stronger in my core, my upper body, my legs, and I'm also a little bit faster and able to cut a little bit better because I've been doing more plyometrics and jumping and squats and lunges, different things like that to improve my speed. I've had knee issues in the past and all this has helped that as well. Of course, if you have an injury, go see your doctor, talk to a physical therapist for that stuff. But if you can do some type of off-court training to try to strengthen your body and to make yourself faster and more stable when you're cutting and when you're running, it's going to help your game on the court. So if you can shoot for I try to do three times a week in the gym and then two times a week doing something else, whether it's riding a bike or whatever but if you can shoot for even two times a week in the gym, if you've never done any sort of strength training or resistance training before, I think it could really really help your game and you do notice it on the court after a couple of weeks. It really helps a ton. So that is tip number four.

Maximizing Performance in Doubles Tennis

Speaker 1

Then the last one is kind of a simple one. It's to have fun. If you're not having fun, the practice, the training getting to the level that you want to get to, is not going to be sustainable, because what's going to happen is you're going to go into the gym and do the off-court training and if you don't enjoy it then you're going to end up quitting. So set yourself up with very low goals, something that's very achievable. So if you've never been to the gym before, for the off-court training to continue that example, start with once a week or twice a week for 15 to 20 minutes. Keep it very, very simple so that you don't set yourself up for failure. And then, if you do that for two or three weeks, then maybe up it to twice a week for 45 minutes. And then, if you do that for another month, maybe do three times a week.

Speaker 1

You don't want to start out with, you know, saying I'm going to go to the gym five days a week for an hour and then you start missing a few days and then you beat yourself up and then you ultimately quit. Same thing for the on-court training. So set it up so that it's going to be fun and it's going to be sustainable. Otherwise you're not going to actually get better. So be sure to have fun while you're doing it.

Speaker 1

Most of us are not getting paid to play, so if it's not fun, then it's not worth doing. So hopefully these five tips helped you. I'd say definitely the most important one is hitting enough tennis balls. If you can combine that with the off-court training, I think that would help a ton. Obviously, having fun is super helpful as well, but hopefully this gives you something to think about going into 2025 and helps you kind of level up your doubles game. So if any of you have any questions, you can always reach out to me. I'll link to all of these training aids and the membership in the show notes as well, so that you can get discounts on all of this stuff and I will talk to you all soon.