Cardio Tennis is an instructor-led tennis class emphasizing a sustained aerobic workout. The essential idea is to keep everyone moving at a pace that keeps their heart rates in the aerobic training zone. Participants often wear heart-rate monitors to help them and the instructor keep the class at the right pace. A typical Cardio Tennis class consists of 5-10 minutes of dynamic warm-up, 30-50 minutes of high-movement drills and games, and 5-10 minutes of cool-down, all usually accompanied by music with a fast dance beat.


In a typical class, women burn 300-500 calories, men 500-1000.

For the Cardio Tennis warm-up, participants do a few minutes of easy movement, dynamic stretching, and light hitting drills, such as tossing and catching tennis balls with a partner while side-stepping back and forth across the court or hitting gentle groundstrokes or volleys across the net. For the warm-up hitting, as with all Cardio Tennis drills, participants keep moving their feet between hits, which helps to warm and loosen their leg muscles while burning more calories.

The main workout phase of a Cardio Tennis class is devoted to drills and games that emphasize movement. The instructor chooses regular tennis drills that incorporate lots of running, such as approach shot, volley, volley, and then adds additional exercise by having each player hop, jump, or side-step through a rope ladder or weave through a set of cones along the side of the court on the way back to starting the next turn at hitting. A typical game would be something like two-up, two-back, with the ball fed into play by the instructor and quick rotation of positions between points.

To keep points longer and to make the class easier for beginners, the games are often played with transition balls, slower, softer tennis balls designed specifically for making tennis easier for younger kids and beginners, but great fun even for advanced players to hit, as they require much greater skill and deliberate point development to put away. In most Cardio Tennis classes, games occupy around 2/3 of the main workout phase.

The cool-down phase includes light hitting and static stretching, bringing the players' heart rates down and flushing metabolic wastes out of their systems.

Cardio Tennis classes are not meant to be grueling workouts, unless you take an advanced "boot camp" class that's meant to push you to your limit. The main idea is to have fun and get a ton of exercise while still benefiting from lots of repetition of standard tennis strokes. The instructor generally won't do much stroke correction, but if you're executing a stroke in a way that might cause injury or can easily be made much more effective, the instructor will offer a quick correction or offer a more detailed suggestion while you're picking up balls, one of the few breaks during the class.

Several types of Cardio Tennis classes are available to accommodate different types of players, including classes tailored to beginners, advanced players, seniors, and kids, but many Cardio Tennis classes include players of all ages and abilities, which makes the instructor's job of keeping everyone engaged and having fun considerably more difficult. If you're a complete beginner, you should ask the instructor before signing up, as it can especially tough to keep the game part of class fun for a beginner whose class is full of much more experienced players. The instructor may recommend one private lesson to get your strokes off to a good start before you try Cardio Tennis.

Cardio Tennis classes are taught all over the world. Players in the US can find a club that offers Cardio Tennis using the location tool provided at the official Cardio Tennis site.