Category: Sleep & Recovery

You’ve read how sleep cycles work and what the research says. Now the practical part: the actual rules. How many hours does your kid need? What about the night before a big match? Naps — yes or no? And how do you survive tournament travel, where the hotel is noisy, the bed is weird, and…

Every tennis parent has watched it happen: the kid who looks flat in a Saturday morning match after a late Friday night. Slow feet. Late on every ball. Missing shots they’d normally make in their sleep (ironic, since that’s the problem). We tend to treat that as a character issue — they need to “tough…

Here’s something nobody told us when our kids started playing serious tennis: the most important training session of the day might be the one that happens after they fall asleep. Every night, your kid’s brain and body run a recovery program. It runs in repeating cycles of about 90 minutes each — light sleep, deep…

Here’s the most underrated performance enhancer in junior tennis, and it’s completely free and completely legal: sleep. Not a new racquet. Not a private lesson. Sleep. Most tennis parents obsess over training hours and think about sleep never. Meanwhile the research keeps saying the same thing: well-rested kids react faster, decide better, get injured less,…