Last night, British tennis player Andy Murray, was seen flexing his biceps to the crowd after his victory against Richard Gasquet. This is not something the usually seen on a tennis court, especially by a British gent like Mr. Murray. However, he has good reason to flex his biceps.

Andy Murray pulled out of the Stella Artois Championships after an injury to ensure that he is in top shape for Wimbledon. It looks like the rest was a good decision.

Recently tennis legend John McEnroe suggested that Andy Murray did not have the physical fitness required to be Wimbledon champion. Tennis is now a very physically demanding sport that requires superior fitness as well as excellent tennis ability. Many good players have failed in recent years because they did not have the stamina to allow them to stay focused for an entire match. Like any other activity, as soon as you start to become physically tired, your mental processes start to deteriorate rapidly. Tennis players have to be “fighting fit” just like solders and martial artists.

So, what are Andy Murray’s Fitness Workouts? Andy Murray stands at just over 6 feet tall, so he has a naturally slim build. However, this year he has been focussing on athletic strength training to improve his game. John McEnroe has said that “if you really want to go deep in a major tournament then just look how hard the top guys work”. Simply meaning, that the fittest survive and win.

Murray has a revealed that he has a “secret weapon“. As upper body strength and endurance is vital in tennis, especially for power serves and powerful rallies, Andy Murray concentrated his strength training on the arms and shoulders, with core training for improved balance and agility. His main upper body exercise is the weighted chip-up, which simply involves performing a normal chin-up with a 20kg weight attached to a belt around the waist. The chip up forms one of the main exercises in the Motley Health “Core Four” Workout, the others being Clean and Press, Bench Press and Bent Over Row. These four basic compound weight training exercises for the basis of many athletic weight training routines. Also, the standard biceps curl should be added in some workouts for increased development.

Tennis players should try to balance their workouts with sessions concentrating on muscular endurance, strength, flexibility and cardio. High intensity interval training and circuit training geared to tennis are ideal. A typical tennis workout should include:

• Squats (learn how to squat)
• Lunges
• Press ups
• Star Jumps
• Box jumps
• Skipping
• Sprints
• Pull ups

Murray’s fitness training is in good hands, with fitness coaches Jez Green and Matt Little, continuing to guide him. Murray spent the winter in a training camp in Florida, ensuring that damp British weather would not hold him back from his intensive physical regime. As well as standard strength and fitness routines, Green and Little introduced Murray to Bikram yoga, also know as “hot yoga”, in which exercises are performed in 40C heat to help with mental strength and to prepare for matches in high temperatures.

Murray’s diet has also been carefully monitored to ensure that he continues to improve in strength and fitness. Jez Green acts as sports nutritionist, and recommends that Murray eats foods like sushi within 30 minutes of finishing long matches or training sessions. Jez Green says that sushi is “a perfect mix of
protein and carbohydrates which rebuild his muscles and provide energy for subsequent matches. As he has been physically training really hard, his diet has become more and more important, especially in
increasing his body weight.”

Andy Murray is still not as powerful as Nadal – who he plays tomorrow in a quarter final match – but he is certainly improving his physical game, which will allow him to stay focussed and prevent Nadal from getting too many aces in the later stages of the match. Tomorrow’s match will certainly be a gladiatorial battle with two of the fittest tennis players fighting it out for a place in the Wimbledon semi-final.