“How many hours per day do you train?”
That is one of the questions parents ask me most often whenever we travel to tournaments. Years ago, I asked the very same question while trying to understand how to develop better players.
The answer, however, is not as simple as giving every child the same number of training hours.
Every player is different.
Some children can stay fully focused for two hours, while others begin to lose concentration after just 30 minutes. As coaches, we are not only managing training time—we are managing attention.
With Raihah and Reefa, I learned that they need frequent changes of activity or progressions within a drill to maintain concentration. Repeating the same exercise for an hour rarely produces the best learning. Before long, the words “I’m tired” begin to appear—not always because they are physically exhausted, but because they are mentally fatigued.
This is why training quality matters just as much as training duration.
Many people talk about the idea of 10,000 hours of practice. Whether or not that exact number applies to every athlete, the principle remains true: improvement takes a tremendous amount of deliberate practice.
Let’s do a simple calculation.
Training 2 hours per day, 6 days per week equals:
- 12 hours per week
- 624 hours per year
At that rate, reaching 10,000 hours would take around 16 years.
If a child starts playing tennis at six years old, they would reach that milestone at about 22 years old.
Is that a bad thing?
Not at all.
It simply depends on the goal.
If the goal is to become a good tennis player and enjoy the game, that timeline is perfectly acceptable. But if the goal is to become one of the best juniors in the country or compete internationally before the age of 18, then the development process needs to be accelerated.
Now consider 3 hours per day, 6 days per week.
That equals:
- 18 hours per week
- 936 hours per year
Now the journey to 10,000 hours becomes a little over ten years.
Now we are talking.
Can every child train three hours a day for ten years?
Probably not.
The real question is not whether they can survive three hours. The real question is whether they can learn effectively for three hours. A long session without concentration is often less valuable than a shorter session with complete focus.
So what did I do with Raihah and Reefa?
Instead of forcing one long session, I divided the training into two parts.
One session before school.
Another session after school.
Even though the morning practice lasted only an hour, they arrived fresh, energetic and ready to learn. The quality of that hour was often much higher than trying to continue training when their concentration had already disappeared.
The key is not to look at one day.
The key is to look at the accumulation.
One hour may seem too short, but over weeks, months and years, those hours compound into something significant. Improvement is rarely dramatic from one session to the next. It is the compounding effect of quality practice that creates great players.
A clever way to think about training is not to calculate it daily.
Calculate it weekly.
Ask yourself:
How many quality hours are we spending on court each week?
Once you know that number, you can project it over a month, a year or even ten years. Suddenly, the pathway becomes much clearer.
Then adjust the weekly hours according to your goal.
If the objective is to become a strong national player, one training volume may be sufficient.
If the objective is to compete successfully at the international level, the demands will almost certainly be higher.
Sometimes parents ask another question.
“What if my child trains eight hours on Saturday and another eight hours on Sunday?”
On paper, the total number of hours looks impressive.
But once again, we come back to the same question.
What is the quality of those hours?
As training sessions become longer, most young players begin to lose concentration. Their movement slows down, decision-making becomes poorer, and eventually they are just hitting balls without any intention.
At that point, they are no longer practising.
They are simply exercising.
Tennis improvement does not come from hitting thousands of balls mindlessly. It comes from hitting every ball with a purpose. Every drill should have an objective. Every repetition should teach something.
There is another reason why I prefer shorter, more frequent sessions.
A tennis player should be thinking about tennis every day.
When a player trains regularly throughout the week, yesterday’s lesson carries into today’s practice, and today’s learning carries into tomorrow. The learning process becomes continuous.
When training only happens on weekends, there is a long gap before the next session. For most of the week, tennis is no longer at the front of the player’s mind. Learning slows because the connection to the previous session begins to fade.
This is why I believe frequency is often more valuable than simply increasing the duration of a single session.
For younger children, I generally recommend building training progressively.
As a simple guideline:
- Age 6 – around 6 hours per week
- Age 7 – around 7 hours per week
- Age 8 – around 8 hours per week
As children mature physically and mentally, their training volume can gradually increase.
Of course, there are always exceptions. Every generation produces a few outliers who can handle much greater workloads at a young age. Coco Gauff was one of those rare young athletes.
Most children, however, are not outliers.
And that’s perfectly normal.
The objective is not to copy someone else’s training schedule.
The objective is to build a training plan that your child can sustain consistently for many years while maintaining enthusiasm, concentration and a love for the game.
Hours matter.
Quality hours matter even more.
And when those quality hours are repeated week after week, year after year, they begin to compound.
That is how great players are built.