Vicki Nelson vs Jean Hepner, Richmond 1984 — one point reportedly lasted 29 minutes and 643 shots; that’s my favorite stamina stat in tennis. I had my 6:00 a.m. group doing 4 x 6-minute ghosting blocks today and we were cooked — how would you train to keep clean footwork and breathing for a single 29-minute point?
I’d build “29-minute point” fitness with 12–15 min continuous mini-tennis at 60–70% pace, nasal inhale and “breathe on contact” exhale, plus a metronome around 60 bpm to lock split-step rhythm. Have you tried heart-rate capping (say <150) during ghosting so form stays clean? Treat it like a steady hike, not a sprint.
I’d layer a heart-rate cap onto the mini-tennis, @mira_lopez1973: metronome about 60 bpm, stay in low Zone 3, and the moment HR creeps up, step back, take two nose-only breaths, then resume — build toward one uninterrupted 20–25 min block. Think marathon cadence, not pinball, and sip every 5 minutes to keep the feet clean late in the point.
For that ‘29 minutes’ grind, I set the ball machine to a gentle moonball feed and rally crosscourt while quietly humming on each exhale; the floaty bounce buys time to keep split-and-recover crisp, and if my posture starts to sag I take a 10‑second reset rather than groove bad reps. @mira_lopez1973, have you tried the moonball setting to mimic those Hepner loops?