- And Why Spikeball Is in Their Kit Bag
Wimbledon 2026 runs from 29 June to 12 July. With the grass-court season in full swing, here's a look at what the pros are really doing before they walk on court — and how you can train the same skills at home.
When the gates open at the All England Club on 29 June (today), the cameras will be on the serves, the rallies and the trophies. But the work that decides those matches happens long before the umpire calls "play" — much of it in the warm-up area, and a surprising amount of it with kit you'd recognise from your own back garden.
Because here's the thing the broadcast doesn't show you: elite tennis isn't won by the player who hits hardest. It's won by the one who sees the ball earliest, reads it fastest and reacts cleanest. And the tools the best players use to sharpen those skills aren't always rackets.
Warming up is no longer just "hitting a few balls"
The modern pre-match routine is built around the nervous system, not just the muscles. Coaches and sports scientists now treat the warm-up as a chance to switch on the systems that actually decide points: visual tracking, reaction time, hand-eye coordination and decision-making under pressure.
Enter Spikeball (roundnet) — the warm-up the pros can't put down
If you've followed tennis on social media or seen the practice-court footage over the last few seasons, you'll have spotted it: a small circular net at ankle height, a bright ball pinging between players, and a lot of laughing. That's roundnet — and the Spikeball set is the equipment that took it global.
Players have been filmed and photographed using roundnet in their preparation. Sky Sports captured Coco Gauff playing Spikeball with her brother Cameron and her team at the Miami Open; Emma Raducanu has been seen bouncing a ball off the net between sessions; and Novak Djokovic was photographed last year playing Spikeball with his kids. It's become a fixture of the warm-up area this year, and for good reason.
Strength and conditioning coaches like it because a few minutes of Spikeball delivers a genuine athletic workout disguised as a game:
- Hand-eye coordination — tracking and striking a fast, low-bouncing ball trains the exact eye-hand link tennis depends on.
- Reaction speed and reflexes — the ball comes off the net at unpredictable angles, forcing instant adjustments.
- Multidirectional footwork and agility — you're constantly repositioning, exactly like covering the court.
- Balance and spatial awareness — reading angles and bodies in a small space sharpens court sense.
- It's fun — which loosens players up, lifts the mood and bonds a team before the pressure starts.
That last point matters more than it sounds. A relaxed, switched-on athlete performs better than a tense one. Spikeball gets the heart rate up, the eyes tracking and the smiles going — all at once.
Going a level deeper: vision and reaction tools like HECOstix
If Spikeball is the fun, full-body warm-up, tools like HECOstix are the precision instrument for sharpening the brain-eye-hand connection.
The "HECO" in HECOstix stands for Hand Eye COordination. It's a lightweight, three-pronged tool with colour-coded grips. A coach or partner throws it while calling out a colour or hand — "blue, left!" — and you have to track the unpredictable spin, process the instruction and catch the correct grip with the correct hand, in a split second.
That tiny moment trains exactly what a returner needs at Wimbledon:
- Cognitive processing speed — reading information and acting on it under time pressure.
- Reaction time — the lag between "I see it" and "I've moved" gets shorter with practice.
- Peripheral vision and focus — tracking a spinning object while filtering distractions.
- Decision-making under pressure — choosing the right response when there's no time to think.
It's the same principle behind the trend of NFL receivers catching tennis balls before kickoff, or footballers training with vision-restricting goggles: deliberately overload the visual and cognitive systems so that the real thing feels slower and easier by comparison. Train the brain like a muscle, and it gets faster.
And because HECOstix is portable, durable and works indoors or out, it slots into a warm-up just as easily as it fits in a kit bag — which is why it's used across tennis, cricket, football, hockey and more.
How to build your own pro-style warm-up
You don't need a Centre Court warm-up area to train like this. A genuinely effective pre-match (or pre-training) routine for any club or recreational player looks like:
- Raise the heart rate (3–5 mins): A few rounds of Spikeball to get moving, tracking and reacting — and to actually enjoy the warm-up.
- Sharpen the eyes and brain (3–5 mins): HECOstix drills with a partner, progressing from simple colour calls to combined colour-and-hand callouts as you warm up.
- Transfer to the sport (5 mins): Move into your normal hitting or skills work — now with the visual and reaction systems already switched on.
Ten to fifteen minutes, no specialist facility, and you walk on court seeing the ball earlier than the player who just "had a few hits" beforehand.
Train like the best this Wimbledon
As the UK's leading Spikeball retailer and a specialist in vision and reaction training equipment, Lightning Sports stocks the exact tools the pros use to switch on before they compete — Spikeball roundnet sets, HECOstix, reaction balls and more.
Wimbledon starts 29 June. There's still time to add a pro-level edge to your own game
Shop Spikeball & vision training → Spikeball – Lightning Sports and HECOstix – Lightning Sports
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