The leg that stops you is the leg that breaks

Tennis conditioning still trains acceleration, while almost every serious lower limb injury in the sport happens during deceleration.

Count the sprints in a tennis point and then count the stops. They are the same number, because every acceleration in a rally ends in a hard stop, usually on one leg, usually sideways, usually while the upper body is rotating to hit something. Then count how many minutes of a typical training week are spent on stopping.

Almost none. The gym work is squats and jumps and sled pushes, all of which build the ability to produce force. Stopping requires the ability to absorb it, which is a different quality trained in a different way, mostly through eccentric loading and landing mechanics, and it is far less satisfying to coach because nobody gets visibly stronger at it.

The forces are not comparable either. Pushing off produces something in the region of two to three times body weight through the leg. A hard lateral stop from full speed, on the outside leg, with the foot planted and the body still travelling, produces considerably more, and it produces it in a shorter window. That is where the knee, the ankle and increasingly the hip give way.

There is a design problem in most court coverage sessions that makes this worse. Drills are built around getting to the ball, so the coach feeds wider and wider and measures success by whether the player reached it. The player learns to accelerate hard into a position he cannot control. He reaches everything in practice, arrives out of balance, and in a match either shanks the shot or turns an ankle.

I would rather see the drill scored on the recovery. Reach the ball, hit the target, and be back in a stable ready position within a set count. Suddenly the player self-regulates his approach speed, which is exactly what good movers do without being told.

The other thing worth doing is boring and cheap. Teach the two-foot stop. Landing on both feet where the geometry allows halves the load on each side, and a lot of players single-leg by habit rather than by necessity, particularly on the forehand side.

There is a version of this piece that ends with a warning about overuse. I would rather end with the practical bit. Watch a junior session and note where the coach's eyes are. If they follow the ball rather than the player's landing, nobody in that group is being taught to stop.