Every Tuesday, this site looks at a training or technology concept that shapes how tennis is played. Last week’s article on five-minute movement breaks reminded me that I mention the Seconds Pro app with surprising frequency, but haven’t written a blog post focusing exclusively on it since 2020.
Over the years, I have experimented with several newer interval timer apps that promised a more modern interface or a better user experience. Somehow, I always end up back on Seconds Pro. It lacks some of the slick visual polish of its competitors, but it consistently lets me build workouts exactly the way I think about them. As it turns out, that is the one feature I can’t do without.
Today, my app installation contains more than forty custom timers. I have organized those into folders including Court Timers, Gym Timers, Hotel Room Workouts, Desk Routines, and Meditations. Rather than creating workouts from scratch each time, I simply select the routine that is designed for where I am. That organizational model has proven far more useful than categorizing exercises by muscle group or difficulty.
My “Feet First” timer guides a fifteen-minute stretching sequence that I perform every morning. It is the one I credit with curing my chronic plantar fasciitis and preventing future recurrence. Before a match, I launch a pre-match muscle activation routine. More recently, I have added several five-minute desk routines inspired by recent research on interrupting prolonged sitting that I discussed last week.
What keeps bringing me back to Seconds Pro is that it is a true interval timer rather than a checklist disguised as a workout app. Many fitness products present a list of exercises and leave it to the user to manage the timing. Seconds Pro treats time as the foundation of the workout itself. Custom intervals, recovery periods, transition times, nested circuits, and repeating loops are all fully supported. I find that approach is better for tennis conditioning, since the sport is played in short and continuous bursts of effort and intensity.
The app has been updated since I first started using it. The addition of Apple Watch integration with haptic feedback has been particularly valuable. I used to rely on audio prompts using earbuds while performing stretching routines, which worked well until someone stopped to talk. Conversations inevitably caused me to lose my place. Now my watch quietly taps my wrist when it is time to transition to the next exercise. With Seconds Pro, I always know exactly where I am in the routine.
Another feature I appreciate is its ability to annunciate each exercise as it begins. When I want audio, the app tells me exactly what comes next. When I prefer silence, that same information appears on my watch with a gentle tap on my wrist. Either way, the workout keeps moving without requiring me to constantly glance at a screen or remember the next exercise.
The more I train, the less interested I become in apps with flashy graphics or elaborate social features. Good training software should disappear into the background. It should remove friction, eliminate unnecessary decisions, and allow the focus to remain on the workout itself. That is precisely what Seconds Pro has done for me for many years.
One of the recurring themes on this site is that consistency usually comes from building better systems rather than finding more motivation. Seconds Pro is one of those systems. It is not the most glamorous app on my phone, but it is definitely the one that has contributed the most to my off-court tennis training.
The official page for the Seconds Pro App, including links for downloading from the Apple App Store and Google Play, can be found at https://www.intervaltimer.com/app.
