Tennis Warmup Drills to Prevent Muscle Strains
November 12th, 2009 | 
Author: It’s easy to get out on the courts and pull a muscle if you don’t have a proper tennis warm up before taking the first swing.
With your muscles still cold, trying to ‘warm up’ by only hitting a few light shots to get your blood flowing, can still cause injury.
Here are a few tennis warm up exercises to perform in progression before you take the first swing:
Line Jumps- Begin at the baseline with your feed side by side on one side of the singles line. Quickly hop back and forth across the line with both feet while moving towards the net and return to the service line.
High knees – Stand at the baseline and begin lightly jogging in place. Once your legs are pumping, begin slowly working your way to the net and return to the baseline. For the first set, don’t lift your knees too high during the ‘jog’. The point is to get blood flowing through your legs and your hip flexors. As you begin the second set, then begin bringing your knees higher and higher. On your return to the baseline, you should be trying to touch your knees to your chest with each step.
When warming up for tennis during the cold weather season, it’s best to start with a warm up that doesn’t use tons of joint movement (such as the line jump) and progress to exercises that use more and more movement. The point is to ensure your joints and muscles are gradually stimulated to prevent injury. After 5-7 minutes of your tennis warm up, you’ll be ready to hit the courts.
As one of the nation’s most in-demand fitness trainers, Todd Scott is a training advisor to Men’s fitness and Muscle & fitness Hers magazines. You can find his articles on news stands today and in nearly every issue of Men’s fitness or Muscle & fitness Hers magazines for the past 2 years. A high school champion tennis player-turned-fitness expert finally decided, after a little arm twisting by his tennis clients, to allow public access into his ignitingyourgame.com Tennis Specific fitness Databank to help people just like you develop strength and power to hit stronger shots and win more matches.
Additional Resources: TennisfitnessTips.com/play_tennis.html How to Play Tennis: A Guide for Beginners.
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