Whether you are about to play a tennis match or just starting practice, doing a quick tennis warm up is crucial.
A tennis warm up should provide you with a way to warm up your muscles so that you can prevent injury.
In this post we will cover everything you need to know as far how to warm up and prepare your body for playing tennis.
Quick and Easy Tennis Warm Ups for Adults
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Tennis Safety: Why You Need to Start with a Tennis Warm Up
Maybe you showed up late for practice or your match and think you should just skip warming up.
This is not a good idea.
Warm ups are important because they get your muscles warm and loose which will help prevent injury.
What kind of injuries can happen during a tennis match?
According to an article in Men’s Journal, “Warm-ups are crucial to heating up muscle tissue, improving tissue extensibility, decreasing internal tissue resistance, and increasing the amount of tissue deformation that can occur before you break the threshold into injury.”
When you are playing tennis you do lots of running, jumping, and quick movements so having your body warm and flexible will help you move about the court.
What should a tennis warm up look like?
A tennis warm up can include simple exercises to get your body heated up and then some gentle play or quick drills to get you ready to play.
Some quick exercises you can do to get your body warmed up include:
- Jumping Jacks
- Squats
- Planks
- Plank Walk Outs
- Push Ups
- Arm Circles
- Butt Kicks
You will want to do these exercises for about 5-10 minutes before moving on to some tennis drills or hitting.
Pre Tennis Stretches
You may also want to add in some dynamic stretching before your tennis match.
This is different than static stretching as you are moving your body while you stretch.
Here are some examples of dynamic stretches that you can try out:
- Arm circles
- Lunges
- Hip circles
- Leg Swings
- Shoulder rolls
Warm Up Tennis Drills When Playing a Match
Before you actually start your tennis match you most likely will do a quick warm up together.
This usually consists of hitting ground strokes to start on both your forehand and backhand side.
Then you can move into serves.
You will take turns each serving from the left and right hand serves.
Then you both will move up to the service box and do a few quick volleys.
After that you can each feed each other a couple of lobs.
This should all take about 10-15 minutes.
Warm Up Tennis Drills During a Group Practice
There are a few different ways you can start your tennis practice if you are warming up a whole team.
You will still want to make sure to choose a few of the physical exercises that we listed above to help warm up your players bodies before starting drills.
One way to warm up the team would just to feed balls to each player and go through each of the strokes such as forehand, backhand, and serves.
You could also play some fun tennis warm up games or drills to get everyone pumped up and ready to play.
Click here to check out these fun warm up tennis drill ideas.
Frequently Asked Questions
Tennis players usually do a quick series of exercises for about 5-10 minutes to just warm up their bodies even before they start to play.
Then they will usually do some gentle hitting or drills before actually starting a tennis match for about 10-15 minutes to warm up their serve and strokes.
You can do some gently stretching after your muscles are warmed up but I would not recommend static stretching unless your muscles are warm.
Stretching is a great way to cool down after practice or a match to prevent injuries and sore muscles.
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