Tennis Mobility and Stretching

If you have ever played tennis, you know how tight and sore your muscles can get.

Tennis really works your whole body, and although there are some common areas that we need to focus on keeping stretched and mobile, you as an individual may have specific areas that get a lot tighter than others.

It is important to be aware of these areas or parts of your body that need extra attention, especially when preparing for tennis practice or matches.

If you get good at releasing tension out of the muscle and freeing up movement, you will set yourself up to play better tennis and be a lot less prone to tennis injuries.

Over the past 20 years working as a tennis fitness trainer, I have found that performing regular tennis-specific, mobility exercises before practice or training, is critical to prepare your body for the complex movements it needs to perform on the tennis court.

(To check out the full range of Tennis Strength and Conditioning Programs we have that can help you play better CLICK HERE)

Tennis mobility exercises are exercises that open up a chain of movement and usually involve multiple joints, just think about stepping out to hit your forehand in an open position and then rotating your torso and swinging your arm back.

In this movement, there are lots of joints working together and lots of muscles providing movement and stability.

To prepare your body for these complex movements it is best to isolate them in a controlled way, so we can focus on the specificity of what needs to be done and also have a better connection with the movements.

This leads to a better prepared/more ready body and keeps you in check with where your body is at e.g. is it tighter than usual or am I feeling free through the movement?

I recently recorded a new range of tennis mobility exercises and today I want to share them with you.

You will notice when you watch them that most of the exercises involve a “flow movement” there is no stopping or holding.

Remember we are trying to encourage the body to free up these movements, so we need the movement to flow.

For each repetition that you perform when doing mobility exercises, you want to aim to slightly increase the range e.g. get deeper, rotate more, until you feel you are at your maximum limit.

When you are doing these specific tennis mobility exercises it should never hurt or be painful, it can be uncomfortable which is good, this means you are challenging the range, but we don’t want you in pain when doing them. To get improvement in your mobility you need to be consistent. Aim for 3-5 times per week, per exercise e.g. before you start your warm up.

Ok, you are ready to give these tennis mobility exercises a go, check out the video below.

Find what mobility exercises out of the ones I have shown you in the video feel the most restricted and most challenging to perform. These are the ones I would recommend you focus on.

I can guarantee you that if you work consistently in this area, you will boost your level of tennis.

You will get into deeper, better positions on court and not feel as restricted when moving around the court.

If you know you need to improve your flexibility, and mobility and look after your body better (I would say that’s 90% of you 🙂 and want to do it the right way, then you need to check this out)

Do your body a favor, respect it, and protect it!

If you or any player you know needs some guidance and support, get in touch with us.

No matter your age or level of play we want to help with your tennis strength and conditioning! Click here to get help!

Thanks

Nathan Martin
Tennis Fitness Expert