hey guys in today's video i want to show you how to warm up for tennis whether it be
a match or practice you've got to be properly warmed up and the first thing you got to do and
this doesn't have to be on a tennis court you got to run very gently jog for a couple of minutes to
loosen the body up now it's important that when you do this after you get loosened up a little bit
you mimic the movements you're going to be doing on a tennis court so what i want you to do is
move sideways like this side steps make sure the intervals are short do the other side as well
and now involve the arms so you're going to do these crossover steps and move the arms side
to side which will get your upper body going as well and now do the same thing on the other side
now you're going to start doing this to loosen up that shoulder a little bit
and you do it on the other side as well and now we're going to do a little exercise that's going
to involve both the lower body and the upper body it's going to look like this i'm going
to put the arms to the side and put the knees to the other side you see this this is going to work
your rotation a little bit your abs so you do this as a short interval as well also make sure
you don't forget to move backwards because you're going to be moving backwards on a tennis court
so this has to be part of your warm-up session now another important thing that you got to do in your
warm up session is short interval sprints and you can do this just for a few seconds
and i'll change direction go the other way
now i'm not a big fan of stretching before practice or before a match i'm a fan of stretching
afterwards when i'm warming up for tennis i like my exercises to be dynamic and one great thing you
can do hold on to the net and i'll just swing your leg up and down like this this will warm
up your hip area which is very important for tennis to make sure that you do both sides
once you're done with that you're going to do the same exercise laterally
and this will work on your groin area now i should have done this a lot more in my active
playing career because i had chronic groin injuries and part of the reason was that i
didn't warm up this area of my body properly and make sure you do the other side as well
and now you do the exact same thing with your arms you go laterally across like this
this will warm up your shoulders and also you do it forward backward but this will work more
on your rotator cuff and make sure the abs are nice and loose you're going to circle
your hips in this way to loosen up those abs those side abs and even the lower back muscles
and guys if you want to warm up your shoulders properly there's nothing better
than a band and you can get this anywhere and the exercises are quite simple now make sure
that when you're doing these exercises that they're dynamic as well and don't be
afraid to do them fast so if you're going back like this you can do it at quite a
fast tempo in order to mimic the movements you're going to be doing on a tennis court
another great thing about this is you can mimic every stroke so you can do forehand
you can do backhand
you can do two-handed backhand
and volleys are going to work the same way you mimic the volley movement with the band and
the same thing on the backhand side you can even do serve just tie a knot with the band
make sure the length is okay and now you do a serve warm up one additional exercise you can do with the
band for people who have kind of a stiff shoulder something that i saw from caroline wozniacki and
i've been doing it ever since is the following exercise you start with the arms extended like
this make sure the band is stretched out now you go over your head and now back over your head
this way all the way down and then back over the other way you do this about 10 times and it's a
great way to loosen up the shoulders so guys when you're warming up nothing prepares you better than
mimicking the exact movements you're doing in a practice courts or a match court in your warm-up
session so a simple thing that you can do is grab your racket this doesn't have to be done on the
court you can do this anywhere and simply start moving around mimicking tennis specific movements
so i'm going to start off with some lateral movements my forehand and my backhand side
and you can do the same thing moving forward and backward 10 shots but alternate between
forehands and backhands
and guys you're going out of breath it's exactly what you need prior to a tennis match or even
prior to a tennis practice get your heart rate up what a lot of people don't do is do high intensity
in their warm-up and then once they step on the practice court or a match court there's
gonna be a lot of high intensity there so high intensity needs to be there even in your warm-up
session so your body can get used to it you can also do a drill where you're working on your
volleys and your overhead simply run up mimicking a forehand volley and back up make sure you jump
off your back foot with your overhead and then back up for a backhand vollley do this 10 times
now the serve is not a throwing motion but throwing a ball or throwing a frisbee
is a perfect way to warm up your arm for tennis
and make sure that whatever you're throwing you're gonna catch it as well
oh yes and a great way to warm up your core and your body's rotation is to throw a medicine
ball just make sure that the medicine ball is light so that you don't hurt yourself
and guys you see my forehead you see that sweat pouring down this is how you know
that you're warmed up a lot of players they warm up i'm sorry to say in kind of a lazy way they
don't even break a sweat so think about the word warm-up this is what you're doing you're warming
up in order to play tennis the most efficient way and only that but also can serve as injury
prevention so a warm-up should be good enough so that you break a sweat and guys what i just
showed you is more of a professional level warm-up this is what you see on tour this is how players
prepare for every single practice and every single match i understand that you have time constraints
and you might not be able to do this entire warm-up but you can pick one segment out of here
what are you doing the dry swings whether you're running around the court whether you're doing bands
any of this by itself is a lot better than not warming up at all and remember the only way to
tell whether you're warmed up properly for tennis is if you break a sweat that was the
pete sampras you guys remember this pete sampras used to wipe his forehead with his finger and
then you just flick it like this this is a perfect opportunity to do the sampras sweat flick
hey guys today's video i want to show you how to warm up for tennis