Part of every good tennis player’s routine is the warm-up. This is just a simple set of exercises to help warm up your muscles and get your body used to move before performing more strenuous activities, and it’s meant to prevent overuse injuries. However, not everyone knows how to properly warm up– so is your warm-up actually causing common injuries, or is there something else afoot on the court?

The Proper Way To Warm Up

Warm-ups don’t have to be difficult to do, but you do have to understand the basics! To start your warm-up, try something light that gets your heart rate up, like jogging, jumping jacks, or other aerobic activities. After that, it’s recommended that you move on to stretches that help to loosen your joints and get your muscles ready to move. If you’re looking for ways to begin this step, try yoga or an elastic band to help you. Your warm-up should typically take about 15 to 20 minutes, and shouldn’t cover anything that your main workout is already going to feature. Throughout the warm-up, try to focus on increasing your muscles’ flexibility and range of motion, because that’s going to help you on the court. 

Is Your Warm-Up The Real Problem?

It’s not hard to learn how to warm up, but it can be difficult to ensure that you’re doing it properly. It’s easy to injure yourself from misapplied or underutilized warm-ups, so make sure that your main goal during the warm-up is to loosen your joints and get your body ready for movement. If you’re struggling to find the perfect warm-up for you, remember that you start with basic aerobics like jump rope or ladder drills, and then move on to more specialized muscle movements like squats, side shuffles, or monster walks. If you follow these tips, your warm-up will be perfect– and you won’t get injured either!