The Mini-Tennis Warm Up and Why We Love to Copy the Pros
The top tennis stars have distinctive styles that we love to mimic because the sport is so highly individualistic.
Back in the 1970s, young players carefully applied surgical tape to their racket grips to be like local hero Vitas. They wore Fila headbands to embody the coolness of Borg. They had huge windups to try to serve like McEnroe. By copying the habits and style of the best players, we felt further connected to these tennis gods. Today, I see young players copying the top stars, but looking a bit more to substance over style and that's a good thing if applied properly. A good place to begin to explore this topic is the start of play by learning and emulating the "do's" and "don'ts" of how the pros warm up.
About 10 years ago, I traveled to the hallowed grounds of the All-England Club to bring a longtime student to play on the grass courts of Wimbledon. Usually, it's next to impossible to find an empty practice court during the early rounds, but to my surprise, I saw courts open all over the place. It seemed as though half the players were on the sidelines doing functional movement exercises to get ready to play. It made me think that if the top players in the world were choosing to perform "glute bridges" and "lateral lunges" over hitting on these very unique courts, this was the start of something revolutionary.
Today off the court training is as significant as on the court training as the sport is defined by athletic ability, as much as by racket skill. A good non-hitting, functional tennis warm up will:
►Emphasize mobility of ankles, hips and torso and stability of knees, core and shoulders.
►Focus on the correct sequencing of the core firing before the hips hinge to ensure good posture.
►Raise your respiratory rate, core temperature and hormonal levels.
►Emulate actual tennis movements.
Good tennis movement warm up protocols will help you play better, longer and with fewer injuries.
One of the exercises that I am not fond of is the practice of holding the net and swinging one leg from side to side in an exaggerated hip abduction/adduction movement. Of the criteria above, it just address hip mobility and in a limited, highly unrealistic and impractical movement. You have to self-stabilize when you play, you don't get to hold the net. Still somehow because Maria Sharapova, Roger Federer and others did it before a match, its copied by juniors time and time again. Maybe it's popular because it's simple, easy and it kind of looks like you are doing something that is "high performance." While it's not a total waste of time, it's a far cry from a best practice. In the same vain, while a warm up of jogging around the court a few times is better than sitting on the couch and eating potato chips, but not a great preparation for most tennis movements which are short, quick and multi-directional.
My advice here is to find a top trainer and learn a sound, compact, practical and functional routine that is right for your needs and the demands of your play. Follow this routine before you start to hit each and every time. The pros prepare with many exercises, choose yours wisely and appropriately.
A pro practice that I love is the popular habit of warming up "short court," but again its value is found in understanding what can be gained and exercising discipline in performance. Short court warm ups are more than gaining "feel" for the ball. The close distance between the hitters creates time urgency, which compensates for a slowed swing speed, and therefore, the ball will arrive soon even when hit slowly and your preparation must still be quick. The advantage of a slow tempo is that it promotes self-awareness and mechanical correctness so that you can move at the speed you "can," not at the speed you "can't" and begin play with great positioning and stroke production. If you use the short court to be lazy, this warm up will not help your game, but if you work your feet and your mind, the short court is a valuable tool to start play.
