How To Warm-Up

by John Brunner

    Warming-up is a part of a tennis match that is many times overlooked.  The main purpose of a warm-up is to gradually loosen up your muscles and to help lessen your chance of injury.  Also, it is a perfect time to find your rhythm for the upcoming tennis match or drill session.

    To begin, players should start at the service line with "mini tennis".  When playing mini tennis, players should use short back swings so the ball lands inside the service line and they should rally playing the ball on the bounce.  This should be done for about two minutes.  Players can then hit groundstrokes for about a minute from 3/4 court (half way between the service line and baseline).  Players then hit groundstrokes from the baseline for three or four minutes.

    Another important part of the warm-up is hitting the ball back to your partner.  There is nothing worse than your partner smashing winners while you are trying to warm-up.  Groundstrokes should be hit at medium pace to help you and your partner get into a rhythm.  Both players should try to hit as many balls consecutively back and forth as possible to work on consistency.

    After about four minutes of groundstroke to groundstoke, one player should come to the net and take some volleys.  The volleyer should hit the volleys medium pace and have them land at 3/4 court and the groundstroker should hit medium pace balls right to the volleyer.  After about three minutes of groundstroke to volley, the volleyer should ask for some lobs so he can practice hitting about ten to fifteen overheads.  The players should try to keep the lob to overhead rally going by the overheads being hit medium pace back to the lob player and the lob player hitting the ball so that it would land at about the service line if the overhead person wasn't hitting the overheads out of the air .  They should then switch roles with the opposite player at the net for groundstroke-to-volley for about three minutes and then about ten to fifteen lob-to-overhead.

    Lastly, players should warm up their serves by hitting serves back and forth to each other.  Stop your partner's serves with your racquet, not your hand as that may hurt.  The first player with the balls hits three serves or until they are out of balls and then the other player serves them back until they are out of balls.  Start out with easy serves and very gradually pick up the pace until the players' serves and shoulders are completely warmed-up and a rhythm is found.

    You have now warmed-up like most pro and college tennis players and are ready to play a match or do some drills.