How to Prevent Injuries in Tennis

Max Mirnyi, former #1 in doubles, shared a secret of his long-time successful tennis career:

“The most important thing before any tennis match or workout is the warm-up. A proper warm-up prepares our muscles, tendons and joints, and the whole organism, for intensive and hard work on the court.”

I remember watching Max Mirnyi and Vladimir Voltchkov before the Davis Cup matches. They warmed up for 40 minutes and after every match, they did a cool down with static stretching for 30 minutes. Sometimes I saw that the younger players disappeared from the court, but the tennis veterans continued to do a regular cool down after the match had ended.

Nonsufficient attention to a regular warm-up and cool-down is one of the reasons for injuries. Today I watched a tennis workout at a public court. I intentionally measured the time for the warm-up and cool-down. Nothing was new to me. Three minutes of slow running with a few dynamic stretching elements, and then the players started to drill.

Cool down consisted of 5 minutes of static stretching. It was a group of beginner tennis players who were about 9-11 years old. I thought that if they have not learned the importance of warm-up and cool-down during their first years of training, most of them will not be paying attention to these vital parts of the workout in the future.

Other reasons for injuries are ignoring or using the wrong programs for player conditioning. Many tennis coaches like to say: “Play tennis to get in shape”. Although tennis certainly provides inherent fitness benefits to the sportsman’s body, that advice reflects an out-of-date approach. The most important thing to preventing injuries and optimizing performance in modern tennis is definitely: “Get in shape to play your best tennis”.

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