Unlock Your Tennis Potential: Why Your Exercises Should Mimic Tennis Movements

Have you noticed that tennis injuries can take much longer to heal than expected?

There could be many reasons for this. Still, one of the big ones is that tennis movements are very different from movements in the rest of your life—and significantly different from the exercises commonly prescribed by physios, chiros, and osteopaths.

If you think about it simply, lifting weights up and down and pulling bands in and out isn’t used in tennis. Tennis is done standing up and moving around the court.

That’s why it can be so hard to get back to playing tennis after injury: the exercises that therapists prescribe to rehabilitate tennis don’t look or feel anything like tennis.

Let me tell you more.

Tennis movements improve tennis movements.

If you want to improve at something, the closer your activity looks to that thing, the faster you’ll improve. If you want to improve at math… do math. If you want to improve at gardening, you have to garden.

For some reason, this thought can fly out the window when seeing a therapist hoping to return to a particular sport.

Although we use fancy terminology and scientific papers to justify what we do, we can lose sight of the fact that the exercises we prescribe look nothing like the activity our patient is returning to. And that’s a problem.

If you want your body to improve at tennis, your exercises should look like tennis.

Read that again.

The difference between tennis movements and gym/therapy movements.

If you look at tennis, you’ll see that the main two movements (forehands and backhands) are rotational. It’s predominantly a twisting motion that involves the whole body from head to toe.

Now, think about the main movements you see at the gym: squats, deadlifts, shoulder presses, bench presses, and rows. None of those are rotational.

And the main exercises prescribed by therapists? Clams, Banded walks, shoulder band movements, wall sits, leg extensions. None of those involve the whole body.

So we’re in a predicament where what we’re doing looks nothing like what we’re trying to do.

How do we get out of the predicament?

Because you’re a unique individual, an exercise that is good for someone else may not suit you, so generic advice is complex.

You can use this blog as a test to compare your movements with the movements of the activity you are trying to return to.

So, if it's tennis, make sure that your exercises include some rotation and involve the whole body. If they aren’t both of these, you have to make sure that they’re progressing towards both, or progress in recovery will be slow, and transferability will be minimal to none.

Remember, if you want your body to be better at tennis, your exercises should look like tennis.

If you need advice or treatment about returning to tennis, see us at Mixed Osteo.

If you’re keen on a game of tennis, see our friends at Royal Park Tennis Club.

Hopefully, we’ll see you on the court or in the clinic soon, Nathaniel.