Get Ready for Tennis Season Right in Your Own Home

The good thing about tennis is that it is a great form of exercise. The bad thing about tennis is that if you haven’t played all winter, that first time out in the spring can make you feel like you’ve been hit by the proverbial Mack truck. Tennis works most major and minor muscle groups, starting with your core, arms, legs and hips. You get the picture.

But there is a way around the pain. Do something now to get your body ready for the demands of the sport. Yes, in only a few short weeks, the nets will be up on all of the outdoor tennis courts throughout the Pointes. Now is the time to get ready.

Tennis pro Brandon Still, who teaches at Wimbledon Racquet Club and is the assistant coach for the boys’ tennis team, has some practical advice on how to ready your body for the season. The first order of business is to strengthen your core. That means your abs, your back and your hips.

“The core muscles are some of the most heavily taxed during all of the strokes,” he said. “One great way to strengthen the core is a routine called seven-minute abs. This entails taking seven different simple ab exercises and doing each one for a minute straight. For example, you can mix sit-ups, planks, the bicycle, basket picking, leg scissors, leg raises and push-ups. Do each exercise for a minute and see how many you can do without stopping.”

Still added that you can mimic the repetitive motions used during a tennis match by using light weights to exercise your arms, shoulders and back. This will get your upper body ready for those long, drawn-out deuce games.

To get your legs and lungs ready, do some interval training with running. This means jog and then incorporate sprints, alternating back and forth. You can do this either outside or on a treadmill. This will give you the burst of energy you need to get to those drop shots or lobs.

“Tennis matches are a series of sprints with short breaks in between,” Still said. “Being able to run six miles nonstop is great, but if you can't break into a full out sprint, you won't get to a lot of balls.”

Believe it or not, Wii tennis can get your body ready for the motions of a tennis swing while also providing you with the opportunity to work on your grip, topspin and slice motions. It’s called shadow swinging. You can do this with or without a Wii.

But as we all know, real tennis is better than Wii. Check out what local tennis clubs offer in terms of drop-in drill sessions.

“This allows you to hit a lot of balls in a no-pressure situation,” Still said. “This will get your strokes functioning after a winter of tennis hibernation and let you see what you may need to work on to get your game back to playing level.”