Tip of the Week #1

This is the first in the series of "Tip of the Week"

I'll try and do these every week if I can...they will be about anything from playing styles, gear, sometimes racket reviews, or your own game.

So here it goes...

#1 WARM UP

I thought a good place to start would be warming up. Anyone who has seen me play knows that I am borderline obsessed with warming up. With the seasons about the change, and it starting to get cold (wherever it gets cold), more and more people are pulling and straining muscles on the court because of a lack of warm up.

Warming up is key to success on the court. You wouldn't just wake up from a sleep and throw a football as far as you could, right (I hope not)? I'm not saying you need to be on the ground for a half an hour before your match, a solid 7-10 minutes should be fine.

There are enough annoying injuries you can get from tennis that you can't really do all that much to prevent (ankle sprains, overuse injuries), so why not warm up and prevent the preventable?

Static stretching used to be thought of as the best way to warm up, and maybe even still by your outdated gym teachers, or anyone else whose not truly all there on fitness info. Now, it is almost unanimous that a dynamic warm up is the way to go. The difference between dynamic and static, is basically what it says. Dynamic is warming up through movement, and static is, well, being static(motionless) and holding stretches.

Since I don't have a PhD in exercise science, and no real credentials in fitness, here is a link to a site for a great dynamic warm up. HERE!

Lightly jog for about 3 minutes, then go into some of those dynamic movements, and you should be good to go.

Next time you see the token weekend warrior out on the court, with his Babolat Pure Drive, touching his toes three times, bouncing up and down while then proceeding to bomb a serve with the wrong grip, while only bombing out his rotator cuff, maybe you can show him some of these stretches.

That's it for tip 1....stay tuned soon for updates from Lyon, Basel, and St. Petersburg