The concepts and recommendations in this post are merely informative. For an accurate diagnosis and physical therapy program, visit a specialist.
Tennis has become a fitness sport where players turned themselves into high performance athletes and a whole new approach to technique has been developed to meet the needs of a professional match. This technique and its modifiers are the result of evaluating the most common types of injuries and the redesigning of the already learnt lessons. In Tennis, movement repetition and intensity are tied to good technique and performing good technique is tied to preventing common injuries. A bad technique repeated over time leads to injury. Then it’d be wise to re-think now how your tennis performance is affecting your body. New tricks and exercises have to be learned in order to prevent and correct the faulty technique and to better improve endurance and muscular memory for a better body coordination.
Kinetic Link.
This concept is understood as the interconnected body movements and how the energy is transferred along the muscular groups to end up in an ideal stroke. One that starts from ground level forces that go up through the chain, to the racket. To avoid poor technique injuries the kinetic link needs flawless timing that grants an optimum, swift movement.
Common Tennis Injuries
The most common injuries reported in Tennis involve some sort of technique errors combined with bad gear selection like a poor choice in tennis shoes or wrong racquet and accessory specs: excessive or lower weight, racquet stiffness and vibration dampening, optimum grip selection and comfort (see how to choose a tennis racquet). For that reason a good sales assessment is a must and a racquet demo program should be available to really get the gear that suits your physical condition.
Tennis Elbow: is a injury to the muscles that extend the wrist and fingers and it usually develops gradually and hurts where the muscles are attached, just outside the elbow bump, this leads too irradiating pain to the wrist and fingers. It’s caused by injured muscles and tissues due to excessive gripping or wringing movements, lack of forearm muscle strength and poor technique among other unaccustomed hand uses. Its treatment involves physiotherapy to restore muscular length, strength and its movement patterns. Some additional aids are available as compression elbow braces that diminish stress on the injured area.
Ankle Sprain: is when the ankle ligaments, located right above the ankle suffer a twisting due to an excessive force applied to the planted foot on a slide. The common therapy follows ankle protection and restriction of movement with ankle stabilizers and sleeves to let the rotation mechanism restore and reduce swelling.
Wrist Tendonitis: it’s caused by an overuse of the tendons around the wrist and most commonly happens to the non- dominant hand of the player. The recovery involves restricted movement of the injured area, stabilization of the joint with wrist straps or thera-tapes and strength exercises.
Injury prevention conditioning
These are just a few general approaches to conditioning and strength. For a properly designed physical therapy program visit a specialist.
Core Conditioning and hip stretch: build abductors strength and prevent hip injuries
Shoulder and elbow conditioning : promote adequate forehand and backhand technique
Ankle conditioning for strength and balance.
Videos courtesy of AskDoctorJo
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