Stretching Before Playing Tennis

Video Transcript

"Now I'd like to talk you about stretching. The thing about tennis is this not only requires a lot of hand eye coordination, but it requires a lot of running, sprinting within a very small area. If you go out there and you don't have you hamstrings or your quadriceps stretched out enough, you're liable to pull something. Now I'd like to talk you about stretching. The thing about tennis is it requires a lot of energy in a short area, which means you're going to be sprinting back and forth and back and forth, so your leg muscles need to stretched out and loose and prepared for the impact that they're going to take. Basically, just basic stretching. If you played sports you can stretch to play tennis. You want to try to work your hamstrings to a count of 8-10 on both sides. Then you want to work you middle, the groin, for the same amount of time, a count of 8-10. What I like to do for my quadriceps is you point your knee in and pull you leg back a little bit. I like to do for about 8-10 seconds, and we're just about ready to play. The one thing also that you want to make sure you do is the hand that you play with, I happen to be left handed. You want to stretch out that arm especially well. Reach behind your back to try and grab it. You want to try and reach your hand. I can reach it with this hand. I like to do maybe 20-25 jumping jacks to get me going. There's so much energy that you're going to use if you're in a good tennis match that you want to make sure you bring lots of water as well. "