The Warm Up

As the coaches siren their calls for warm up, the junior players drudgingly stop their game of mini tennis to form a line and proceed to gossip as they jog hesitantly up and down (or around) the courts for their warm up. There is a reason why this is not allowed at Seminole High Performance. We expect high quality effort at all times, even with the warm up runs and stretches. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know already how into stretching I am, primarily because I didn’t do it when I was a junior player myself enough and now it’s costing me.

But I understand how easy it is, day in and day out doing the same stretches, to autopilot through jogging, stretching, and warming up your shots. Often I see players goofing off in the warm up; i.e. trying to peg someone, attempting to beat a world record of how little steps they can take within a warm up time, exaggerating grunting for attention, amongst other fantastic escapades that never cease to irritate a coach.

Warming up deserves a focused player. A focused player will jog to warm up muscles to avoid injury, stretch while focusing on how their muscles feel that day, and notice changes in flexibility when they do certain exercises, and warm up their shots when hitting with a partner, focusing on correct form and footwork while they are at it. We, as a coaching staff, always remind players that the warm up is important. Know that if you did not come off the court that day exhausted from your work on court, you didn’t do all that you could do and didn’t get better that day. 

Never doubt that there is an opponent working harder than you if you don’t work your hardest day in and day out. Footwork is typically the key in the warm up. If we had to count how many time we had to say “step up your footwork” (or something along the lines of footwork), we’d all be a perfect epitome of a broken-record player. Footwork dictates body movement; if they are standing like tree stumps, everything else will soon follow suit. 

It may seem okay to, once in a while, autopilot through a warm up, waiting to get to the “real” practice of that day, but as a serious tennis player, you should quickly reconsider your outlook on the warm up. It is the way that you will approach practice; if that means your lackadaisical in the warm up, guess how the rest of practice will go?