Tennis Elbow
Most often heard about, but not always caused by tennis. Our wrist extensor muscles can take a pounding playing tennis. Working on grip strength with exercise like farmers carries and holding varied objects can protect against tennis elbow. Ensuring you have a correct grip size and replacing grip take regularly can help. Soft tissue rolling may provide some relief and should form the start of your warm up routine before you even grab the racket.
Shoulder Injuries
Often attributed to a weak rotator cuff, we find that shoulder injuries are best dealt with by addressing someones scapular stability as well as their thoracic mobility.
Stress Fractures
Twenty percent of junior players suffer stress fractures, compared to just 7.5 percent of professional players.
Tennis players LOVE time on the court. We find that almost all of our Tennis players complain of niggles on a regular basis and occasionally more serious injuries occur just beacaus chasing that ball around is so damn fun!
But lets make sure we control our "dose" of tennis. This way we'll be able to play with less pain, and for longer. With respect to stress fractures - If an increase in playing volume occurs too quickly, the bone cannot adjust rapidly enough to accommodate the stress and it may break. These "breaks" are usually cracks in the bone that cause pain rather than an actual break or displacement of the bone. Stress fractures can occur in the leg (tibia or fibula) or in the foot (the navicular or the metatarsals). These injuries are preventable with proper strength and endurance training prior to extensive tennis playing. Appropriate footwear is also critical to preventing stress fractures.
Muscle Strains
Almost always a result of an incolmplete (or sometimes non-existant) warmup. Start off slow and build up the speed and explosivity of your movements through each key joint (ankle, knee, hip, torso*, shoulder, elbow, wrist) until you are confident the match-play wont exceed what you've already done. You should be sweaty before the match starts! If you have any concerns about injuries, how to avoid them or how to return to play after an injury. Speak to me!
*obviously the torso is a huge group of joints, but we can treat it as an integrated unit for the purposes of athletic movement