Tennis Injuries Are No Match For PT
Physical Therapy for Tennis Players
Does Your Tennis Game Need PT?
Tennis is a great sport that offers opportunities for players of all levels to get involved. For those who play at a competitive level, they enjoy the thrill of fast-paced competition and the opportunities to see their hard work and practice pay off. For those who play more casually, they have just as much fun playing with friends and engaging in local tournaments. Tennis, like all sports, places a certain amount of stress on the body’s tissues. The more you play, the higher the load on those tissues and the higher the risk for a tennis injury to occur or for an unrelated physical impairment to interfere with your game. So whether you are a player experiencing an injury or someone looking to improve their physical function or get back into the sport, professionals like physical therapists have just what you need.
POINTING OUT THE DEMANDS OF TENNIS
Tennis is a dynamic sport and one that uses the whole body. Let’s take the tennis swing or serve as an example. Serves, overheads, volleys, forehands and backhands utilize certain muscle groups over and over. If you think about how many shots you take in an hour’s worth of continuous play, you get a sense of how much the upper body works during a tennis match or practice. As a player progresses through the levels of tennis they will begin to put more spin and more speed on their shots which can increase the load on tissues in the shoulder, elbow, forearm and wrist even more. Additionally, the effects of poor body mechanics or errors in form become exacerbated.
In addition to the work the upper body performs while playing tennis, anyone returning to tennis after a break from exercise will quickly remember that anaerobic fitness, speed and stamina are necessary to play tennis successfully. Explosive movements to reach a shot can wear a player out if they are not used to them and a lack of speed will leave them missing returns that they could have otherwise gotten.
Balance and dynamic footwork round out the demands of tennis. The ability to change directions quickly, move forward, backwards, sideways and diagonally with speed and precision takes both balance and coordination. This is most evident on the single’s court but even those playing doubles will find their competitive edge dull when they can’t move quickly and with good balance on the court.
MATCHING YOU WITH A PHYSICAL THERAPIST
Depending on the needs you have, a sports or orthopedic physical therapist or even a neurologic physical therapist can help you address many different concerns related to tennis. Let’s explore some of the ways physical therapist help their patients who play tennis:
Improving form and technique: While a tennis coach is the primary resource for learning the skill and technique of tennis, sometimes the body feels restricted or presents with an impairment that prevents you from carrying forth the good techniques taught by your coaches. For example, if you have trouble reaching overhead, your serve might suffer. If your trunk is stiff and it is hard for you to rotate through your spine or hips, you may notice the speed and power of your shots diminish. In these cases, while the player is not injured, physical impairments are leading to limitations in their activities and a physical therapist can assess these impairments and create a plan to address them which is specific to your goals of improving in tennis.
Addressing pain or injuries: As noted above, injuries happen on and off the tennis court. Whether you have an old injury that is bothering you, a new injury that happened off the court or an injury that occurred during play, working with a physical therapist can help you return to tennis. Taking a full break from play is not always necessary and physical therapy can show you more effective and active sports rehabilitation and recovery strategies than simply taking repeated breaks from the game in hopes the discomfort resolves. Because tennis requires repeated, moderate to high load forces, your body’s tissues need to be ready to withstand this. Your PT will examine any injured areas as well as other areas important to playing tennis and with a good plan in place can help you recover from injury and reduce the likelihood of experiencing injury in the future.
Improving mobility: Illness, injury and deconditioning can all be precursors to a reduction in mobility. In tennis, when a player is experiencing reduced mobility they may have trouble being on their feet long enough to finish a game, they may have trouble moving around the court or they may feel off balance and worry about falling. All of these issues will impact a player’s ability to play and possibly even enjoy the game of tennis but physical therapists are trained to address impairments in mobility and to make it specific to the types of activities in which you want to improve.
TENNIS IS LOVED BY MANY
Tennis is a game that is loved by many and as physical therapists we want to see our clients and patients enjoy the sport they love for as long as possible. If you have noticed a physical impairment is affecting your game or would like to address any concerns so that you can get back to playing, don’t wait. Our team of physical therapists at Evolve Physical Therapy would love to help you be your best out on the court.
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About EvolveNY-
Brooklyn's Premier Holistic Physical Therapy Clinics- There’s physical therapy, there’s training, and then there’s EVOLVE. We use the science of biomechanics merged with fitness to help our patients get better and stay better!
First we evaluate, then we heal, then we strengthen our clients so they can reach their goals, feel better, and live happier lives. We do so by utilizing a range of core techniques and specialized treatments to reduce pain, improve mobility, enhance physical strength and deal with the underlying issues, not just the pain itself.
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