With the Australian Open on our screens, it’s often a time that we all pick up a racquet (even if we haven’t played since high school). This can often result in overloading the upper limb – we’ve already discussed tennis elbow if you’d like to read further HERE. However, your shoulder is also susceptible to pain and injury, the most common of these being impingement syndrome. The legendary Pat Rafter succumbed to persistent shoulder injuries, ending his career at the age of 29.
With repetitive strokes, particularly serving, pain can often result due to strain on the rotator cuff muscles or irritation of the bursa in your shoulder. In order to prevent these issues from occurring, it is important to have good flexibility, strength and endurance as well as control through the shoulder blade.
Below we have compiled some great exercises to help with your shoulder injury. Whether you sustained it playing tennis, throwing a ball to your child, or lifting something overhead, they are all relevant to you:
Pec stretch
If you’re tight through your chest (known as your pec muscles), you can be pulled into an impingement position when you hit, especially when serving and hitting overhead shots (remember Pat Rafter – even with his amazing technique, this injury still ended his career). To test your flexibility, put a tennis ball between you and the wall at shoulder blade level. Keeping your lower back flat as possible, pretend to create a snow angel against the wall the whole way up to 180 degrees. If you are unable to keep your hands and elbows against the wall, this may indicate a lack of flexibility through your pec muscles. You can use this test as an active stretch.
See this video for a demonstration
Tennis-ball Massage
A tennis ball can be great to release any tight areas, particularly around the back of the shoulder around the posterior capsule. Simply roll out any areas that feel tight or sore. You can either release these areas by standing with the ball between you and a wall and rolling or you can lie on the ball for a more intense release.
See this video for a demonstration.
Scapula Control
If your shoulder blade (also known as the scapula) is not moving effectively, it means other areas of your shoulder have to compensate and may overload. A good exercise to test out your shoulder blade control is by completing some simple shrugs. Stand against a wall, keeping the tips of your shoulders as close to the wall as possible. Stand with your arms out at 45 degrees, and aim to shrug your shoulder blades up and back at the same time, holding that position for 3 seconds and repeat this 20 times. If you’re unable to do this, it’s an important exercise to practice.
See this video for a demonstration.
Rotator Cuff Strengthening
The rotator cuff muscles work to keep your shoulder secure and stable in the socket, and they are integral to normal shoulder function. Weakness in these muscles will predispose you to injury, therefore making them as strong as possible should be a priority. Rotator cuff strengthening exercises can be quite simple and done at home using a theraband or at the gym using the cable machine.
Video coming…..
Woodchop Exercise
The woodchop is a great functional strengthening exercise that involves your shoulders, core and hips- all important muscle groups when playing tennis. For a woodchop, a cable machine or theraband is required.
Video coming…..
For this exercise it’s important that you don’t get any pinch pain in your shoulder. If you are, you may be performing the technique incorrectly or there could be something else going on in your shoulder. If you are it might be a good idea to book in for a free assessment at our clinic.
It’s important to note that when playing tennis, you get just as much, if not more power through your hips and legs as you do your shoulder. So if you’ve hurt your shoulder playing tennis, it could be due to a technique flaw in how you move your hips. If this is the case you may need to see an experienced tennis coach. If you live in the Eastern Suburbs, high-performance tennis coaches Bryce and Jason Lindeman are worth checking out. Visit http://www.tenniscoaching.com.au/ to get in contact.