By Tony Beecroft, Physiotherapist
top 3 Shoulder prevention exercises for tennis.
If you are suffering from a shoulder injury, don't worry, we can help you!
Below are a few of our favourite shoulder exercises for overhead sports, such as tennis.
The list is essentially endless, and each shoulder needs to be assessed to determine which are the best specific exercises to fix your problem, but I'm loving these 3 at the moment!
Handcuff 4 Point Kneeling Taps
The exercise below looks pretty easy, but its a real 'burner' for the posterior rotator cuff, so you'll feel this in the back of your ball in the socket.
It depends on where you place most of your weight (weight bearing arm, or your legs) as to where you get the burn. Sometimes it will be in the weight bearing arm, but often it is in the moving arm. A lot of people describe it as both.
It doesn't really matter overall, as long as you are hitting fatigue, and doing both sides, you'll get gains.
This has been really useful for those people we catergorize diagnostically as Multi-Directional Instability (MDI). These people tend to have a significant ache post sport or activity, with a vague pain presentation, and nothing to specific or pin point. This is caused by the ball moving very slightly in the socket.
Hand Cuff Elevation
We love the use of 'Hand Cuff' band, and think this elevation exercise is an absolute beauty for working your external rotation muscles through elevation range of motion.
You should feel the back, underside part of your shoulder socket fatigue with this one.
If it isn't, get a heavier resistance band!
This has been great for any overhead or throwing athletes, and is very safe to perform.
Lawnmower Theraband Pulls
A classic shoulder exercise that is great for firing up the rotator cuff muscles through the whole shoulder range. Not only will it help your back hand drive improve power, it'll prepare you to hit some serious winners on the dance floor too!
I really like this one, as it tends to work infraspinatus muscle, one of the largest rotator cuff muscles, and one that we often find is somewhat inhibited in people who have had shoulder pain in the past, or quite recently.
Don't jump straight into this exercise. If you have had shoulder pain, you should complete some base level shoulder rotator cuff loading exercises from your physio prior to progressing to these exercises.
Start with slow speed with this exercise, and then increase the speed so that you are replicating your speed of performance on court.
There's no point in doing everything really slow in the gym, then quickly on the sporting field. It's a massive jump and that equals increased injury risk.
Hope you get some shoulder prevention exercise tips and motivation from this blog post by Melbourne Sports Physiotherapy.
Experience the Melbourne Sports Physiotherapy Difference
Here at Melbourne Sports we go further than simply diagnosing your injury and providing you with rehab to complete. Following our detailed assessment, our main priority is to get you back to what you love doing as soon as possible. Our rehab process typically includes hands-on treatment to settle symptoms, a detailed rehab exercise program and a carefully mapped out return to sport plan. Given load management is so important, once you are back performing we will also help you plan your sessions so you can safely increase your sports load.
What is often not realised is as Physiotherapists we don’t just see you once you are injured. We want to prevent injury from happening in the first place! We work hard in the injury prevention space and often see keen, healthy sports people for a detailed assessment to help them stay injury free.
If you are showing some signs of injury or simply want help staying injury-free then book in with one of our highly experienced Physiotherapists today!
You can make an appointment by calling or booking online or attending our Melbourne Sports Physiotherapy clinics in Blackburn, Essendon or North Melbourne.