The Dynamic Lunge and Ankle Reach Stretch warms up the musculature used when hitting groundstrokes in closed stance.
The dynamic lunge and ankle reach stretch is a total body stretching exercise that you should include into your pre-match warm up routine because it prepares various muscle groups simultaneously.
Its purpose is to prepare the musculature for explosive movements, reduce the risk of injury and improve flexibility and dynamic stability by increasing muscle tissue temperature.
Dynamic Lunge & Ankle Reach Stretch Progression
Make sure you can control the action throughout the entire range of motion. Otherwise you defeat the purpose of the exercise.
Very often, athletes are not focused and they just go through the motions. They become sloppy. Especially when it comes to maintaining dynamic stability.
Here are the progression levels:
- Beginner: look down during the action
- Advanced: look forward during the action & increase speed
- Professional: close your eyes
As a beginner you want to perform the dynamic lunge and ankle reach stretch in a controlled fashion, especially during the trunk rotation, so that you can maintain dynamic stability throughout the stretch.
Advanced athletes can speed up the action and maintain a narrow base during the lunge position to increase the dynamic stability requirements.
Professional athletes can close their eyes during the action. That makes it even more difficult to maintain dynamic stability throughout the action.
Dynamic Lunge & Ankle Reach Summary
- Look forward at all times
- Take a large step out with the left leg
- Drop right knee towards the ground in a controlled fashion until both knees are at 90˚
- Rotate the torso all the way to the right and touch/reach the ankle of the right foot
- Keep weight on forward heel
- Stand up and progress into next lunge now rotating and touching towards the left side
Targeted Musculature
- Glutes
- Quadriceps
- Hamstrings
- Hip Flexors
- Obliques
“Illu trunk muscles“. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Other Static Stretches For You
Apart from the dynamic lunge and ankle reach stretch we have some other static stretches for you that target the muscles acting on the knee and hip.
You can use these stretches during the cool down once you are finished with your match or training session.
Simply click on them to learn more or watch the videos:
Training Zone
In this section we provide you with some more workouts and training tips you may be interested in to optimize your training:
