The Lunge and Overhead Reach dynamic stretch warms up the musculature of the legs and trunk used during stroke production.
The lunge and overhead reach prepares you for explosive movements on the tennis court, reduces the risk for injury and improves flexibility and dynamic stability by increasing muscle tissue temperature.
Implement the lunge and overhead reach into your dynamic stretching routine because it is targets various muscle groups at once and hence can help you save some time.
If you were hitting a lot of closed-stance groundstrokes it would make sense to regularly do this stretch because it partially emulates the movement mechanics.
Warming up the abs is also important because they are being used every time you hit a ball.
Tearing your abs can be very painful and prevent you from playing tennis altogether.
So do the stretch regularly and minimize the risk of aggravating an injury any further.
Lunge and Overhead Reach 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 stretch in a controlled fashion, especially during the lunge, 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.
Lunge and Overhead Reach Description Summary
- Look forward at all times
- Take a large step out with the leading leg
- Drop trailing knee towards the ground in a controlled fashion until both knees are at 90˚
- Extend the arms and rotate them over your head as far as possible behind your head (full shoulder flexion)
- Keep weight on forward heel
- Stand up and progress into next lunge
Targeted Musculature
- Glutes
- Quadriceps
- Hamstrings
- Hip flexors
- Deltoids
- Latissimus dorsi
- Rectus abdominis
“Rectus abdominis“. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Other Static Stretches For You
Apart from the lunge and overhead reach dynamic stretch we have some other static stretches for you that target the muscles acting on the 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:
