Tennis is a fast-paced, individual sport that takes strength, speed, endurance and agility. Being able to quickly transition your body side to side and back and forth will make or break your ability on the court. All of the movement patterns of the body in conjunction with slicing, serving and smashing require you to activate multiple joints. Every time you activate a joint, you also recruit at least one muscle.
Elbow
The elbow joint allows you to do two motions: flexion and extension. During a serve, you perform both of these motions as you raise your racket and follow through with an overhand smash. When you extend your elbow, you straighten your arm. This requires the recruitment of the triceps muscles which sit on the back of the upper arms. Bending your elbow to move your forearm closer to your upper arm is flexion and works the biceps on the front of the upper arm.
Shoulder
The shoulder joint is one of the most mobile joints in the human body. During tennis, you perform multiple motions with your hitting arm, such as adduction, flexion and extension. Adduction takes place when you swing your arm down across the front of your body, flexion takes place when you raise your arm straight up in front of your body and extension takes place when you move your arm backward for an underhand hit. These motions cause you to work your deltoids, trapezius and rotator cuff. The delts form the roundness on your shoulders, the traps run across the collarbones, and the rotator cuff is small grouping of muscles and tendons that surround the joint of the shoulder. This muscle group is known by the acronym SITS which stands for supraspinatous, infraspinatous, teres minor and subscapularis.
Hip
The hip joint gets activated when you run back and forth and make sidestepping motions with your legs. Moving your thigh toward your stomach is called hip flexion and this causes you to work your quadriceps and hip flexors. Moving your thigh backward is called hip extension, and it works the glutes and hamstrings. Lateral movement of the thigh is called hip abduction, and it works the glutes and tensor fascia latae. The tensor fascia latae is a small, round-shaped muscle on the side of the hip.
Knee
The knee joint is similar to the elbow in the fact that it has two movements: flexion and extension. You flex your knee during running when you kick your heel back toward your butt. As you straighten your knee, you perform extension, which also takes place while running. The quadriceps are the focus muscles for extension, and the hamstrings are the focus muscles during flexion.
Ankle
The ankle joint has multiple ranges of motion, but during tennis, you primarily perform plantar flexion and dorsiflexion. Plantar flexion involves pointing your foot down and raising your heels in the air. This takes place when you jump to serve or reach up high for a ball. The calves on the back of the lower legs are the main muscles targeted with this movement. Dorsiflexion takes place when you point your toes back toward your shins. You mainly perform dorsiflexion when you run, and it works the anterior tibialis muscle, which runs down the front of the shin.
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