Why a Tennis Warm Up Should Never Start With Jogging

Walk onto most courts in Sarasota an hour before a match and you will see the same thing: a kid jogging two slow laps, calling it a tennis warm up, then picking up a racket cold. At SRQ Tennis, Coach Michael Boothman runs it the opposite way. A warm up is not about raising a light sweat. It is about getting the body ready to do the exact things tennis asks of it. Jogging does almost none of that, and starting there can actually leave a player flatter and more injury prone than if they had done nothing at all.

This is one of the Six Pillars in action. Pillar 5 is Movement & Conditioning in the Right Order, and the order is the whole point.

Jogging warms the wrong system for tennis

Tennis is not a steady state sport. It is a series of short, sharp, explosive efforts: a split step, a first step, a hard change of direction, a stretch for a wide ball, a recovery. Points last seconds, not minutes. Jogging trains long, slow, straight line effort. None of that maps onto what a player does inside a rally.

There is a second problem. A slow jog raises core temperature a little, but it does almost nothing for the joints, the hips, the shoulders, or the nervous system that has to fire fast when the ball comes. So the player feels "warm," steps onto the court, and the first time they sprint and plant for a wide forehand, the body is still cold where it counts. That is exactly the moment a junior rolls an ankle or tweaks a knee.

So we do not ban jogging because we dislike running. We skip it as the opening move because it spends time and energy on the wrong system. The clock before a session is short. We want every minute of it preparing the body to play.

The right order: joints, then muscles, then intensity

Pillar 5 lays out a sequence, and we follow it every session: joint preparation, then muscle activation, then high intensity work. Never the reverse.

Joint preparation comes first. We take the ankles, knees, hips, spine, and shoulders through controlled movement to wake them up and open their range. This is calm, deliberate work. It tells the body what is about to happen and gets the hinges moving freely before we ask anything hard of them.

Muscle activation comes second. Now we switch on the specific muscles tennis leans on: the glutes that drive a first step, the core that transfers load through a groundstroke, the shoulder stabilizers that protect a serve. Short, pointed exercises. The goal is to get these muscles firing on time, not to tire them out.

High intensity work comes last. Only once the joints are open and the muscles are switched on do we add speed: short sprints, split steps, reaction starts, change of direction. This is also where movement coaching lives. We use the David Bailey Method as our footwork vocabulary, building from the Golden 12 foundational moves into the shot specific patterns a player will use minutes later in live ball. By the time the first real rally starts, the body has already rehearsed the movements the point will demand.

Conditioning prepares the body to move. Movement coaching teaches the body what tennis looks like. Both, in order. Reverse that order and you get the worst of both: a tired player who is still not actually ready for the first hard sprint.

What this looks like on court at Potter Park and Pineview

At Potter Park with our youngest players and at Pineview Park with the older juniors, the warm up looks like tennis from the first minute. No laps. The kids move through joint preparation as a group, hit a few activation patterns, then start moving the way they will move in the rally: split, push, recover, repeat. Ten to twelve focused minutes and they are genuinely ready to play, not just sweaty.

Parents notice the difference, and it is worth naming for two reasons. First, fewer tweaks and rolled ankles. A body that is prepared in the right order handles the first hard ball far better than a body that jogged and then went cold. Second, the player gets more out of the session. The first fifteen minutes of live ball are sharp instead of sluggish, so the reps actually count.

You can use the same idea at home before a match or a backyard hit. Skip the lap. Spend a few minutes opening the joints, fire up the legs and core with a handful of quick patterns, then do a short burst of movement before the first ball. Same order, smaller version.

Common questions about the tennis warm up

Is jogging always bad? No. Easy running has a place in general fitness and in some recovery work. It is just the wrong tool to open a tennis warm up, because it does not prepare the body for the explosive, multi direction demands of a point.

How long should a junior warm up take? For most of our players, ten to twelve minutes done in the right order beats half an hour done in the wrong one. Quality and sequence matter more than total time.

What about a cool down? A short, calm cool down helps. The same principle applies: match the activity to what the body needs at that moment, which after a hard session is settling down, not another sprint.

Wrap up

A good tennis warm up is not a lap and a stretch. It is joints, then muscles, then intensity, in that order, every time. That is Pillar 5 of the SRQ Tennis system, and it is one of the simplest changes a family can make to keep a junior healthier and sharper. Want to see it in person at Potter Park or Pineview? Text Coach Michael at 941-239-4703 or read more about the Six Pillars behind how we coach.

You can also see how this fits the bigger picture in why we build practice around live ball, and check the full programs and pricing breakdown if you are thinking about getting your player started. For more on how the wider sport sees warm up sequencing, the USTA is a solid place to start.

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Coach Michael Boothman is a USPTA Elite Professional and the founder of SRQ Tennis in Sarasota, Florida. He coaches juniors and adults at Potter Park and Pineview Park. Text 941-239-4703 or email [email protected] to talk about your player.