This has been bothering me for a while. How should a club player warm up to serve? My main problem is this: I tend to hit too fast too early. What’s strange to me is that the speed seems to come automatically. In other words, I am not trying to hit my serves fast or hard. Compare this to my baseball career where I found it very easy to warm up gradually. I enjoyed playing short toss before moving up to long toss before refocusing on pitching at full speed from 60 feet 6 inches. For me, properly warming up to serve would take a little more thought. At first I tried to work it out by myself but I continued to find myself at 75% with two or three serves.
That can’t be good.
So, I decided to reach out to two trusted experts. Coach Lexie is one of my favorite tennis coaches at Instagram. Every time she says, “I’m Lexie, your tennis coach.” I smile. It’s nice to think that I’m actually Lexie’s student and her posts always make it feel that way. When I asked her about warm up to serve she was generous enough to write this for me.
“When I warm up the serve, I start by preparing the body and shoulder before hitting balls. I use light dynamic movements like arm circles, shoulder rolls, torso rotations, and wrist prep to open up my range of motion.
On court, I add shadow swings and light throwing to groove the service motion and rhythm without tension. From there, I move into a progressive serving routine—starting easy to find feel, then gradually adding direction, different targets, and serve types (flat, slice, kick), always focusing on a consistent toss.
A good serve warm-up is about rhythm and feel first—speed comes last.”
All of that make sense to me but it’s not easy. I have tried to formalize the process as much as I can. I start by tossing along the fence (another technique Lexie shared on Instagram). My toss tends to creep lower and lower as I hit my serves faster but a fence-high toss allows me body more time to impact the ball with a nice sense of flow.
Then, I move to the baseline and I toss and catch, another bit of advice from Lexie. This is very helpful because it gives me instant feedback about whether my toss is even in the ballpark. Sometimes it’s not.
Then, I finally make contact with the ball. My goal for the first ball is to hit the ball as slowly as possible for at least five balls. That’s not easy for me, but I am trying. I promise. In fact, my practice goal is not to exceed 30% when I am hitting serve after serve. Hey, I’m gonna be 65 in April. Sixty–fucking–five!
Another Instagram coach who has helped with my warm up is Coach Kirsche. As soon as I started to follow him he came out with a warm up guide for the shoulder. Talk about timing!
Me? I love this dynamic resistance band stuff but I have to admit that I have a hard time implementing it. Why? Did I mention I was going to be 65 in April? Thing is, every time I’ve tried any resistance band work, even light stuff, I have ended up with a shoulder that’s more sore than it would be after thirty serves. Still, I am going to dedicate myself to doing more of this. I just need to find the sweet spot between overdoing it (my style) and not doing it at all (also my style. You figure that out.
I’d like to extend my sincere thanks and gratitude to Lexie and Kirsche. Just the feeling of having two great coaches out there who want me to improve makes me want to improve even more.
Tt
Tennis thing 