A good warm-up for young tennis players is a few minutes of moving games that get the legs, arms and balance ready: skipping, star jumps, frog hops, a bear crawl, standing on one leg and arm circles. Two or three games for a couple of minutes each is enough before home practice, and children rarely notice they are warming up.
The 6 drills
Tap a drill for the steps, and an easier and a harder version. Ages are a guide: go by what your child can do.
1. Skip Party
Ages 5 to 9
You need: Nothing
Rhythm and coordination: a step, a hop and the arms swinging in time.
Step and hop on one foot
Step and hop on the other
Swing your arms as you go
Easier: Gallop sideways instead, then try skipping again next time.
Harder: Skip in a circle, then try skipping backwards.
Skip tag is one of the tag games in USTA Net Generation red ball practice.
Federation lessons for young players start with a warm-up. In USTA Net Generation's red ball practice plan, it is the first part of every session, before the skill games.
The best-tested warm-up for children comes from football. FIFA 11+ Kids is a warm-up programme for children aged 7 to 13 with balance, jumping and landing, and strength exercises. In a large trial with youth football teams, teams that used it had about half as many injuries as teams that did their usual warm-up. The games on this page use the same kinds of movement.
What do you need?
Space: a clear area about four big steps long.
Kit: nothing for most games. A soft ball if your child wants to try the harder Flamingo.
A grown-up nearby, especially for Frog Hops and anything with jumping.
How do I turn these into a practice?
USTA Net Generation's red ball lessons follow a simple shape: a warm-up, then skill games, then a team challenge. A home session can do the same:
Two or three warm-up games from this page, a couple of minutes each.
Every drill on this page has an easier version: use it, and go back up when it feels easy again. Stop while it is still fun, and keep score against yesterday, not against a brother or a friend.
Praise the effort and the way they did it (“you kept your eyes on the ball”) rather than talent. In a well-known set of experiments, children praised for being clever gave up sooner after a hard task than children praised for their effort (Mueller and Dweck, 1998).
