Acute Effects of Different Warm-up Methods on Tennis Performance

Abstract

Warm-up is an important parameter that can acutely affect competition performance. In this study, the acute effects of dynamic warm-up (DI), foam roller (FR) and vibrating foam roller (TFR) applications on tennis performance were tested. In our study, we used undergraduate tennis specialization students (mean age 23.39±2.79 years, height 170.41±11.91 cm, body weight 71.38±16.83 kg) who practiced tennis for at least 16 hours per week. 14 athletes were included. Warm-up protocols were randomly applied to the participants on 3 different days at 48-hour intervals, followed by joint range of motion measurement, vertical jump measurement, and ITN tests as tennis-specific tests; groundstroke depth, volley depth, groundstroke accuracy, and serve measurement were performed. Friedman test and Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used to analyze the data. According to the results of the study, significantly higher values were found in the TFR method compared to the FR method in terms of hip hyperextension (p<0.05). In terms of volley depth test, significantly higher values were found in FR method compared to DI method (p<0,05). In terms of the serve test, significantly higher values were found in the FR method compared to the DI method (p<0,05). When the warm-up methods were compared in terms of the total scores obtained from the total of tennis-specific tests, the FR method revealed significantly higher values than the TFR and DI methods (p<0.05). As a result, the FR method within the scope of our study acutely improves tennis performance to a higher level compared to DI and TFR methods. Different results may emerge in future studies with different warm-up methods and foam roller applications of different intensity.