Warming up is important, and there is never a more important time to warm up than in the cold of preseason training.

But we only have a short time at nets, so warm ups tend to get a lost or converted into slightly more gentle practice.

Both are a recipe for injury if unchecked, but we carry on anyway, so what’s the minimum we can get away with to stay on the park while not wasting precious deliberate practice time?

Well, if we all did nothing else except loosen up our hips, t-spine and ankles we would not be far away from the perfect minimalist warm up.

That said there are 2 other things I feel are essential.

Firstly, the warm up should warm you up. In other words, your temperature should be up, you should be breathing heaver and you are getting good and sweaty. You will be ready for greater exertions then.

Second, invest in a foam roller and spend 5 minutes doing good quality tissue work. It’s worth every penny and every moment.

Yes, you can do more and get even great benefits but if you are strapped for time, keep it minimal.

The sneaky warm up trick

While that will certainly do for injury prevention, there is also space in the minimalists warm up for sneaking in some extra work and calling it a warm up.

Here you can spend 10-15 minutes doing tennis ball grooving or gentle fielding drills to switch minset and get some quality practice in before “training starts”.

It’s an old coaches trick calling it a warm up, and in this case it’s worth the extra time “warming up” because it’s really skill work in disguise and so a great way to get senior players to work with tennis balls!

For more warm up tricks and videos of warm up exercises you can do, get the Preseason Bundle at PitchVision Academy now.