Tennis and your body: what regular play does to your joints
Nicola Tik
Tennis is one of the few sports that combines explosive power, sustained endurance, and highly repetitive technical movements all in the same session. That combination makes it genuinely demanding on the musculoskeletal system, and understanding what it asks of your body helps you stay on the court for longer and manage the niggles that most regular players encounter at some point. This article looks at what tennis actually does to your joints over time.
Every point in tennis involves rapid acceleration, sudden stops, lateral movement, and rotational force through the trunk and upper body. The lower body manages the constant changes of direction and the explosive push-off of each shot. The upper body, particularly the shoulder, elbow, and wrist of the playing arm, manages the repeated technical demands of serving, groundstrokes, and volleys.
For recreational players, who may play once or twice a week without specific physical preparation, the challenge is often the mismatch between the demands of the sport and the overall physical readiness of the body outside of court time. Tennis asks a lot of specific structures in ways that general fitness does not fully prepare for.
The elbow is perhaps the joint most associated with tennis, and for good reason. The forearm muscles that control the wrist and racket are attached to the elbow, and the repeated impact of ball on racket transmits load through those structures with every shot. Over time, and particularly with certain technical patterns, the tendons at the elbow can become overloaded.
The shoulder of the playing arm manages significant demand during serving and overhead play. The serving action involves rapid acceleration and deceleration of the arm through a wide range of motion, placing high and repeated load on the rotator cuff and the surrounding structures. For players who serve frequently, this accumulates considerably over the course of a session.
The knee is loaded heavily by the lateral movement, the split step, and the explosive push-off that tennis requires. The repeated changes of direction place rotational and compressive stress on the knee that differs from the more linear loading of running or cycling.
The wrist and lower back are also commonly affected in regular tennis players, the wrist through grip and swing mechanics, and the lower back through the rotational demands of groundstrokes and the serving action.
Tennis is an asymmetric sport. The playing arm, shoulder, and trunk rotate repeatedly in one direction with every forehand, and the demands on the dominant side of the body are considerably greater than on the non-dominant side. Over years of regular play, this asymmetry can contribute to imbalances in strength and mobility that make certain areas more vulnerable.
Recreational players are generally less aware of this than professional players, who have conditioning programmes specifically designed to address it. Building some balance into training alongside court time, through strength work that addresses both sides of the body, is one of the most useful things a regular recreational player can do for their long-term joint health.
The players who manage to keep playing regularly over many years tend to share a few common habits. They stay reasonably strong in the muscles that support the joints most loaded by tennis, particularly the shoulder, hip, and knee. They take minor niggles seriously rather than playing through them unchanged. And they manage their court time sensibly, building back gradually after breaks rather than returning to full volume straight away.