The Acute Effects of Dynamic and Static Stretching on Tennis Serve Targeting Performance

Abstract

The study investigates the acute effects of dynamic and static stretching on the tennis serve targeting performance of amateurtennis players. Twenty male athletes who were between the ages of 16-24 years and played tennis for at least 1 year (21.40±2.16years, 181±0.06 cm, 71.85±7.42 kg, tennis playing time 1.55±0.88 years) voluntarily participated in the study. Prior to the pretests and after applying the traditional warm-up protocol, serve targeting test (STT) was applied to all participants. In the posttests, STT was used after applying three different warm-up methods on three different days (48-hour rest interval). The warmup stages included No Treatment (NT) (jogging, rally), Static Stretching (SS) and Dynamic Stretching (DS). In the statisticalanalysis, the homogeneity of the data was investigated using the Shapiro Wilk test. The Wilcoxon test was used to compare thepre-test and post-test results of the non-homogeneous data; Friedman test was used to compare the three different stretchingmethods with each other; in the paired comparisons of the groups, the paired samples t-test was used for the homogenous dataand Wilcoxon test was used for the non-homogeneous data. In conclusion, stretching exercises before serving increased theserve targeting performance and the increase in the dynamic stretching exercises was higher than that in static stretchingexercises.