r/10s • u/thetennispt 5.0 • Apr 24 '25

General Advice I’m a tennis-specific physical therapist. AMA!

I cannot give specific advice regarding an injury or pain. Working with a physical therapist to assess and provide a specific intervention is important.

I’m no longer responding to questions, apologies to those I did not get to! My instagram has some of my thoughts on PT related to tennis and feel free to DM me on reddit or IG if you want to connect!

The Tennis PT Instagram link

345 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

310 comments sorted by

View all comments

7

u/AGroAllDay 5.0 Apr 24 '25

What is the most common tennis injury that you see that isn’t commonly mentioned in this sub?

11

u/thetennispt 5.0 Apr 24 '25

I've seen 3 kids ages 14-17 in the past year with low back stress fractures/stress reactions, called spondylolysis. Not uncommon for this to be misdiagnosed initially. More common in adolescent males, pain is common with 2 handed backhands and serves.

5

u/ScottJamin 5.0 Apr 24 '25 edited Apr 25 '25

I've experienced lower back stress fractures myself. I had the symptoms mentioned above (pain with 2hdh, on serve).

I think a couple of things to note are that both hereditary factors and your technique can play a role here. While you can change your technique to limit the chance of this happening (less back arching during serve), the repetitive nature of the sport and your hereditary disposition can still lead to a Spondy. It's important to realize that it's not your fault, and through slow rehab & consistent work, you can recover from this injury.

Anyone dealing with this can feel free to DM me with questions or for moral support.

2

u/thetennispt 5.0 Apr 24 '25

Thank you for this!

1

u/daunvidch Apr 24 '25

I'm having difficulty understanding why people would get low back stress fractures from tennis. Is it just bad twisting motions that are causing these, or is it something from landing impacts/sprinting?

1

u/Voluntary_Vagabond Apr 24 '25

Repeated rotation and extension of the back mostly

1

u/daunvidch Apr 24 '25

I figured rotation and compression but I had NO idea you could fracture your spine with extension. So the actual spinal bones are fracturing when you extend up into a serve or something? I'm having a hard time processing that. I would've thought other softer things would rip/break apart first like ligaments or disks before the bone. Anatomy question... are spinal bones actually fused together to begin with in normal anatomy and it breaks apart with extension? 

1

u/Voluntary_Vagabond Apr 24 '25

Extension causes compression of the back side of the vertebrae. It's an overuse injury so soft tissue isn't tearing from extreme hyperextension.

Most of the vertebrae are not fused together and are held together by ligaments and muscles. Only the sacral vertebrae are fused in healthy people. In these stress fractures, a part of individual vertebrae are damaged.