Tennis Off-Season Shoulder Training

[Paradigm]

A few years ago, I injured my right 'rotator cuff' (in that area, in quotes for the sticklers if it's not technically the rotator cuff); basically this happened due to poor serving technique, where I would try to serve the ball flat with my elbow at almost a 90 degree angle, causing most of the torque to be generated by my shoulder. For a little while after that, I couldn't lift my shoulder above parallel, but this subsided for the most part.

Over the past couple years, I've gone out and been able to play tennis for a couple hours+ at a time, though I limit this to simply going out an hitting, albeit going all out for the ball. During this summer, I've played upwards of 5 times a week, sometimes up to 3 hours a day, and have noticed that my shoulder has gotten a lot stronger, and it doesn't ache after extended play (or at least not enough to warrent ice/pain-killers), but I still haven't tried serving too much for fear of reinjury.

Now that the tennis season is essentially over (I'll try to play as much as I can, weather permitted, but there can't be much left), I'd like to add some sort of training in the off-season that would ensure that I have the shoulder strength come springtime to try to pick up serving, with the intention of being able to eventually start playing in tournaments (or just even play a match ). Right now, I'm finishing up the break-in for NROL and will carry on with that through various FL programs, maybe a hypertrophy program after FL2.

This essay of a post basically boils down to: what is my best off-season training approach for my shoulder(s) to incorporate with NROL that would help prevent reinjury of my shoulder as well as an overall strengthening (I realize these are probably one and the same)? I experience no range-of-motion difficulties with my shoulder now, so this isn't a factor.