Put more muscle into your stroke

Warming up is essential before almost any sport or athletic activity. It helps elevate one’s heart rate and prepares the muscles for what lies ahead. For certain sports that use racquets or clubs, such as golf, baseball and tennis, some players weight their equipment, making the muscles work harder and the warmup more intense.

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Swing Sock: The weighted tennis racquet cover has steel shot sewn into it, giving the bag its extra heft -- 12 ounces for women, 18 ounces for men. “The added weight stretches and loosens up all the muscles that are used in the swing,” product inventor Ray Liberatore says. “It’s a good training aid because it pulls your swing right through the whole [arc] because of the momentum.”

Peter Smith, head men’s tennis coach at USC, says a weighted racquet could be beneficial. “It’s a good way of warming up the muscles slowly, and in warming up, you’re also building muscle. When you go to a normal racquet, you’re that much quicker.”

But Smith, who hasn’t tried the Swing Sock, said that because the strings of the racquet are completely covered, “that adds an even extra dimension of weight, and it’s a little unnatural to what tennis is, which is more free-flowing.”

Price: $24.99, available at www.swingsock.com or by calling (877) 794-6476.

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-- Jeannine Stein