Three hours of tennis every week can cut the risk of developing heart disease by 50%.<\/p>\n
\u201cTennis uses all your senses;\u2019 says Craig Morris, former coach of Samantha Stosur and now participation manager at Tennis Australia. \u201cYou hear the ball come off the racquet, watch the ball spin towards you, move constantly towards it, just like netball, jump up to reach the ball or to serve, in the same action as swimming, and use your legs in the same way as footballers do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aaron Kellett, physical performance manager at Tennis Australia, says tennis can help you become fitter and stronger, boost your cardiovascular strength and burn kilojoules. It will also tone your legs, stomach, and arms.<\/p>\n
Research at the Miller Family Heart and Vascular Institute in the US found three hours of tennis every week could cut the risk of developing heart disease by 50 per cent.<\/p>\n
Players have also been found to have improved aerobic fitness, a lower body-fat percentage, a more favourable lipid profile, a lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease and improved bone health.<\/p>\n
What happens when you play. \u201cJust aiming to hit a tennis ball challenges your fitness level and focus. As you run to hit the ball, initially you have a perception of where the ball is;\u201d Kellett says. As your mind reads the cues from your opponent, your body has to react. Which it does by telling your feet to move?\u2019 As your body reaches to hit the ball, imagine a piece of rubber that is compressed and twisted. As you release it, it rotates quickly, generating force.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the energy for swinging the tennis racquet begins from the ground up, as you load the lower body by bending your knees and hips, and coiling up and rotating to get into the position of a back swing in order to execute a forward swing. This stop-start element of tennis is good for your body. \u201cThe duration of a typical tennis movement is between four to 10 seconds,\u201d Kellett says. \u201cYou then have around 20 seconds\u2019 recovery between each movement or match.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis type of movement lends itself to interval-style training, which, research has shown, is a great way to improve your fitness levels and burn calories?\u2019 A good level of fitness is an important component of tennis, mainly because of the constant acceleration and deceleration required.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour body needs to go from zero to 100 in a matter of seconds,\u201d Morris says. \u201cIt\u2019s a much more physical game than it used to be. It involves spring work, a combination of anaerobic and aerobic exercise as you move from the baseline to the net, and you need endurance to last the distance as well.\u201d The more you play, the stronger, leaner and fitter you become.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you land, either after leaping to hit a ball or after serving, there\u2019s 21\/2 times your weight going through your body,\u201d Kellett says. This means your muscles need to absorb that impact.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs your body adapts to these forces, it becomes stronger and fitter overtime. The stronger you get, the more likely you\u2019ll stay injury-free.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morris says even those who don\u2019t have high levels of fitness can improve their game and reduce the chance of injury by concentrating on cardio workouts. \u201cTo warmup, get the body moving by starting from a slower position until the body gets used to movement?\u2019 Morris, who runs Cardio Tennis workouts (cardiotennis.com.au) to help people improve their tennis fitness, says starting off in a slow-motion game gives your mind and body time to position correctly and warm up.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not just your body that benefits from tennis. A study done at Southern Connecticut State University found players scored higher than non-athletes when it came to optimism and self-esteem, while scoring lower in depression, anxiety and tension.<\/p>\n
Published in Sydney Morning Herald<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three hours of tennis every week can cut the risk of developing heart disease by 50%. \u201cTennis uses all your senses;\u2019 says Craig Morris, former coach of Samantha Stosur and now participation manager at Tennis Australia. \u201cYou hear the ball come off the racquet, watch the ball spin towards you, move constantly towards it, just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5910,"featured_media":5349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5910"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}