News - Exercise
Tennis Progress
Tennis Conditioning
By Juan Margarit, Tennis Pro and owner of Tango Tennis Argentina
Additional input By Nick Lynch S.S.C, C.F.T.
Anyone who participates in sports such as tennis or dances tango knows the importance of being healthy and fit. Our daily activities are affected by the way that we take care of ourselves physically and mentally. Tennis, like life, is a never-ending improving process. There are many different factors that help to influence our performance such as diet, working out, sleep and mental focus. At the end of the day what we see is a balance between internal factors like genes and external environmental factors. The better the balance, the better we’ll be ready to face our challenges. There is not much that we can do about our genes, but there is a lot that we can do to help them.
Warm up:
Prior to any physical activity, we should always prepare our body to what it is going to do. In the past, people were told to do some static stretching before entering the tennis court, for example. Lately, it has been shown that static stretching is recommended post any physical activity and not before. Static stretching helps to maintain and improve range of motion during the cool down phase of any activity. Include deep breathes during this kind of stretching and make sure and hold each stretch for approximately 30 seconds.
How can we prepare our body before any physical activity? By warming up with more dynamic movements and physically mimicking the activity we are about to engage in. The basic idea is to gradually increase the temperature of our body and our muscles. Now you can see why we call this the warm up. In addition, warming up increases blood flow, oxygen to the muscles, gives your mind times to connect with your body, increase balance and among many other great actions you will start to release fat/carbohydrates for energy.
In tennis, before you start hitting, do some jogging around the court for about 5 minutes alternating high knee steps, butt kicks, sprint, jog etc., lunges, arm circles, trunk twists, etc. all for at least 10 minutes total. Then go ahead and do some polite hitting like volleys, groundstroke’s, rallies and serves. The idea is to gradually increase the intensity to avoid any possible injury. Some players, before going to the court will even take a hot shower to warm up their muscles.
A tennis pro one mentioned to us, “the way that you are going to play your match is going to depend on the way that you warm up,” “if you hit like crazy during the warm up; then you will play the match with no control, probably loose and get hurt.”
Cool down:
We had a fun and long match, we tried our best and luckily, we won! Now, is time to relax and cool down. Lets make sure to stretch while our muscles are still warm. In order to improve our range of motion, relax our muscles, prevent the risk of injuries and reduce muscle soreness while increasing their flexibility; we should always stretch after any physical activity like dancing tango, for example. In the case of tennis, we should stretch all major muscles. Tennis is a whole body work out.
To summarize the above information, perform a dynamic warm up before the match and static stretching after the match while cooling down.
References:
http://www.southern.usta.c
om/sportscience/fullstory.
sps?iNewsID=35025&itype=39
19&iCategoryID=
http://cis.squirming.net/c
ategory/tennis/185
http://www.tennis.com/your
game/fitness/fitness.aspx?
id=35298
