9 Ways Tennis is Great for the Body

Tennis, unlike less vigorous sports, is truly a total-body workout. Legs, shoulders, arms, hands, upper back, and lower back are all worked out. Tennis works on strengthening your core muscles and playing on a regular basis is an excellent strength training routine for your entire body.

Below we take a closer look at how the game of tennis and fitness go hand-in-hand, plus some reasons for why you should take up the sport. But first, let’s quickly cover how tennis is played.

Tennis is a racket sport that can be played individually (singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles). Each player employs a tennis racket strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball covered in felt over or around a net and into the opposing court. The goal of the game is to move the ball in such a way that your opponent cannot play a valid return. The player who is unable to return the ball does not receive a point, whereas the opposing player does.

Tennis for Mind & Body

It’s not just the physical benefits you get from tennis. The sport helps heal the mind too!

#1 Aerobic Exercise

Aerobic activity is beneficial to everyone, regardless of age, weight, or athletic ability. Aerobic activity has numerous health benefits for people of all ages. You’ll become stronger and fitter as your body adapts to regular aerobic exercise.

Consider the following ten ways that aerobic activity can help you feel better and enjoy life more.

Aerobic exercise from tennis can help you with:

1. Maintaining a healthy weight — aerobic exercise, when combined with a healthy diet, can help you lose weight and keep it off.
2. Improving your endurance, fitness, and strength — when you first begin regular aerobic exercise, you may feel tired. However, in the long run, you benefit from increased stamina and decreased fatigue. Over time, you can also improve your heart and lung fitness, as well as your bone and muscle strength.
3. Defending against viral infections — aerobic exercise stimulates your immune system in a beneficial way. This may make you more resistant to minor viral illnesses like colds and flu.
4. Lowering your health risks — aerobic exercise lowers the risk of a variety of conditions, including obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, stroke, and certain cancers. Walking and other weight-bearing aerobic exercises can help reduce the risk of osteoporosis.
5. Controlling chronic conditions — aerobic exercise has been shown to help lower blood pressure and control blood sugar levels. It can help people with arthritis reduce pain and improve their function. It can also improve cancer survivors’ quality of life and fitness. Aerobic exercise may help you manage your coronary artery disease if you have it.
6. Making your heart stronger — a stronger heart does not have to beat as quickly. A stronger heart also pumps blood more efficiently, increasing blood flow to all parts of the body.
7. Maintain the health of your arteries — aerobic exercise increases high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or “good” cholesterol, while decreasing low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or “bad” cholesterol. This may result in less plaque buildup in your arteries.
8. Improving your mood — aerobic exercise may alleviate the gloominess of depression, reduce anxiety-related tension, and promote relaxation. It can also help you sleep better.
9. Maintaining your independence and activity as you age — aerobic exercise strengthens your muscles, which can help you maintain mobility as you age. In addition, exercise can reduce the risk of falls and injuries from falls in older adults. It can also improve your quality of life. Aerobic exercise keeps your mind sharp as well. In older adults, regular physical activity may help protect memory, reasoning, judgment, and thinking skills (cognitive function). It may also help children and young adults with cognitive function. It can even help prevent the onset of dementia and improve cognition in those who already have it.
10. Living a longer life — according to studies, people who engage in regular aerobic exercise live longer lives than those who do not. They may also be less likely to die from any cause, such as heart disease or certain cancers.

#2 Anaerobic Fitness

If anaerobic exercise sounds like a lot of effort, it is. However, the advantages of the rigorous fitness regimen are compelling enough to motivate you to complete your next workout.

Here are the anaerobic benefits gained from playing tennis:

1. Increases bone density and strength — anaerobic activity, such as resistance training, can improve bone strength and density. This can also reduce your chances of developing osteoporosis.
2. Encourages weight maintenance — anaerobic exercise, in addition to helping your body handle lactic acid more effectively, can help you maintain a healthy weight. One study examining the effects of high-intensity training discovered that, while regular aerobic exercise has a small effect on body fat, HIIT training can result in modest reductions in stomach body fat.
3. Power is increased — anaerobic routines have the potential to increase your power. A 2008 study of division 1A baseball players discovered that doing eight 20- to 30-second wind sprints three days a week increased power by an average of 15 percent throughout the season.
4. Increases metabolism — anaerobic exercise increases metabolism while also building and maintaining lean muscle. The more lean muscle you have, the more calories you will burn during your next workout. High-intensity exercise may also boost your post-workout calorie burn.
5. Raises the lactic threshold — training above your anaerobic threshold on a regular basis improves your body’s ability to handle lactic acid, which raises your lactic threshold to the point at which you become tired. That means you’ll be able to work out harder and for longer periods of time.
6. Combats depression — do you need a pick-me-up? Anaerobic exercise, such as strength training, has been shown in studies to improve mood. Trusted Source and can even help with depression.
7. Disease risk is reduced — increased strength and bone density from high-intensity anaerobic training, such as bodyweight squats and pushups, can lower your risk of diabetes and heart disease.
8. It protects the joints — by increasing your muscle strength and mass, your joints will be better protected, which means you’ll be less vulnerable to injury.
9. Increases energy — consistent anaerobic exercise improves your body’s ability to store glycogen (what your body uses as energy), providing you with more energy for your next bout of intense physical activity. This can help you improve your athletic abilities.

#3 Lower Body Strength

Tennis is often thought of as an upper-body sport due to the swinging of the racket, but your leg muscles, including your glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves, do the majority of the work on the court. Tennis necessitates short bursts of running; if you can’t get to the ball, you can’t hit it back over the net.

When a ball is in play, your feet never stop moving — even if your opponent has the ball. Furthermore, the power for your serve, forehand, and backhand originates in your legs and travels up your body to your racket.

Playing tennis will help strengthen your legs, but if you are a serious player, consider adding squats, lunges, and step-ups to your workout routine.

#4 Improve Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills are those that require the cooperation of the muscular, skeletal, and neurological systems in order to make small, coordinated movements with the hands and fingers.

Adults can effectively rewire their brains; the more the affected areas are worked on, the faster the brain relearns movements. Furthermore, applying the principles of constrained-induced movement therapy speeds up the process of improving performance. This entails putting the weak side to work while isolating the strong side.

Specific finger and hand movements are included in fine motor skills, which is not limited to tennis. In addition to playing tennis, golf, darts, and billiards all require deft and precise motions to be successful. In comparison to gross motor skills, fine motor skills necessitate greater levels of control and hand-eye synchronization.

#5 Improve Gross Motor Skills

Gross motor skills are the abilities that allow us to perform tasks that require the use of large muscles in our torso, legs, and arms. They entail full-body movements. Gross motor skills are used in a wide range of physical activities, from running to raking leaves.

Most people use these abilities effortlessly and automatically. However, gross motor skills are more complicated than they appear.

They require muscle coordination as well as the neurological system. They have an effect on balance and coordination. They also serve as the foundation for fine motor skills, which allow us to perform small movements such as writing with a pencil.

Other abilities are related to gross motor skills, including:

• Balance
• Coordination
• Body consciousness
• Physical stamina
• Response time

Poor gross motor skills can have a negative impact on people in all aspects of their lives. It can make it difficult to complete important tasks at school, work, and home. Difficulties with motor skills can also have a negative impact on self-esteem.

#6 Improve Bone Health

Bones serve numerous functions in the body, including providing structure, protecting organs, anchoring muscles, and storing calcium. While it is important to build strong and healthy bones during childhood and adolescence, you can also protect bone health during adulthood.

Your bones are constantly changing, with new bone being formed and old bone being broken down. When you’re young, your body creates new bone faster than it degrades old bone, so your bone mass grows. The average person reaches their peak bone mass around the age of 30. The bone remodeling process then continues, but you lose slightly more bone mass than you gain.

The likelihood of developing osteoporosis — a condition that causes bones to become weak and brittle — is determined by how much bone mass you have by the age of 30 and how quickly you lose it after that. The more bone you have “in the bank” and the less likely you are to develop osteoporosis as you age, the higher your peak bone mass.

Exercise strengthens bones in the same way that it strengthens muscles. Exercise is essential for building strong bones when we are young and for maintaining bone strength as we get older. Because bone is living tissue, it changes over time in response to external forces. When you play tennis on a regular basis, your bone adapts by growing stronger and denser. This bone improvement necessitates proper nutrition, including adequate calcium and Vitamin D.

#7 Boost Your Immune System

Exercise can help reduce your risk of developing heart disease. It also keeps your bones strong and healthy.

We don’t know if or how exercise boosts your immunity to specific illnesses; however, there are several hypotheses. Unfortunately, none of these theories have been proven.

Among the theories of how exercise helps certain illnesses are:

1. Physical activity may aid in the removal of bacteria from the lungs and airways. This may lower your chances of catching a cold, flu, or other illness.
2. Antibodies and white blood cells change as a result of exercise (WBC). WBCs are immune system cells that fight disease in the body. Because these antibodies or WBCs circulate more quickly, they may detect illnesses earlier than previously. However, no one knows whether these changes aid in infection prevention.
3. Bacterial growth may be inhibited by a brief increase in body temperature during and immediately following exercise. This increase in temperature may aid the body’s ability to fight infection. (This is similar to the symptoms of a fever.)
4. Exercise reduces the production of stress hormones. Some types of stress increase the likelihood of illness. Lowering stress hormones may provide protection against illness.

Exercise is good for you, but don’t overdo it. People who already exercise should not increase their physical activity just to boost their immunity. Long-term, strenuous exercise (such as marathon running and intense gym training) may be harmful.

People who live a moderately active lifestyle benefit the most from beginning (and sticking to) an exercise program. A moderate program might include the following elements:

• Several times per week go bike riding
• Walk for 20 to 30 minutes every day
• Every other day, go to the gym
• Golf on a regular basis
• Play tennis or basketball twice a week

Exercising makes you feel better and more energized. It has the potential to make you feel better about yourself. So go ahead and sign up for that aerobics class or go for an evening stroll. You’ll feel better and be healthier as a result.

#8 Improved Eye-Hand Coordination

Hand-eye coordination is a fundamental skill that everyone learns from birth. Parents will ooh and ahh the first time their baby reaches out and grabs something, indicating that they are developing hand-eye coordination.

This fundamental skill is required for a wide range of tasks that people perform on a daily basis. Pouring a glass of water, stacking blocks, and driving a car are all impossible without good hand-eye coordination.

As a result, many sports, tennis included, necessitate a highly developed sense of hand-eye coordination. Players would be unable to reach out and catch a ball without this skill, let alone react to sudden changes in movement in a split second.

Tennis players develop fast-twitch muscles in their arms and legs, allowing them to respond to visual information more quickly. They also develop more fast-twitch muscles in their eyes, which allows them to see the position of the ball more quickly.

They can’t respond to something they can’t see, after all. To this end, tennis players must develop a number of vision skills in order to improve their game.

5 examples of how vision improves:

1. Visual acuity — the player’s ability to see clearly.
2. Depth perception — information on the position and trajectory of an object
3. Vestibulo-ocular reflex — the involuntary ability of the eye to track an object
4. Peripheral vision — awareness of everything in the player’s visual field, not just what is directly in front of the player
5. Visual and motor memory — a reflex response to a moving object

#9 Reduce Stress

The physical benefits of exercise, such as improving physical condition and fighting disease, have long been established, and doctors always advise patients to stay physically active.

Exercise is also thought to be important for maintaining mental fitness and for reducing stress. It has been shown in studies to be very effective at reducing fatigue, improving alertness and concentration, and improving overall cognitive function. This is especially useful if stress has sapped your energy or ability to concentrate.

When stress affects the brain and its numerous nerve connections, the rest of the body feels the effects as well. So it stands to reason that if your body feels better, your mind will as well.

Exercise and other forms of physical activity release endorphins, which are chemicals in the brain that act as natural painkillers. They also improve sleep quality, which reduces stress.

Meditation, acupuncture, massage therapy, and even deep breathing can stimulate the production of endorphins in your body. And conventional wisdom holds that a low to moderate intensity workout will leave you feeling energized and healthy.

Regular aerobic exercise has been shown by scientists to reduce overall levels of tension, elevate and stabilize mood, improve sleep, and boost self-esteem. Even five minutes of aerobic exercise can produce anti-anxiety benefits.

10 FAQs About Tennis & Fitness

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#1 When it comes to losing belly fat, does playing tennis work?

Tennis is one of the most physically demanding sports, and it can help you lose weight and tone your muscles if you play it regularly. Playing singles burns a lot of calories, but even doubles can help you slim down by causing you to burn more calories.

#2 Compared to running, does tennis have a clear advantage?

According to the findings, which were published in the journal Sports Health, tennis players had significantly superior musculoskeletal health than gym goers, runners, or cyclists.

#3 Is tennis good for your health?

Tennis is a great sport to play competitively or for fun with your family and friends. Tennis, in either case, is a beneficial sport for your physical and mental well-being, as well as your stamina and agility. Singles tennis burns about 600 calories for males and 420 calories for women in an hour long match, according to research.

#4 Do you think tennis is a good way to be in shape?

Tennis is the finest racquet activity for building arm strength. Even if you only play tennis for a few hours a week, you will see results in your biceps, triceps, shoulders, and forearms.

#5 Is an hour of tennis sufficient for a day’s worth of physical activity?

The workout is complete because you’re running, swinging, pivoting, and stretching. You can burn between 400 and 600 calories an hour, which is excellent for shedding pounds and managing body fat levels. Many people discover that playing tennis burns more calories than doing any other physical activity.

#6 Is tennis a useful form of exercise for burning calories?

The constant movement you experience while playing tennis raises your heart rate and causes your blood to flow more rapidly, increasing the amount of oxygen reaching your tissues. That, my friends, is what a decent cardio workout looks like. Tennis will assist you lose belly fat because it increases your calorie expenditure.

#7 When it comes to the knees, is tennis a harmful sport to be involved in?

Tennis. Tennis is particularly taxing on the knees because of competitive play, singles tennis, and racket ball. Playing racket sports necessitates rapid dashes and pivots, which can lead to major damage if done repeatedly.

#8 Are your abs strengthened by tennis?

Every tennis match or practice session targets both major ab regions at the same time, resulting in obvious and long-lasting tonal improvements. Tennis is a full-body workout in and of itself.

#9 Is it hard to learn tennis?

Some say tennis is one of the most difficult sports to learn since it necessitates a high level of hand-eye coordination, flexibility, agility, and strength. Tennis might be difficult to learn without a strategy, but with one in place, the process goes much more smoothly.

#10 Is there any benefit to playing tennis for the mind?

Tennis can help develop critical thinking skills such as mental stamina and mental awareness, as well as tactical thinking. To assist regulate serotonin, tennis utilizes a molecule in the brain called tyrosine hydroxylase (TAH).