Tennis is a favorite racquet sport in Australia and America. Tennis is played by people of all ages, and it’s an excellent experience for your health. It’s a full-body workout that engages numerous muscle groups and organ systems. Tennis can be played by two people or four people, and it requires using racquets to hit a ball over a net to the other side of the court. This sport can either be played as a recreational activity with friends and family or as a sport. Recent studies confirmed that an hour-long of playing tennis burns around 500 calories for men and 420 for women. Either way, tennis is a good sport that maintains your fitness, health, strength, and agility. In conjunction with its physical health benefits, it also provides numerous social and mental health benefits as well. Below are the physical and mental health benefits of playing tennis for people of all ages.
1. Aids Weight Loss
Playing tennis does not only help protect your heart, but it may also help you lose weight if that’s your personal goal. Researchers found that people with obesity ( both men and women) who added playing tennis to their routine for a week lost a significant amount of fat over 11 months- even when they still maintained the same diet plan. This aerobic exercise can burn a few hundred calories per hour, depending on your weight and the intensity of the activity. It’s advised to combine this exercise with a healthy diet to maintain a healthy weight.
2. Supports Cardiovascular Health
Like other aerobic exercises, one of the benefits of playing tennis is that it helps improve your heart health. Running down the court, chasing runaway balls, and jumping for the perfect swing are some activities in playing tennis that help increase your heart rate as you play tennis. As you participate in this sport, your breathing becomes faster and deeper, increasing oxygen and blood flow throughout your body, which helps support your cardiovascular system. In addition, a study conducted in 2017 found that participation in racquet sport was related to a 56% significant decrease in death from cardiovascular disease.
3. Decreases Osteoporosis Risk
Regular exercises such as playing tennis can help reduce the risk of joint pains and osteoporosis. Osteoporosis occurs when the bone becomes brittle and weak, which occurs when the creation of new bone doesn’t match up with the deterioration of old bone. This condition mostly affects women, and the risk increases with age. People generally think that participating in exercise would increase the risk of joint pains or fractures, but the opposite is actually true. According to the National Institutes of Health, weight-bearing activities and tennis help prevent osteoporosis. With this workout, your bones grow stronger because you’re working against gravity each time you raise your racquet.
4. Improves Agility, Flexibility, and Balance
Another benefit of playing tennis is it helps improve flexibility, balance as well as agility. Tennis is a sport that requires forward and back, side-to-side movement, and constant changing of direction and stretching of the body. It also requires you to change your vertical positioning for low balls as well as overhead volleys and serves. All these benefits of playing tennis will significantly help improve your flexibility and agility. In addition, by using a racquet, you’re training your body to maintain its equilibrium while hitting and serving with a two-foot extension of your arm. Endeavor to stretch well after and before your tennis sessions.
5. It Enhances Motor Control
Tennis helps enhance motor control which is necessary as you swing your racquet and move your arm. Motor control is the ability or awareness to stabilize one body part while another body part is moving. The movements in tennis can help support and enhance this area of physical fitness. Various activities such as stopping and starting, body rotation as well as reaching and balancing can help stabilize your arms and legs as well as your core to become more coordinated. Playing tennis is way better than abdominal floor routines and simple postural exercises to help develop your core.
6. It Helps Relieve Stress
Generally, all sports activities help relieve stress due to the release of a feel-good hormone known as endorphin. Playing tennis help prevent and fight stress. During this activity, you basically take your mind off other stories and issues in life by concentrating on defeating your opponent. You can think of playing tennis as a little vacation for your brain.
So, above are some of the numerous health benefits of playing tennis. Tennis is a very interesting activity you can try out on weekends or whenever you’re free. If you’ve not tried playing tennis, we hope these benefits of playing tennis will give you the push.
