Is Tennis a healthy sport? Yes, the German Tennis society was recently even awarded for it. This article describes the health effects of tennis.
Is Tennis a healthy sport?
Tennis is generally not considered to be the healthiest sport. Everyone knows the famous tennis elbow, and many tennis players can also report back pain or complaints in the shoulder or knees. So you might think that sports like swimming or cycling are much healthier and you should avoid tennis. But what can you do to ensure that tennis is a “healthy” sport and that you can have a lot of fun in the “white sport”?
Important health aspects for playing tennis permanently with fun
physical fitness
A very important aspect of tennis is that you don’t get fit through tennis, but should be fit in advance if possible. This is especially true for beginners. The main reason for this is the one-sided strain on the body during tennis. This means above all that one should have both good tennis-specific condition and fitness, and that the musculoskeletal system should be strengthened by appropriately trained muscles.
If you are physically fit, then you can cope well with the physical strain of tennis, and a targeted muscular whole body training, especially for the back muscles, prevents back complaints. With these two basic requirements you have already fulfilled two essential points, so that you can play tennis successfully and with a lot of fun in the long run.
Correct percussion technique
The second essential health aspect of tennis is the right stroke technique. No fitness training and no targeted muscle build-up can prevent tennis elbow if you have a wrong or bad stroke technique in tennis. Therefore it is recommended to take a few coaching lessons with a good tennis coach, especially for beginners. You invest in your own health, and above all in the fun of tennis.
An important principle in tennis is: first comes the stroke technique, then the power!
Especially beginners always try to play tennis with far too much strength at first. As a result, tennis elbow or other health problems are almost inevitable. The basic prerequisite for fast and clean strokes in tennis is always a good stroke technique, only then comes the power.
Targeted equalization training
As the third important point, so that one can exercise tennis healthily, a targeted compensation training is necessary. Since tennis is a one-sided sport, one half of the body is always trained much more than the other. This leads to muscular imbalances, which will certainly lead to physical complaints in the long term. These are mainly back pain or shoulder complaints. For this reason, it is essential to train the body half of the “non-beating side” by means of targeted strength training.
Furthermore, a good and regular training of the back muscles is very important, because the back is most strained in tennis, and usually the “weakest part of the body” is. In addition, it is always advisable to warm up properly before tennis, and not to forget the stretching of the strained muscles after tennis.
