Whether you play competitively, for your health or just socially, tennis has great benefits for the mind and body.
He we share five ways that playing tennis and hitting the court can have a positive impact on your health.
Decrease The Risk Of Heart Disease
According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, lowering high blood pressure, maintaining a healthy body weight, lowering cholesterol, reducing stress and being physically active are key to helping reduce the risk of heart disease and that playing tennis can help accomplish all these things.
A recent study shows that men who burn around 2,000 calories a week through exercise have lower death rates from heart disease, and they live on average two years longer.
An average sized man burns around 600 calories playing just one hour of singles tennis.
Enhance Your Flexibility, Coordination and Balance
Tennis is a sport that uses the whole body. The feet to move you around the court, arms and hands to position the racket and to make contact with the ball, and the torso and legs provide the power to send the ball flying over the net. Each shot takes flexibility, coordination and balance.
Playing regularly helps to improve the body’s ability to synchronise controlled movements. The more you play, the better your flexibility, coordination and balance will be.
Elevate Your Mood
When you exert yourself, the body releases endorphins / chemicals that make you feel good. Endorphins improve your mood, reduce stress, increase optimism and even ease the symptoms of depression.
Aerobic workouts, like tennis, are especially good at improving your mood. And being mentally healthy can carry over to all areas of your life, including work and your interactions socially.
Tennis requires the brain to be creative, and it involves planning, tactical thinking, agility and the coordination of different parts of the body. So the more you play tennis, the better and stronger the neural connections related to those types of activities become, and the better you will become at them.
Improve Your Bone Health
As well as improving muscle strength and mind, tennis has a positive impact on the bones also.
Exercising regularly can increase your peak bone mass and can slow the rate of bone mass loss over time.
The NIH names tennis as one of the weight-bearing activities well suited to building strong bones.
Lose Weight
Running, swinging, reaching, pivoting; tennis can be a real workout with the right opponent.
It’s a whole body sport that can burn off many calories because you are constantly on the move.
For some people it is actually better than more traditional methods of weight reducing exercise.