The current yoga craze swept the country in the mid-’90s and it’s still going strong. People looking to get or stay fit continue to want to hit the mat, and that includes tennis players. The Health & Fitness Mailbag regularly receives questions about the benefits of yoga for tennis. My general answer: As long as it’s done properly and you take it slowly if you’re a beginner, yoga can be great.
“You’re getting a lot of benefits at once,” says Kathleen Stroia, vice president of Sport Sciences & Medicine and PRO U at the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour, listing breathing control, concentration, flexibility, strengthening, and propeoception (your body’s awareness in space). Along with all that, yoga can help you relax and reduce stress.
But, Stroia says, if you want benefits that will help your body perform better specifically on a tennis court, you need to do a dynamic yoga. “Tennis is dynamic, so the yoga needs to be dynamic to be sport specific,” Stroia says. Dynamic styles of yoga, such as ashtanga and vinyasa, keep you moving through a series of poses in time with your breath.
But regardless of yoga style, through practicing yoga tennis players can step on court with more concentration and focus. “I see the breathing control and mind control as being the best benefits from yoga,” Stroia says. “There are very few other activities that you’re doing in your tennis training that are focused on that.”
If you want a workout designed specifically for tennis players, a new DVD, SportsYoga Tennis, might be the way to go. All the necessary information can be found at sportsyoga.com. The DVD has three sections: a workout for power, a stretching segment, and an on-court warm-up. All are done with your host, Billy Asad, a yoga professional based in Los Angeles, and in the power workout, another yogi does modified poses for those who are new to yoga or are tight in some areas.
Here’s the introduction to the workout to give you a better idea.
The workout on the DVD will help tennis players gain total body strength as well as flexibility in areas where they tend to tighten up, including the quadriceps, hamstrings, back, and shoulders. It can also help you to move with your breath and learn to focus your mind. But before you start doing yoga at home, I would recommend that beginners go to a class or two with a certified yoga instructor so he or she can supervise you and teach you proper techniques in person. A little personal attention can keep you from injuring yourself doing an activity that’s supposed to strengthen and rejuvenate you.
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