Effects on joints and skeleton integrity – Tennis

Every guy aspires to be like Roger Federer and every woman aspires to be like Serena Williams. Who are those people you may ask Well, they are the world number one for tennis respectively for their gender. Tennis is a popular sport that is extremely high impact and high intensity, and there are numerous start stop throughout the game, making it an excellent sport not only to lose body fats but also to strengthen and work out the entire body. Every part of your body is involved in this sport. You need your leg muscles to run about and jump when you serve, receive and smash. You need your arm and shoulder muscles to serve and return the ball.

Ligaments

As mentioned above, tennis is a high impact sport that will cause damages to your ligaments after prolonged play. It is inevitable as you will be repeatedly jumping up and down, landing in different directions and load each time. This will place tremendous stress on your knee ligaments and over time, it will degrade. Improper landing techniques or sudden twisting motions can cause the ligaments to tear.

Tennis elbow

Tennis elbow like its name suggest is a problem to your elbow caused by tennis. Specifically, it involves the tendons that are outside of your elbow whose function is to cock the wrist back to its original position. Since the wrist is repeatable used throughout the game, micro tears can occur in the tendons which do not have the chance to heal.

Tennis toe

As the saying goes, the ball does not grow any eye and can go in all direction. This is very true for tennis and the ball can go in any direction, resulting in you needing to make sudden direction change which will cause your toes to keep pushing against your shoe, causing immense pressure on your toes. Over time, it can cause toe damage or otherwise commonly known as tennis toe.

Bones

However, there are benefits associated with tennis too! Since tennis is an all rounded sport, every single part of your body is involved throughout the entire game. Tennis utilises lots of the muscle’s phasic fibers and it can increase your stamina and endurance levels. As your body will constantly bear load throughout the game, it will help to build up your bone density, greatly reducing the risk of contracting osteoporosis.

Tennis is a high impact sport with a high risk of injuries due to its nature. However, many people still play it regularly to not only keep fit but to challenge their body to its limits. If you take sufficient precautions, you are able to avoid most injuries. Make sure to give your body sufficient rest between games to allow proper recovery of your muscles and tendons.

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