Try Tennis As Exercise

At one time in my life, I spent a lot of time playing tennis.  In fact, there was a time when I played for hours on end, but I never really thought of tennis as exercise.  It was just plain, old fun.  But now that seems like a long, long time ago.  In fact, its been almost 20 years since I played tennis with any regularity.  I’ve played twice in the last week, and one of those times was pretty intense.  I’m definitely feeling the pain, too.

Why Try Tennis As Exercise?

Photo Credit: mandj98

I try to involve myself in a wide variety of fitness activities these days.  I run a few days each week, hit the gym, cycle, and swim.  On the whole, I would like to believe I’m in pretty good physical condition.  So, last Sunday when I got a call from a friend to play tennis, I didn’t think twice about jumping at the opportunity.

We started with an easy 15-minute warm-up, and then he asked if I wanted to play a match.  I figured “sure, what the heck” and we teed it up.  That’s when I discovered that he’d been playing 1-2 days a week for the last six months.  I immediately knew this was going to be trouble.  I won’t bore you with the details, except to say that my competitive side got the best of me and I wasn’t about to let the match go.  I won, but after playing for a total of 3 hours and 10 minutes, we were both wiped.  The aerobic portion wasn’t really an issue, but the next day, my calves were killing me.  It took a full two days for the knots to go away.

What this experience made me realize is that although my exercise program is relatively intense (for someone with a family, job, etc.), one thing it doesn’t incorporate is plyometrics.  Tennis, like many other competitive sports, requires competitors to change direction, often explosively.  There’s a lot of switching direction, rapid cuts, and forward-to-back movement.  Of course, many competitive sports don’t actually cause participants to burn a large number of calories, but tennis excels in that area as well.  According to Nutristrategy.com, someone of my weight playing singles tennis burns nearly 700-calories an hour.  For the record, my longest ever match was a 5 and a half hour, five set doubles affair that I played on the day of my high school senior prom.  We lost in a tie-break in the fifth set.

A nice thing about tennis is that it is one of the few competitive sports that can be played very late in life.  Even if you can’t find a partner, many cities now have tennis clubs that offer cardio tennis, which are group activities that allow people to get together to play, no partner required.  So, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are numerous reasons to get back into the game.  Trying to fit it into my schedule with any regularity will present a challenge, yet I’m going to try to manage it at least a few times each month while its warm outside.  It’s good exercise, and one of the best ways to get in shape than to have fun.