Tennis Conditioning – Types of Breathing

Breathing is critical for all sports, including your tennis conditioning program.   Each sport branch has imposed its own breathing style, based on the physical requirements of the sports.

Tennis Conditioning – The Three Types of Breathing Styles

1. The first one includes all the sports that use the technique of respiratory blocking. The most typical among these are anerobic power sports such as athletic weight throwing, weightlifting, body building, gymnastics etc. In short, the goal of the activity is an anaerobic extreme – the one which imposes apnea (blocking the thorax and respiration). The main advantage of diaphragm blocking is brute force created. A classic example of this is power lifting.

2. The second big group is the one of sports that utilize continuous respiratory action, otherwise known as pure aerobic effort. The typical examples are distance running , swimming, cycling etc. – generally efforts on long and very long distances. In these events the muscular force implied is little – medium at most – the stress affecting the cardiovascular component and leading to increased cardiac frequency and pulmonary ventilation.

3. The third category is mixed breathing, where both aerobic and anaerobic alternate back and forth.  Tennis is a perfect example of a mixed breathing sport.  In the case of fitness, as both types of effort – aerobic and anaerobic.   For your tennis conditioning program, you should breath out during the most difficult part of the movement and breath in during the preparation and recovery.  

You should note, there is a reson why tennis players grunt when they hit the ball.  They are actually doing a respiratory blocking technique to maximize their ball striking.

Lastly, when you hit the court or gym, be aware of your breathing.  Make sure you breathing is smooth and rhythmic during aerobic traning, and breath out when force when lifting weights or doing body weight work for power.