How do I use breathing? What? It might sound silly because you breath and you don’t have to think about it. However besides breath giving us life it has many additional benefits that can facilitate better tennis playing.

Before practice or matches do you ever notice that your heart is beating really fast? That’s your heart rate and your heart rate effects your breathing. For example, you are running around the tennis court during practice, which increases your heart rate and you catch yourself gasping for air. Yeah? When you have a similar feeling before you’ve even begun playing that usually signals to your brain that you are nervous and a bunch of negative thoughts flood your brain. You can learn to let that increase of heart rate go and realize that it’s only an increase in heart rate and doesn’t have to be or lead to anything else (which is really what’s happening). If letting it go seems impossible once you are aware of the feeling, take 2-3 deep breaths and refocus on something else (I usually help athletes find something else to refocus on rather than leaving it up to chance).

During a match breathing can be used to energize or calm you. Yep, it can have both effects. During a match if you find yourself getting tired you can take some rapid mid range breaths (mid range is not too deep and not too shallow) that will bring you some adrenaline. I usually pair this breathing with a phrase or a 10 second image. On the other hand, if during a match you find that you are too pumped up take 2-3 deep calming breaths. I usually pair these breaths with something else calming that you can refocus on, i.e. it could be a word, focusing on your strings, wiping down with your towel or turning your back to the court (Sharapova style).

The breath gives tennis players the ability to:

• Activate energy
• Calm nerves
• Relax muscles
• Refocus
• Increase concentration
• Get prepared

I don’t recommend that tennis players buy a heart rate monitor but it is a great way to practice these skills and see that they work. It’s also important that you don’t try this in a match but that you play around with it during practice to see what works. The breath is easy and fabulous to incorporate into performance routines.

The US Open has begun! I hope you are enjoying it!

Dr. Michelle

Photo credit: en.wikipedia.org