Active Rest for the Body and Mind Is the Important Part of a Tennis Training

This article is written by Diana Chalikov, owner at DCTP Tennis &Fitness.

Active rest for the body and mind is the vital part of tennis training that often goes unseen as part of the overall training process.

There is really only so much that an athlete can do with his body. After that, a tennis player needs to let his body rest while still maintaining good blood flow and circulation. There are ways to rest while still actively working on things, which can be called “active rest”.

During active rest a tennis player is awake, mentally alert, focusing the mind on aiding in the recovery of the body. This also means rebuilding a strong mind-body relationship, by doing things as simple as controlled breathing.

During active rest a player should try to reconnect with the most soft and distance feelings.
An athlete should sit and breathe peacefully and welcome any thought that emerges to the surface of their awareness. When a thought comes into awareness, the thought should be felt, sensed, and given time for emotional processing. We interact with an abundance of information everyday that cannot be processed during full activity.

During dreaming while asleep, we process information in a vital way that is not clearly understood. Regardless to what dreaming actually achieves, active rest can achieve practical things.

For example, during active rest a person may suddenly recall the location of a misplaced item. Or another example might be finally dedicating time to a long neglected minor detail that has been overshadowed by bigger things in the mind.

The exercises that should be included are only the recovery type exercises that improve blood flow. Deep tissue massage and yoga are great for the recovery process.

It’s not just the muscles that need to rest; it’s also the nerves, neurons, and neuroconnections. The brain needs to be able to enter into a calm wakefulness with the lowest heart rate possible.

During levels of high excitement and active training, the brain represses many thoughts. These thoughts require calmness, and are vital to good mental and emotional health. The path to quality emotional well-being is unique for everyone, but is still basically the same.