A growing number of tennis and Pickleball players at every level practice Pilates. They utilise their Pilates training for a range of issues. Issues such as: injury prevention and recovery, rectifying muscle imbalance, to improving flexibility and building core and stabilizer muscles.
Racquet sports are by their nature one-sided. Most players repeatedly use the same hand and arm to hit the ball, generally in the same direction. Typically they do this with their head and neck usually adopting the same position in anticipation of playing a shot. Such pronounced left- or right-sided movements load stress on the structure of the body. This produces a physique that is out of balance and thus is more liable to break down with over-use injuries particularly prevalent.
Repetitive, inefficient patterns of movement combined with the quest for power give rise to problems in the collection of joints that make up the shoulder. ‘Tennis elbow’, or inflammation of the muscle tissue and ligaments at the base of the elbow, is caused by chronic twisting of the arm plus repeated shocks to a small bony ridge on the outer elbow.