Machine Maintenance

To be in good health, it is necessary not only to eat 5 fruit and vegetables a day, but it is also necessary to exercise. Tennis players, used to forehands blasted into the fence netting, know it and suffer from it—gasping for breath after a rally of at least four hits; but even those who always hit the line and are not in favour of the recovery position, those who watch their ranking live from the FFT or LTA website, those who dream of the Futures tour while preventing themselves from dreaming beyond, all these also feel that sport, which is meant to keep them in shape, paradoxically erodes their machine. Any body submerged in a liquid undergoes a vertical surge towards the height equal to the weight of the volume of liquid displaced. To expand on Archimedes, I will add that a body submerged more often than its built for in a streaming sweat undergoes a surge of ageing that it could do without.

For an athlete, the first phase of preparation consists of sculpting their body by mixing proteins and vitamins which build up muscle mass. But during all their preparation, athletes, even amateurs, need to increase their nutriments for maintaining the cogs of their machine. Without health, no performance. And without performance, hello broken rackets.

Because they breathe, athletes oxidize. Because they oxidize, tennis players damage their joints, their muscles, their tendons, their ligaments. Even their intestines are harmed when the ordeal of training is prolonged.

Whether it displeases grizzled actors or not being invited to rake over their careers in tell-all interviews, no one enjoys ageing, especially when before even taking a step on court you already ache all over. To protect oneself against the dreadful effects of intensive sport, it is necessary to arm yourself with tools other than perseverance. Hence the interest in turning to dietary supplements in order to look after one’s body and improve one’s performances without stuffing oneself with fatty acids.

The Aminoscience range from NHCO Nutrition has been created with this in mind. These dietary supplements are easily worked into a tennis player’s day to day and permit them to concentrate on their backhand slice and kick serve without compromising their future. There are four supplements with differing benefits—the object is to improve the immunity of the athlete and to deliver all of the nutriments, vitamins and antioxidants required by the perpetual demands of physical intensity.

Defending oneself against oxidation

It was once custom to guarantee the quality of antioxidants by always selecting the same ones. Now when fruit and vegetables contain less antioxidants than in the past, it is advised to diversify one’s input in order to counter the oxidative stress. With its 25 active ingredients, the NucléOx brings the equivalent in primary and secondary antioxidants of more than two portions of fresh fruit and vegetables. It has the ability to help repair microlesions and to support optimal cellular protection. The NucléOx contains in addition a patented ingredient, Polyphenox, which contains numerous polyphenols.

It is recommended to consume NucléOx in courses of two months, especially during periods when the athlete is training and competing heavily.

 

Stockpiling energy

The image of a tennis player consuming a plate of pasta before the match and a banana when switching ends won’t disappear soon, but one can’t extrapolate a healthy regime from this picture. Slow release sugars don’t do everything in the struggle to maintain performance. Given that athletes sweat heavily, more or less, they release through their pores numerous micronutrients. One realises the importance of what one has when it is gone: a super tie break, without micronutrients, is a super tie-break that one is likely to lose.

It is here that Orthosamine intervenes. A cocktail composed of 31 active ingredients, which boasts minerals, essential amino acids and natural vitamins, all guarantee a supply of energy during the match, even when forced to battle far from the baseline. Orthosamine can be taken for a maximum of two months, including while the athlete does not compete.

Looking after the joints, tendons and ligaments

Let’s confess, if one removes the racket and the ball from a tennis player on a court, they will appear a little silly, repeatedly doing short but strenuous runs, repetitive forehands and backhands, forcing an invisible ball to rebound before serving twice. Our joints, though, hate the repetition and brutality. There are those joints which suffer the most from tennis practice, those which are the most likely to halt our play, more so than our muscles that we look after with a lot of warming up and massage, done more or less intuitively to soothe our aches.

In order to give back to our joints, our tendons, our cartilages and our ligaments, the support that they deserve, the NHCO nutrition laboratories propose Collax-Sil, a formula containing notably collagen and its precursors, which is taken over a period of up to three months to prepare for tournaments. In all likelihood, your joints will thank you. Nevertheless, if you hear your joints literally thanking you—your knee bursting into heartfelt gratitude, for example—then please consult your doctor.

 

After effort, comfort

Athletes tend to fall into self-soothing routines, after all their effort, which then tend to ignore the part of the system that suffers. Because the body is tired, it is more likely to fall ill just after a match. In order to avoid illness, one must support the immune system and defence cells. Endomune, created by the NHCO Nutrition Laboratories, acts in this way via four targeted effects. The first stimulates the immune system mostly thanks to echinacea. The second effect restores energy and vitality, which is down to ginseng and eleuthero. The third makes it possible to bolster the immune system through green tea. Finally the last effect of Engimune acts on tiredness through the help of vitamin C.

NHCO Nutrition Laboratories recommend taking Endomune to support one’s immune defence system 15 days a month during winter. From the first symptoms, whatever they are, Endomune will go to work by supporting health and fitness. 

In the same way that a jammed ball machine is not very useful, a body, tired by sport, will not return balls satisfactorily. Outside physical health, there is also mental health—the susceptibility to frustration—which one can protect by taking dietary supplements. This will prolong the life of rackets. In a sport where there is always a winner and a loser, here is an opportunity to win on all fronts.