In recent days tennis fans have been puzzled by photos of Iga Swiatek’s training session ahead of this week’s Canadian Open.
The world No.1 conducted her regular drills on the court but the unusual thing about her practice was the fact there was tape over her mouth. Initially, it would seem rather strange that a person would want to restrict air going into their mouth whilst doing exercise. However, there is an explanation as to why the unusual technique was used.
Swiatek’s fitness coach Maciej Ryszczuk is the person who came up with the idea. It is done to restrict the tennis player’s oxygen intake to improve performance. One study on 10 runners using nasal-only breathing during exercise over a six-month period found that the technique helped reduce their overall energy cost.
“It’s harder to breathe when you’re only breathing with your nose, and it’s easier for my heart rate to go up,” Swiatek told reporters during Media Day. “I’m not going to explain it to you perfectly because I’m not an expert. Sometimes I don’t get the things they tell me to do, but I’m doing that for a long time now so it got pretty easy.
“But for sure you can see the difference in how everything you do on the court is getting more and more hard with that tape on your mouth. So I guess it’s the way to kind of work on my endurance by not having me run so fast and do extreme things.”
It is unclear as to how effective this method is with the majority of studies into it concerning running. Some research has suggested that breathing through your nose instead of the mouth during exercise is more efficient because a person doesn’t have to work as hard to get the same amount of oxygen.
“About 10 to 15 percent of your total energy cost is just your respiratory muscles attempting to move enough air to provide oxygen and remove carbon dioxide.” George Dallam, a professor in the School of Health Science and Movement at Colorado State University-Pueblo, told Runner’s World last month.
Swiatek is the top seed at the Canadian Open this week where she will be aiming to improve on her performance from 12 months ago when she lost in the third round to Beatrix Haddad Maia. This year’s tournament is taking place in Montreal which is a city the Pole hasn’t previously played in.
She is currently on a five-match winning streak after claiming her first-ever title on home soil at the Warsaw Open. An event that she believes has helped her for the upcoming Noth American hard court swing.
“I think playing Warsaw on hard court changed a lot the perspective because last year, switching from grass to clay and then to hard court was really tricky,” Swiatek said. “This year, I feel like it’s a really nice process without any extra obstacles. So it was pretty easy for me to just focus on work.”
Swiatek will play former world No.1 Karolina Pliskova in her opening match.
