Victoria Azarenka is hitting tennis balls – in her workout gear. In a new social media post the professional athlete shows off her impressive physique in an exercise set while on the court. “Here I am,” she writes across the Instagram video. “If you’re not having at least a little bit of fun, you’re not doing it right,” she added in the caption. How does she approach diet, fitness, and self-care? Here is everything you need to know about her lifestyle habits.
Smoothies
Victoria likes to drink her nutrients. “A smoothie with raspberry, banana, mint, almond milk and almond butter. And a bit of granola on top,” is one of her favorite fuel-up treats. “It’s gluten-free and vegan. It’s healthy and has all-natural nutrients to start the day. It gives me lots of energy and is naturally sweet!” she told ESPN.
Power Exercises
Victoria focuses on developing fast-twitch muscles. “I do power exercises like medicine ball throws and I recently, like a year ago, started doing olympic weightlifting because it’s the most complex movement with the most explosiveness and power in it to help you extend faster and get to the first step faster,” she says.
Stretching
“For me it was a lot of educating myself to just understand, first of all, how the body works so I knew what to do. I’m constantly reading and learning injury prevention. Basically, injury prevention is discipline,” she told Elite Daily. Stretching has been key. “It was also a lot about mindset, ’cause I hate doing it — like, I absolutely hate stretching. But once I started to understand it a little bit more, it became fun for me,” she says.
Cold Plunge
She also recovers with cold plunges. “Ice baths are another alternative, they are most common because cryotherapy is not everywhere. We have it at the tournaments, so after the matches it’s very efficient, especially somewhere really hot,” she says.
She Tried A Vegan Diet
Victoria is not a fan of the vegan lifestyle. “I wanted to be vegan because I love animals, but it was the worst thing I could’ve done for my body and my body wasn’t recovering. So I had to learn it the hard way… but that was fine. Every body is unique. You can’t really find out [about your body] without experimenting and learning,” she said.
Training
To avoid injury Azarenka has a long training period and increases focus on her physical conditioning. “I will have, this time, an extended preseason. I want to get at least eight good weeks of training before I go to do my season, but usually it’s about five to six weeks. And you start mainly with general physical training for two weeks, just really hard work getting your base endurance, etc., and then it goes more into tennis,” she told Elite Daily.