June 9, 2026 by Ekaterina Kuznetsova
Why Sports: My Story and Choice to Look at Life Through Sports.
Sports has been in my life since very early years. First, it was a support for healthy growth and development. Then it was my early job – training to become a professional tennis player. At a later point in life, sports has become a way to get the joy of moving my body and feeling its strength. It’s become my way to reset mentally.
Today, sports is my hobby and my passion. It’s with me every day of my life – be that a workout, tennis practice, or following the elite sports world with endless curiosity. I like asking the questions of what helps athletes balance performance and wellbeing.
I remember my father used to say “sports is the health” when I was little. I’ve always been encouraged to move and exercise. I was put to a kindergarten that specialized in exercise and physical development. I remember enjoying physical education and swimming classes especially.
When I was 4-7 years old, I was trying to climb everything I saw. My father used to call me a “monkey” then. I felt excited to catch and grab things, to pull my body – I was completely engaged and enjoying myself. At around the age of 5 years old, I discovered another true passion for myself – everything related to various kinds of balls, especially with a racket. I was in flow trying to catch or hit a ball. Not long after, my parents introduced me to tennis.
Honestly, I loved tennis from the start. I felt joy from chasing the ball and from the feeling of the ball on the racket. I loved the aesthetics of the sport and the feeling I got when looking at myself in the tennis attire. It’s been a journey of more than 25 years for me in tennis. Still and even more deeply enchanted by the game, on the inside and on the outside. My life in the sport of tennis has been a huge experience that’s definitely shaped me in many ways. It’s been a road of joy, challenges, leanings, and routines that’ll stay with me for life.
My first five years in tennis were ones of the most exciting. The pleasure of making progress when learning to do something from scratch was immense. The amazing feeling of having a strong, jumpy and flexible body was already then something I consciously enjoyed quite a bit. And I was good at the sport for my age then, too. I felt self-confident among the children of my age overall, and I liked having structure and discipline in my life.
As I was getting older, the expectations and pressure were growing, while it was becoming more difficult for me to enjoy the process. Having more insight into that period now, I think it was difficult for me to balance the ability to enjoy with the strong need (as a child and a teenager) to be “good” and keep the important adults happy. It was too scary for me not to win a match or not to make a stroke with perfect technique. Ironically, of course, my body was getting so tensed up that it was literally impossible to succeed. It was also not feasible for me to even notice how I felt and what was going on. I was too focused on working hard to get the result expected from me.
Eventually, at the age of around 16, the decision to focus on education (vs. sports career) was made by me together with my parents. To be honest, for me it was not even a question or any hard decision. At that point, I hadn’t seen myself becoming a tennis player since quite some time. In all the pressure, there just wasn’t any space for me to feel a desire to play tennis or make a career out of it.
It’s only taken almost 15 (!!) years and tons of self-work for me to feel the real, my own, desire to play tennis and to even be a professional player (better late than never:)). Playing tennis as an exercise and closely following the pro tennis tour for years have eventually led me to getting that feeling. The feeling of complete flow and engagement, playfulness combined with body strength and agility. The feeling of trusting the body while letting go of the mind’s control.
Today, I’m at a point where sports is an important and unquestionable part of my daily life. I play tennis for pleasure, and I experiment with different kinds of exercises and workouts. I follow the world of elite sports (mostly tennis, and expanding to other sports). Since I made a career switch and dived into coaching and counselling almost 3 years ago, I’ve been particularly curious about the mental side of the game and of the high-performance environments overall. Fascinated by learning more, observing and utilizing sports as a lens for my coaching and counselling practice for people related to sports and for everybody else.
To me sports is really the health, and life. Elite sports is literally many lives within a bigger life. Moving is life, feeling the body and trusting it is life. What is crucial in any life (sports and overall) is balance: between results and wellbeing, between freedom and control, between pressure with overwhelm and flow with clarity.
What do these story and perspective touch in you? Let’s talk. Let’s connect.