Photo credit: Rob Stone/@RobStoneTennis
The most arduous challenge of Emma Navarro’s career didn’t come on a tennis court.
In a candid Instagram post, a candid Navarro courageously shared her health battle that waged on for about three years.
Former world No. 8 Navarro revealed she felt she had been running on empty, playing a pro sport despite the fact she was suffering from severe lack of energy.
Navarro said she was diagnosed last fall with Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S), complicated by Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism. The conditions wreaked havoc with her health and began back in 2023.
“What you probably don’t know is that these challenges began almost three years ago and were heavily influenced by the choices I made early in my professional career relating to training, fueling, competing and recovery,” Navarro posted on Instagram.
In a grueling and successful 2023 season, Navarro played 88 matches. Navarro would go on to reach the 2024 Wimbledon quarterfinals and US Open semifinals, but felt her body serious depleted by the training and heavy match workload.
““I was hungry. Every hour of the day, I was hungry,” Navarro wrote. “I thought I was doing what professional athletes are supposed to do. Getting lean to optimize performance.”
Navarro shared she lost 20 pounds during the 2023 season and another 10 pounds during 2024 when she began suffering from dizziness, brain fog and mood swings.
“I couldn’t think straight a lot of the time,” Navarro wrote on Instagram. “My brain felt slow and tired, as did my body.”
Last spring, Navarro stepped away from tennis to focus on regaining her health. Recovering her health has required adjusting her medication, altering her diet and accepting the changes in her body.
“We figured out that I had been under-fueling for almost three years,” Navarro said. “My body was fighting back any way it knew how. It had been screaming at me for years, and I ignored it.”
Now, her physical and mental health is a top priority. Navarro, who is skipping this month’s Asian swing to train and prepare for 2027, said she’s in a much better place physically and mentally these days leading a more fulfilling life on and off court.
“So yeah, I gained some weight this year,” Navarro wrote. “But I also gained my life back.
“I have enough energy to seize every day, to train or compete as hard as I want to, and to live a life outside of tennis.” Navarro