If you want to live longer and healthier, pick up a racquet.
According to the Copenhagen City Heart Study, playing tennis weekly could add as much as a DECADE to your life expectancy. The next closest sport? Badminton, at 6.2 years. Soccer comes in a distant third at 4.7 years, a massive gap.
And it’s not just because tennis is a great workout. I mean, it IS a great workout. It gives you consistent bursts of strenuous activity followed by periods of rest. Strength. Agility. Sideways motion. It’s got it all. I was a tennis pro for all of my 30’s, and I couldn’t have been in better shape (I could be now, but that’s another story).
It’s also the mental aspect of the sport. It’s being out there alone and figuring out the strategy of the next point. Grinding it out after an hour in the hot sun.
And then there’s the social side of tennis. Being with friends. Scheduling a time to hit. Playing doubles and working with your partner. It’s an aspect of physical activity that tends to get overlooked. The communal side of sports.
It will be interesting to see where pickleball ends up on this list after it’s been studied. I’m sure it will fall somewhere between tennis and badminton, which is a good sign for the health of this new sport.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you need to wake up at 4am with Mark Wahlberg and lift heavy weights and be extreme and eat whey powder four times a day. But maybe calling your buddy and picking up a racquet and hitting some balls a few times a week are just as, if not better, than those hardcore options.
The weather is turning here in Michigan, and I might start playing again, after a long hiatus. I have to make sure my 9.7 additional years are still coming to me!
My friend Robert is actually 82 in this image.