I’ll confess, I have, traditionally, hated team sports. At school I was the last to be picked for netball. And rightly so. I have an aversion to whistles, rules, and most things you can’t do while holding a book, glass or snack in one hand.
But this year, I’m getting fit (enough). And walking, while brilliant for your health, is not enough on its own. So recently, I’ve been having to do something I would previously have thought impossible. I have been considering organised sport.
If I am to override all my natural instincts and do some sport, however, I need it to count. And I mean, really count. So a Danish study caught my eye. The research involved 8,577 participants with an average age of 44. It found that those who played tennis lived almost 10 years longer than their sedentary peers. They also survived longer than those who played football, swam, ran or trained in the gym.
If you’re skeptical, another study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, reinforces the findings. This one tracked over 80,000 participants for nine years, comparing the impact of various sports on their overall health. Those who regularly played racket sports – including tennis, but also badminton, squash, racquetball, and even table tennis – had a 47% lower chance of all-cause mortality than those who didn’t exercise. The study also evaluated the benefits of swimming, cycling, and aerobics: swimmers had a 28% lower risk, cyclists had a 15% lower risk, and those who did aerobics had a 27% lower risk.
Tennis (and racket sports) are clear winners for longevity, but why? The authors of the Danish study believe it’s largely down to the element of social interaction. Playing tennis, whether singles or doubles, fosters camaraderie, emotional support, trust, and a sense of belonging – all of which have been proven to impact health as profoundly as movement and nutrition.
“Consistency, enjoyment and connection are the key to building good habits so these findings make perfect sense,” says Kim Hawley, GH fitness expert. “For the over 60s (or any age), tennis combines cardiovascular work with balance, coordination and cognitive challenge into a single session, while also ticking the often-overlooked social box. Rallies (or running all over the court after repeatedly missing shots like I do) act like built-in high-intensity interval training, improving heart health and the constant decision-making keeps the little grey cells guessing and add the motivation that comes from playing with others and committing to regular sessions, and you have a sport people stick with for decades.”
Other experts put it down to the high-intensity interval training effect: tennis naturally involves short bursts of intense effort, like sprints and rapid direction changes, which improve cardiovascular fitness, insulin sensitivity, and vascular function – health markers closely tied to longevity.
So maybe I need to stop watching the tennis on telly, and finally drag myself onto the courts in my local park. Will you?
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