Advantages of Playing Tennis: How Racquet Sports Extend Life Expectancy by Ten Years

– Do you want to live longer? Play tennis!

Racquet sports extend life expectancy by ten years. Experts explain what makes tennis so valuable for the body and mind.

Published: 04/11/2024, 6:00 p.m.

It’s time to get your socks dirty again, tennis season has started.

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For several days, we have heard the clicking of yellow balls again. The summer tennis season has begun, we get our immaculate white socks dirty again, we despair at our own inability or we exult at the successful balls. And to finish, we shake hands, sweating at the net.

With around 3,000 outdoor courts, Switzerland is a tennis country, and that’s a good thing. Because tennis is the healthiest sport you can choose. It increases life expectancy significantly.

Before badminton and football

This is the conclusion of an American study which compared the sporting activities of 8,577 participants from 1991 to 2017 with their mortality. Tennis players obtained the best results. Those who regularly handle the racket extend their life by 9.7 years on average. Tennis is followed by badminton (6.2), football (4.7), cycling (3.7), swimming (3.4), jogging (3.2), body weight exercises body (3.1) and training in a fitness center (1.5). Interesting: sports with social interaction come out on top.

The US study used data from the large Copenhagen City Heart Study, launched in 1975 and originally intended to improve prevention of heart disease and stroke. In this context, the lifestyle habits and health of around 20,000 Danes were monitored for years. They also indicated the sport they practiced regularly.

In their quest for the healthiest sport, American researchers in 2018 filtered some 8,600 participants who had taken part in the initial study for twenty-five years, and determined who had died. In their selection and evaluation, they tried to take into account socio-economic factors. Tennis players tend to be wealthier and more educated than others.

The more sport we do, the better!

People who die young are those who never played sports. Which isn’t entirely surprising. According to the study, tennis is the highest ranked sport among the eight studied. And health would not correlate with the number of hours of sport. Thus, the group of people who practice the most sport in terms of hours, namely those in fitness centers, even show the smallest increase in life expectancy.

Of course, exact figures for life expectancy should be taken with a grain of salt, says Gommaar D’Hulst, a sports scientist at Zurich Polytechnic. Especially since it is an observational study, that is to say an analysis in which data is collected without there being any intervention in the lives of the participants. “But the study highlights several interesting points. On the one hand, the importance of social interaction in addition to physical activity. On the other hand, the fact that tennis, as a high-intensity interval training, has an advantage over a uniform exercise, such as jogging for example.

This Belgian living in the Zurich region founded “wod_science”, a platform with which he makes the results of scientific studies in the field of fitness and sports nutrition accessible to the general public. On Instagram, the portal already has 117,000 followers.

The expert says that the combination offered by tennis is now increasingly sought after in the field of fitness: no more uniform training, but combined sports like crossfit, hyrox or bootcamp, where we combine strength training and interval training and where you also have the feeling of being part of a group.

Team strength and interval training, bootcamps are booming in Switzerland.

SILAS ZINDEL/TAMEDIA

But tennis has an unbeatable advantage, as Tobias Bächle of the Federal Sports Office (FOSPO) says. “Cognitive and coordination abilities are strongly stimulated.” Tennis is a very complex sport, in which the interaction between body and mind places high demands on the players. It’s not just about chasing balls, but you’re also constantly trying to solve the riddle of how you can outsmart your opponent. You have to constantly make decisions under time pressure.

The specialist compares tennis to dancing. “When I learn a new movement there, I am in great demand.” He refers to a German study which demonstrated that women and men who followed a dance program three times a week aged more slowly, significantly improved their sense of balance and reduced serious complications in the event of a fall.

Additionally, dancing stimulates “neural plasticity.” In short, it has a positive effect on our brain performance. Which is a great advantage given the progression of dementia in our society. When it comes to tennis, research is still in its infancy. But a similar effect in tennis is entirely plausible.

Simpler racket sports

Anyone who picks up a racket for the first time at an advanced age is unlikely to have much success at first. Tobias Bächle first recommends simple forms of play, in the service square or with light balls. And he talks about the boom in easier-to-learn racket sports, like padel or pickleball, which are played on smaller courts. Padel is already booming in Switzerland. Pickleball, popular in the United States, is also gradually spreading.

A particularity of padel is that it can only be played with four people, the social component is therefore even more marked. This is an important point for both experts. “We know from various studies that relationships are essential for humans,” says the OFSPO representative. “Loneliness leads more quickly to death. People who have good social relationships live longer, are happier and in better physical shape.” But, applied to tennis, it is difficult to know what is cause and effect. “Do people who are more social anyway play tennis instead? And do the loners rather practice an individual sport?

Gommaar D’Hulst highlights another aspect of social interaction. Those who exercise with others do so more regularly. “If you’re jogging or going to the gym by yourself, you can just skip the session if you don’t feel like it. Nobody cares. If your crossfit group trains at 6 p.m., you need to be there. When football practice starts, we’re waiting for you. Otherwise, you’re letting the team down. When you have a tennis appointment, you have to show up.”

So call a friend and head towards the tennis court.

READ ALSOSimon Graf is deputy sports editor in Zurich and has covered ice hockey and tennis for more than 20 years. He studied history and Germanistics at the University of Zurich and wrote several books on sport. His latest work: “Federer Inspiration”.More info@SimonGraf1

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2024-04-11 16:55:24
#live #longer #Play #tennis