Tennis for Health

Avid tennis players have long believed that tennis may be the perfect sport not only to help you live longer but also improve the quality of your life.

Higher levels of physical activity lower mortality rates for both young and old, decrease the risk of heart disease, prevents or delays the development of high blood pressure and reduces the risk of cancer. Other substantial benefits include reducing stress, anxiety, and depression. Physical activity also increases energy and makes weight control easier.

So where does all this leave tennis? In very good standing. Much of a person’s decline in fitness is caused by disuse and not by aging. People who start playing tennis at a young age and continue throughout their lifetimes retain the highest level of fitness.  However, if you haven’t played in a long time, you can still get significant benefits by resuming the sport later in life.

Research shows that the aerobic capacity of relatively sedentary people decreases by about 10 percent per decade. However, if you continue to play tennis on a regular basis, you can have significantly less of a decrease in aerobic capacity as you age. With training, our aerobic capacity decreases only 5 percent every two decades.

What about muscular endurance?  Although strength does decrease steadily with age, strength training can lessen the impact of aging on performance.  Performing strength-training exercises, including tennis, increases bone density and improves overall muscle strength.  Recent studies indicate that regardless of age, gender, or level of fitness, you can improve strength with training.

The main reasons we tend to gain weight as we get older are that we tend to eat more and exercise less. Although older players have more body fat that younger competitors, older tennis players have significantly lower body-fat levels than sedentary people of similar ages.

The UK is in the midst of an inactivity epidemic.  More than 60 percent of the adult population and 50 percent of our children are not getting enough physical activity.  A sedentary lifestyle has been placed in the same risk category as smoking cigarettes or driving while drunk.

“The good news,” is that you don’t have to train like an Olympic athlete to enjoy the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.  Participating in activities such as tennis for at least 30 minutes per day, most days of the week, is good for your health and good for your future.