Looking for changes to make to your life to improve longevity? Here are three ways pickleball can help you live longer.
1) Pickleball is a racquet sport
The first way that pickleball can help you live longer is probably the most obvious: it’s great exercise. And not just because playing any sport is good for you, but specifically because it is a racquet sport. And according to studies, racquet sports are the best for longevity.
For example, this study of 80,000 adults over nine years found people who regularly played racquet sports reduced their risk of death by 47%, compared to people who were inactive. In particular, racquet sports were found to lower your risk of dying from heart disease (such as heart attack or stroke) by 56%. In comparison, swimming reduced the risk of heart disease by 41%, and other forms of exercise by just 36%.
Another study which followed more than 8,500 people for up to 25 years discovered that tennis players extended their life by 9.7 years compared with people who were inactive. And badminton players extended their life by 6.2 years. These were the two highest-ranking activities for extending life expectancy – and pickleball is a combination of both (with some table tennis thrown in).
So why are racquet sports like pickleball so good for longevity? Racquet sports require endurance, flexibility, agility, coordination, bursts of speed, balance and mobility, which mean they give pretty much your entire body a workout. They also challenge your brain – you need good hand-eye coordination to hit the ball, a playing strategy and to remember what the score is.
So if you’re looking for a new sport to take up because you want to hopefully extend your lifespan, consider trying pickleball.
2) Pickleball is a social sport
There’s another very good reason to pick pickleball as your new leisure activity. As we’ve covered extensively in articles like this one, being social is essential if you want to live a long and happy life. And pickleball is a highly social sport.
To start with, you usually play in doubles, so straight away you have a partner to interact with. Games are quite short and it’s normal on club nights to switch partners often, which means you’ll meet plenty of people in one session.
If, like me, you join a regular club night, you’ll get to know your fellow members. I play on a Tuesday, which is considered a ‘friendly’ night. This means that we’re not playing to improve our games for competition, but just to have fun. Over time you get to know your fellow players, and we now meet afterwards for a drink once a month, and even swap books with each other.
We need a rich network of people, from vague acquaintances to close friends, to be emotionally fulfilled. So, in the social fabric that makes up my life, the people I meet every Tuesday for pickleball play as important a role as my friends and family. And they’re not just a nice group of people, but hopefully they are helping to add more years to my life!
3) Pickleball is fun
The third reason why pickleball could be your secret weapon when it comes to living longer is simply because it’s fun.
As I mentioned, Tuesday night at my pickleball club is designated as a friendly night, which means we’re all there for the same reason: to get exercise and have fun. As a result no one takes the game too seriously.
While it’s nice to have a win, people are usually just as happy to lose; it’s more important that the game is fun, and I often find myself spending two hours laughing. Which is great because, as we covered here, laughing can help you to live longer.
Of course you can play pickleball competitively and get a huge amount of pleasure from it too – a good friend of mine plays for the same club but on a Monday night as she plays in competitions, and she enjoys pickleball just as much.
That’s the point: pickleball can be a fun sport whether you want to improve your game and play in leagues, or whether you just want to bat a ball across a net for a couple of hours a week for a laugh. And you don’t just have fun now – you could be having a laugh for many more years of life.
How to start playing pickleball (and maybe live longer)
So if you fancy trying pickleball, how can you get started? Over the past few years it’s grown hugely in popularity across the world. If you live in the UK you should be able to find a club near you for a trial. You can find a club locator here on Pickleball England (it also covers Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales).
