The World’s Healthiest Sport
This past weekend, I hurt my back.
Now, would I prefer to say “This weekend I decidedly did not hurt my back”? Indubitably. But failing that, am I proud that I hurt my back playing tennis? You bet.
For it’s not the fault of the game but rather merely my decrepit bag of bones that I’m laid low. The game is actually "The World’s Healthiest Sport," according to the signage on the court at the U.S. Open.
I’ve seen it over the past week of watching nothing but tennis, but I haven’t given much thought to it. Until I read a piece in The Atlantic.
Alexandra Moe
The crazy thing about the numerous stats in this story is how closely they mirror my comments and conversations with Courtney as we walk off the court. Just this past Saturday, she was marveling at the tracked statistics on her Apple Watch and how much it calculated she had worked during the hour of play.
I said something to the effect of, “It’s really like mini HIIT workouts.” Which, sounded good in the moment, and it certainly felt apt based on how I was feeling.
But then I read this line in the story:
Tennis, with its explosive bursts—sprinting to the ball, stopping, lunging laterally, jogging backwards to the baseline—can yield especially powerful results. James Gladstone, the chief of sports medicine at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, told me that tennis resembles high-intensity interval training, which has been shown to improve cognitive function and memory in healthy older adults. In youths, it has positive effects on cognitive performance and attention.
Having intuited this basic truth somewhat made up for the lackluster state of my game.
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