Boost Your Health with Pickleball

It’s a game that not only demands your full attention but also elevates you into a moderate form of aerobic exercise, getting your heart to pump ample amounts of blood not just to your lungs but also to the tips of your fingers and toes. When you’re done playing, if you’ve really played and not just goofing off, you’re completely out of breath, and you might even be drenched in sweat, far more so than one might expect from a game that’s typically played indoors.

Quick lateral movements and precise coordination and hitting require reflexes. But as we grow older, our reflexes tend to slow down. Enhancing reflexes can help older people with these necessary skills, but the workout can benefit anyone regardless of age.

People experiencing joint discomfort should keep away from high-impact exercises and activities that involve lots of jumping. Pickleball is a fantastic alternative because its an intense game played on a small court, its low-impact, and its a blast!

Enjoyable activities, especially those involving planning, rapid responses, and intense concentration, are stimulating to the brain. Add social interaction (a necessary ingredient in many games) to the mix, and you have a perfectly formulated recipe for banishing not just the kind of stress and anxiety that can make you feel as though you’re living on a tightrope but also the cognitive decline that threatens us as we age.

You engage your legs and core as you run, swing, and pivot to keep the ball in play. You work your arms and shoulders hard as you stretch for and return the ball. And like any good workout, pickleball tests both your brain and your brawn. Yes, there’s the obvious cardio involved. But pickleball requires split-second decisions and a whole lot of basic math and geometry. You have to think it, plot it, and serve it up to get one over on your opponent. And when you add all that up, it’s a game that works nearly every part of your body and mind.