What 8,577 people and a quarter-century of follow-up reveal about the workout linked to the longest life
Credit: Daily Vitality
Most of us size up exercise by the numbers staring back at us from a screen. Calories burned. Steps logged. Minutes in the zone. We pick a workout the way we pick a parking spot — whatever's closest and gets the job done. So it's easy to assume that one hour of effort is more or less interchangeable with any other.
One of the longest studies of its kind quietly asked a different question. Not how hard you work or how many calories you torch, but something far more personal: how many years might a given activity add to your life? Researchers followed thousands of adults for up to a quarter of a century, then compared sport against sport to see which ones lined up with the longest lives.
The answer surprised even the people who ran the numbers. The activity at the top of the list wasn't the treadmill, the spin bike, or the weight room. It was tennis — associated with nearly a decade of extra life compared with sitting still. And the gym-style workout that so many of us default to? It landed at the very bottom of the ranking.
Before you cancel your membership, it's worth slowing down. This isn't a story about a "wrong" way to move your body, and it isn't a promise that picking up a racket will hand you ten more birthdays. It's a story about a fascinating pattern — what the top sports have in common, what the numbers can and can't tell you, and how to use that insight to choose an activity you'll actually look forward to. Let's walk through it together.
The findings come from the Copenhagen City Heart Study, a long-running project that tracked the health of a large slice of the Danish population over many years. For this particular analysis, researchers zeroed in on 8,577 adults, asking detailed questions about the leisure-time sports they played and then following them for up to 25 years to see how those habits lined up with longevity.
The timeline matters here. Baseline interviews took place between October 1991 and September 1994, and the team followed participants all the way through March 2017. That's a remarkably long window — long enough to watch how everyday habits played out across decades rather than months, and recent enough to reflect modern medical care and lifestyles.
The outcome the researchers measured was all-cause mortality, meaning death from any cause rather than just heart disease or a single condition. From that data, they estimated how many years of life expectancy each sport was associated with, always measured against a sedentary reference group of people who didn't play sports. In other words, the comparison throughout is "this activity versus sitting it out."
Crucially, the team didn't just look at raw survival. They adjusted their analysis for a long list of factors that could muddy the picture, including age, sex, education, income, smoking, and alcohol use. They even accounted for how much total time people spent exercising each week. As you'll see, that last detail turns out to be one of the most interesting parts of the whole story.
Eight activities had enough participants to produce reliable life-expectancy estimates, and the spread between them was striking. Here's how they ranked, based on the multivariable-adjusted gains reported in the 2018 Copenhagen City Heart Study analysis:
A few things jump out. Tennis sits far ahead of the pack at about 9.7 years, with badminton and soccer rounding out a clear top three. Familiar favorites like cycling, swimming, and jogging cluster together in the middle, each tied to roughly three to four additional years. And health-club activities — the treadmill sessions, elliptical workouts, and weight circuits many of us think of as the gold standard — came in last at about 1.5 years.
Here's the reassuring part, though, and it's worth holding onto: every single activity on this list was associated with a longer life than doing nothing at all. Even the lowest-ranked option was linked to extra years compared with being sedentary. So this is a ranking of good, better, and best — not good versus bad.
So what separates a sport linked to nearly ten extra years from one linked to a year and a half? When the researchers looked at their own results, they noticed a pattern that had little to do with how vigorous each activity was. The sports at the very top — tennis, badminton, and soccer — all share a simple feature: you can't really do them alone. Each one calls for a partner, an opponent, or a team, and with that comes regular, face-to-face human contact.
The authors said as much directly. In their words, "the leisure-time sports that inherently involve more social interaction were associated with the best longevity." It's a careful sentence, and the care is the point — they're describing a link, not a mechanism. But the pattern was hard to ignore, with the most social activities clustering right at the top of the list.
What makes this especially intriguing is what happened when the researchers accounted for how much time people spent exercising. Even after adjusting for total weekly activity, the ranking held. That suggests the gap between tennis and the treadmill may not come down to sweat and minutes alone. Something about the context of the activity — the partner waiting on the other side of the net, the teammates counting on you to show up — appears to be part of the equation. The researchers pointed to plausible psychosocial factors such as social interaction, enjoyment, and the simple fact that we tend to keep doing things we look forward to.
There's an interesting wrinkle in the gym's last-place finish, too. Health-club activities often involved some of the most time spent exercising each week, yet they showed the smallest life-expectancy gain. More minutes, fewer associated years. It's a vivid illustration that, in this data at least, the type of activity and the company you keep may matter alongside the raw quantity of exercise.
This pattern isn't unique to Denmark, either. A separate study of more than 80,000 adults in England and Scotland, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, similarly found that racket sports and swimming were linked to notably lower rates of death from any cause and from cardiovascular disease. Two different populations, a broadly similar story.
The "social" explanation is the researchers' leading hypothesis, not a settled fact. Decades of separate research suggest that strong social connection is good for our health, which makes the idea plausible. But the studies here were designed to spot patterns, not to prove exactly why those patterns exist.
It's tempting to read "tennis adds 9.7 years" as a guarantee — pick up a racket, gain a decade. The honest answer is more nuanced, and understanding why will help you read any health headline more wisely.
This was an observational study. That means the researchers watched what people naturally did and tracked what happened, rather than randomly assigning anyone to a sport. Observational research is excellent at revealing associations, but it can't prove cause and effect on its own. The authors are clear-eyed about this themselves, noting that it remains uncertain whether the relationship is truly causal.
The reason for caution comes down to a concept worth knowing: the people who choose different sports may differ in other ways, too. Tennis, for instance, often requires court access, equipment, time, and money — so the people who play it may, on average, have higher incomes, better baseline health, or more flexible schedules. The study did its best to account for many of these factors, but no analysis can capture everything. Some of tennis's apparent edge might reflect who tends to play it, not the sport itself.
So the most accurate way to read the ranking is as a population-level pattern, not a personal contract. These numbers describe how large groups of people fared over time. They don't promise that any one individual will gain a specific number of years by switching activities. That distinction isn't a reason to dismiss the findings — the patterns are genuinely interesting and broadly consistent with other research. It's simply the difference between "linked with" and "guaranteed to cause," and keeping that line clear is part of reading science honestly.
If the type of activity is one piece of the puzzle, a natural next question is how much of it to aim for. A later analysis of the same Copenhagen cohort offers a helpful clue. As reported in 2021, the relationship between weekly sports time and mortality formed a U-shape: the lowest risk of death showed up at roughly 2.6 to 4.5 hours of leisure-time sport per week.
What's interesting is that both ends of the curve looked less favorable. People doing no sport had higher mortality risk, which is no surprise. But so did people logging very high volumes — more than about 10 hours a week. This doesn't mean intense training is harmful for everyone, and athletes shouldn't read too much into a single observational finding. It's a gentle reminder that, for general health, more isn't automatically better, and a moderate, sustainable habit may be the comfortable middle ground for many people.
These figures also line up nicely with broader public health advice. The federal Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommend that adults aim for at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity each week, or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous activity, plus muscle-strengthening work on two or more days. The encouraging news is that a few rounds of tennis, a couple of pickup soccer games, or some laps at the pool can count toward those totals.
If carving out several hours a week feels daunting, you don't have to find it all at once. Many people find that a single weekly game with friends, plus a couple of shorter sessions, adds up faster than they expect — and feels less like a chore when there's someone on the other side of the net.
So what do you do with all of this? Rather than treating the ranking as a to-do list, it may be more useful as a lens. The thread running through the longest-lived group wasn't a single perfect sport — it was activity that people enjoyed enough to keep doing, often in the company of others.
That opens up a lot of options. If you've been grinding away solo and finding it hard to stay motivated, you might experiment with something that builds in other people: a recreational tennis or pickleball ladder, a weekend soccer league, a swim class, or even a regular walking date with a friend. None of these is the "right" answer, and the gym certainly hasn't been ruled out — it still outperformed sitting still. The point is simply that pairing movement with connection seems to be a powerful combination, and it's one you can lean into in whatever form appeals to you.
It also helps to remember the bigger picture behind all these numbers. Across study after study, leisure-time physical activity of almost any kind is associated with living longer than being inactive. The differences between sports are fascinating, but they sit on top of a much larger and more reassuring truth: the most important step is moving at all. People with arthritis, heart disease, balance concerns, or other medical conditions may benefit from different forms of activity, and a healthcare professional can help determine which options are safest and most appropriate. From there, choosing something social and sustainable may simply make the habit easier — and more enjoyable — to keep.
Maybe that means dusting off a racket you haven't touched in years. Maybe it means texting a friend to set a standing date at the pool. Whatever shape it takes, the most durable activity is the one you'll still be doing next month, next year, and a decade from now. On that front, the research and plain common sense happen to agree.
About the Author
Angela Nightingale is a Senior Editor at Daily Vitality with over two decades of experience in digital publishing and health and wellness content. She specializes in turning complex, often-confusing health topics into clear, calm, and practical guidance that respects the reader's intelligence. Her work focuses on helping people feel informed and confident — never overwhelmed or alarmed — as they make everyday decisions about how they eat, move, rest, and age.
Tennis topped the ranking. It was associated with about 9.7 additional years of life expectancy compared with a sedentary group — the largest gain of any activity in the study.
The researchers noticed that the top sports — tennis, badminton, and soccer — all involve a partner or team, and therefore regular social interaction. The ranking held even after they accounted for how much time people spent exercising, which suggests the social and contextual side of these activities, not just the physical exertion, may play a role.
No. This was an observational study, so it shows a population-level association, not a personal guarantee. People who play tennis may differ in other ways, such as income, access, or baseline health, that the study couldn't fully account for. The figures describe groups over time, not what will happen to any single person.
The analysis followed 8,577 adults from the Copenhagen City Heart Study for up to 25 years, with baseline interviews between 1991 and 1994 and follow-up continuing through March 2017.
Not at all. Health-club activities ranked lowest among the eight sports, but they were still associated with about 1.5 more years of life than being sedentary. Every activity studied was linked to a longer life than doing nothing.
The eight activities with enough data for reliable estimates were tennis, badminton, soccer, cycling, swimming, jogging, calisthenics, and health-club activities. The researchers also collected information on other sports, such as handball and weightlifting, but those didn't have enough participants for separate life-expectancy estimates.
A 2021 analysis of the same cohort found the lowest mortality risk at roughly 2.6 to 4.5 hours of leisure-time sport per week. Both very low and very high amounts (more than about 10 hours weekly) were tied to higher risk, suggesting a moderate, sustainable habit may be a comfortable target for general health.
It aligns well. U.S. guidelines suggest at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate activity or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous activity each week, plus muscle-strengthening work twice a week. Sports like tennis, soccer, and swimming can count toward those weekly totals.
Broadly, yes. A separate study of more than 80,000 adults in England and Scotland also linked racket sports and swimming to lower rates of death from any cause and from cardiovascular disease, echoing the Copenhagen pattern in a different population.
