As a sport, tennis undeniably has some great health benefits. But how does tennis improve your mental health?

Most sports are associated with physical benefits rather than mental ones, but plenty of sports, including tennis, are great for your mental health as well!

Tennis requires a high level of physical and mental involvement, which makes it an excellent sport for mental health. It helps with things like an improvement in mood to reduce stress and even better thinking skills!

In fact, while all sports do improve mental conditions, tennis may be one of the sports that has the most mental benefit to offer players.

We looked into how playing tennis helps support mental health and what benefits it provides, given the requirements of the game itself.

Mental Health Benefits From Playing Tennis

Improved Mood

Exercise in general provides psychological benefits due to the release of endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine. Because of the physical exercise you get from playing tennis, the chemicals released result in an elevated mood. In some cases, with the focus of the game being to defeat your opponent, playing tennis can become an outlet of sorts for problems like anxiety and depression.

Developing Problem Solving Skills

Tennis is a game that requires problem-solving and quick thinking. Every shot you hit is a response to your opponents’ thinking, which is why you have to be very careful and strategic about playing tennis. It also requires you to develop a very fast understanding of how your opponents play and make your shots accordingly. Playing regular tennis will develop your problem-solving skills and help you with your daily life as well.

Improved Self Esteem

Any kind of exercise will help make your body stronger and more developed, and the same is true for tennis. With regular exercise, your body image improves, which helps with strengthening your self-esteem as well.

In fact, by playing tennis consistently, your balance and coordination also increase, as do your speed and flexibility. This results in a better game as time passes, and thus your self-confidence and self-esteem improve even further.

Mental Resilience

Tennis is not about more scores = wins. In fact, in tennis, you can have a higher score than your opponent and still lose!

This means that you have to be very prepared for the idea of a loss, and be very capable of dealing with losses. In fact, with tennis, learning from your mistakes and understanding where you went wrong without letting the loss get you down is practically crucial.

Of course, this is also true of other aspects of life. While it’s difficult to develop such resilience in regular life, tennis helps with overcoming the fear of failure and becoming much more capable of handling losses and downfalls. This mental resilience helps avoid problems like depression and low self esteem as well, and makes you a much happier and stable person in your day-to-day life.

Socializing

Tennis is a social game – you can’t play it alone! It’s a great way to meet new people and have fun. Whether you’re doing it at a neighborhood game or the local tennis club, simply playing the game is a great way to increase your social circle.

Human beings inherently crave connections, and having something to bond over and share the competitive spirit will help with adding to the enjoyment and ultimately result in strong relationships with your peers.  With the support of the community and people around you, you are less likely to feel lonely, and will have people to lift your spirits if you do end up feeling down.

Accomplishments

Nothing helps with improving your mood than a win! When playing tennis, even if you’re not winning the game, you are sure to feel accomplished because of how difficult the game really is. In fact, simply knowing how to play tennis is an accomplishment in itself.

That also means that winning at tennis is even better, and makes you feel even more accomplished! This also ties in with the idea of self-confidence and esteem: by feeling that accomplishment, you will feel better about yourself, and this will ultimately translate into other aspects of life as well.

Focus & Self Control

Tennis involves a lot of problem solving and thinking about your opponents – we’ve covered this already. At the same time, it also makes you focus and think about yourself. To play tennis effectively, you have to think carefully about what you can and can’t do, and test your physical limits accordingly.

This is also a great skill to have in daily life. Many of us are constantly being caught up in things that are out of our control, or berating ourselves for not doing ‘well enough’. Playing tennis helps reduce these burdensome expectations we have of ourselves, since it helps you understand your own limits and act accordingly.

With tennis, because your game would consist of you doing your best while the opponent also does their best, you’re better able to appreciate the efforts put in by both parties, and then translate this skill to daily life. With improved focus and control, you will not let yourself get let down by things that can’t be changed.

Tennis comes with a whole host of benefits for mental health and cognition. As a sport, there is likely no other game out there that provides as much mental benefit as tennis does.