Pickleball is quickly gaining in popularity across the United States. There’s no denying that playing a sport of any kind can help improve your health, but is trading your tennis racket for a kickball one a better move? Apple decided it wanted to find out.
Researchers from the Apple Heart and Movement Study took a look at data from Apple Watch users in an attempt to learn how the game compares to the game of tennis as well as how it impacts a player’s overall health.
Overall the study found that participants often play both sports for long periods, averaging a peak heart rate of 70% their estimated max heart rate during their recorded workouts on the Watch. Pickleball players tend to spend slightly longer playing than their tennis player counterparts, 90 minutes versus 80 minutes; however, tennis workouts typically resulted in more time spent in higher-intensity heart rate zones as well as a higher average peak heart rate, 152 betas per minute versus 143 beats per minute.
Pickleball, in general, has risen to a point where it’s a bit more popular to play than tennis for Apple Watch wearers. Utah in particular recorded the most pickleball workouts per capita.
“The Apple Heart and Movement Study offers us remarkable opportunities to follow participants’ behavior changes and the consequences of these changes on health,” said Calum MacRae, M.D., Ph.D., a cardiologist, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and principal investigator of the Apple Heart and Movement Study at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “Following the growth of pickleball using Apple Watch data allows us to explore emerging trends and the effects of activity on multiple metrics of health and wellness that were not accessible before.”
As for who was doing the playing, the study found that both sports are popular across different ages and both tended to be slightly more popular with men rather than women. On average, the players who logged at least 10 pickleball workouts also tended to be a bit older than their tennis-playing counterparts. The average pickleball player was 51 versus the average tennis player who was 45.
The Apple Heart and Movement Study, is a collaboration between Apple and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the American Heart Association. The study explores the links between physical activity and heart health and collects data from more than 200,000 participants across the United States all of which have given their consent to share data from their Apple Watch as part of the study.
