They're talking from a North American perspective (probably). In most of Europe, there are plenty of outdoor and other free exercise opportunity. Another downside of the incorrect build environment (poor city planning) is that Americans simply don't have built-in ways to move their bodies. When I spent time in Eastern Europe, there was literally a free tennis/basketball court across the street. And a variety of other courts, including outdoor gym. And when house sitting around, there was nearly always an outdoor park with greenspace for strolling, exercise. All free.
At least in all of the US suburbs I've lived, there's been free tennis courts and a variety of other courts all over the city. The high school down the street from me has 4 tennis courts. I hear them being used all the time when I'm on a walk (incidentally, along a greenway with a shared use walking/bike trail that wraps around the school grounds and connects via a tunnel under a highway to the rest of the city bike trail system).
Well, while we're talking about anecdotes, my neighborhood in a poor Texas town also had a free tennis court. There were a couple more down the road. My in-laws suburb has walking trails end basketball courts.
Grew up in a very poor town in Arkansas. Had a public tennis court literally next door. In the 80s, the tennis court saw frequent use. People would get mad when they lost a match or whatever and hit the balls into our yard.
My grandmother would go collect them, and we always had a basket full of balls by the door.
By the early 2000s, people stopped using the tennis court very often, and the city tore down the chain link fence around the court to use as overflow parking for the adjacent little league fields.
I think the catch is, Americans have to spend so much time driving for ADLs (activities of daily living) that there is no time to walk over to the local court (if there is one, usually there is not). This is due to the sprawl Ponzi scheme (which spreads everything out). It's also the primary cause behind America's mental health crises (lack of 3rd places, everyone is isolated). And yeah, I'm not talking SF or NYC, but 90% of the rest of the country.
That is false for every american I know. Driving means less time than transit users in every study I've seen - that time is of course more stressful but we spend less time commuting and thus have more time. Working hours can be longer but for many it isn't much longer.
There are a lot of couch potatoes that don't use their time, but they have it.
It always blows my mind when I see how many subscribers Netflix has. Americans are so busy driving and working that they don't have time to do anything (cook, grocery shop, exercise, etc.). How are 90M households finding the time to watch movies or binge on TV shows?
> It always blows my mind when I see how many subscribers Netflix has.
Not sure how they count, but for example I have a "free" netflix subscription through a tmobile phone plan. So it's easy to pump the numbers. I only watch like one episode of something every other year on netflix, so not exactly a real user of it.
Maybe they're not actually watching it. I have read that the content guidance recommends that media produced for Netflix et al. have the action described auditorially as well as visually, so people can follow the plot without actually looking at the screen.
> Driving means less time than transit users in every study I’ve seen […] we spend less time commuting and thus have more time
Transit is indeed slower, but there are several big assumptions in there that don’t support your conclusion. In the US, only 15% of trips are commuting to work, the majority of trips are shopping, errands, and leisure. People with cars make more trips than transit users, and go out of their way for shopping, errands, and leisure more often, because they can, because it’s “faster” than transit. Driving commuters tend to drive to lunch, while transit commuters tend to bring one or walk. Transit users can sometimes get things done that can’t be done while driving, which can in some cases more than negate the added travel time. I think that’s a minority of transit users, but I spent a couple years commuting by train and working on the train, and I saved a considerable amount of time compared to driving. Because a lot of people spend this “more time” they saved commuting doing more driving for things other than work, drivers don’t actually have more time in practice.
For the purposes of this discussion there is more time to exercise.
Yes transit uses in practice get more, but it is incidental and lower quality exercise than someone who uses their extra time on a well developed gym plan. (There are of courseetransit users with a well developed gym plan)
How so? Both are great but as someone who got light exercise several times a week (bike commuting) it has still been really beneficial to add resistance training.
You are an outlier, majority of Americans live in suburbia with a significant commute. And that sounds like a sweet setup. Mind if I ask where you live? Medium or small sized town?
The average US commute is less than 30 minutes, people aren't spending all that much time. And with a 30 minute commute, they are likely doing the same thing I am, passing by stores that are reasonable for many of their needs.
If you live in a place with inexpensive land, tennis infrastructure is relatively cheap. If you live in a dense city where space is at a premium, that’s when it gets relatively expensive.
Non-athletic adults can't do anything consistently. Which sports do you think are easier? Certainly not baseball or American football. Perhaps soccer, but only because soccer is more generous about inconsistency: play doesn't stop if you lose the ball or kick it inaccurately, as long as it doesn't go out of bounds. On the other hand, non-athletic adults are going to tire very quickly constantly running around the field with no stoppage.
Soccer you play even if you badly, because the ball is on the ground, but playing soccer well is very hard.
Tennis you can't play truly badly since the ball is in the air, so there's a skill floor, probably not too dissimilar from the skill floor required to play baseball.
Some sports that have a lower skill floor than tennis are table tennis, pickeball, badminton, association football and ice hockey. The thing to understand is that it's not about fitness, it's the skill floor. It's that the beginner will miss the ball or not be able to control it.
> probably not too dissimilar from the skill floor required to play baseball
I think baseball requires significantly more coordination than tennis.
Moreover, baseball (as opposed to just playing catch with a baseball) requires two whole teams, whereas tennis can be played with only two people.
> ice hockey
[John McEnroe voice] You cannot be serious
Ice skating by itself is difficult for beginners. They fall all over the place. Ice skating while trying to follow and control a moving puck is even more difficult.
> it's not about fitness
Ok, but in the current context, the ROI of exercise, it's all about fitness. What's the fitness ROI from table tennis or badminton? Even pickleball tends to be less exercise than standard singles tennis. And in baseball too, there's a lot of standing around and sitting (when your team is at bat). I would say that in terms of exercise, singles tennis has one of the best ROI. (Doubles not so much.)
I played ice hockey with the other children in my ordinary Swedish elementary school class. It went fine. The puck is mostly on the ice, so you can struggle over getting it and shooting at the goal. Those who actually played ice hockey obviously had a major advantage, but the others were able to play.
In the current context fitness matters, that wasn't the context of my statement about what makes tennis hard: what makes tennis hard isn't fitness. It's that people can't control a ball with a racket that actually keeps the energy in the ball.
In any case, the debate between hockey and tennis is largely moot, because the availability of ice skating rinks is vastly more limited than tennis courts, even in Minnesota and Wisconsin, though I can't speak for Sweden.
Tradition, mostly. Tennis is seen as an upper class sport and prices will be set accordingly, it is not the case everywhere though.
Another reason is that a tennis court takes significant space for just 2 (or 4) people. So unless it is subsidized, when land is at a premium like in a large city, it is going to be expensive.
It depends. In suburban areas there are free courts generally available at parks and schools. Rural areas don't have many options. Urban areas have fewer free options that tend to be crowded. Balls are the next largest cost since they are expendable - get lost, go dead, etc. Historically these were much larger costs due to manufacturing and construction differences. My guess is that a lot of this is generational carryover as the free courts are generally newer (1980s+) and the carryrover where well of players from prior generations mostly inspired their kids to follow suit.
Tennis requires a certain proficiency to have fun with. Beginners tend to have trouble getting the ball reliably across the net onto the other player. This proficiency takes time to build. Thus, unless one makes a big up-front time investment, tennis is not particularly good exercise. Up-front time investments are expensive.
Also one cannot tennis alone. Anything one must practise with a partner is more expensive due to scheduling requirements.
The OP was talking about monetary wealth. Here you're redefining "expensive" to mean something other than wealth, i.e., time.
Also, the whole point of the submitted article is that the investment of time into exercise is totally worth it.
Yes, there's a learning curve to tennis, as with any sport. You could just go jogging/running by yourself, but the advantage of sports, including tennis, is that they're usually a more fun and less boring form of exercise than jogging/running by yourself. If exercise is fun, then you're more likely to stick to it rather than skipping it.
> They just said wealthy people have more freedom on schedule that non wealthy people.
I'm not sure that's true though, unless by "wealthy" you mean trust fund kids. But there are millions of tennis players of various levels of income. A lot of salaried workers in upper income brackets work more than the usual 40 hour week, have less free time.
Since I've been a child, living in multiple countries across Europe and Asia, there's always been either free or cheap tennis courts near me. I don't even play tennis much and I know this, I'm sure if I was searching I'd find way more low cost options.
It's more likely that the demographic who play tennis tends to be wealthy, rather than the sport itself being expensive.
