#77. Play Out, Don’t Work Out*

Play your way to a happy, healthy, and long life.

The author in his kayak

Dear friends,

Usually when I write about play it’s about children’s play, about how children learn and grow from play and how we as a society are harming children by depriving them of the play they need for physical, emotional, and intellectual well-being. But occasionally I’m invited to talk about adult play. A few years ago I spoke to a group of over-fifties who called themselves “Bloomers.” They wanted me to talk about the value of play especially for older adults. What follows is a modified form of a portion of that talk.

Physical exercise is good for us. We pretty much all know that. The evidence is overwhelming and well publicized. For a good summary, see the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services booklet, Physical activity guidelines for Americans, 2^nd edition. As documented there, increased physical activity lowers the risk for all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, many types of cancer, dementia (including Alzheimer’s disease), anxiety, depression, sleep problems, obesity, bone loss, bone breakage from falling, and many other things that none of us want. Here’s a simple way of thinking about it: Exercise builds the body—all parts of the body. Without exercise, the body atrophies. A considerable amount of research indicates a dose-response relationship between amount of physical exercise and health, such that the more physical exercise we get, the better our health, on average, will be. The recommended minimal level of 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise a week is much better than none, but more may be better yet (Berg, 2024).

The fact is, despite the well-publicized evidence that exercise is good for us, relatively few Americans exercise even the minimal recommended weekly amount of 150 minutes. There are many reasons for this, but my hunch is that the main reason is, as a society, we have come to think of exercise as work—as something unpleasant that we should do rather than want to do. We talk about working out. What a dispiriting concept. That concept is often reinforced, in the many articles advocating for more exercise, with pictures of people lifting weights, or operating exercise machines in a gym, or running around a track, or swimming back and forth in a pool. Tedious.

Tennis players live longer than joggers.

My suggestion here is that we change the term for exercise from working out to playing out. The only way most of us are going to exercise more than we do is if we come up with ways of exercising that we really enjoy—things that leave us wanting more rather than less.

Some years ago I came across a research study that examined the health benefits of various forms of exercise (here). It’s a prospective study, conducted in Copenhagen, that compared the life expectancies of people who engaged regularly in specific forms of physical activity during their leisure time. The major finding was that people who played tennis or badminton as their primary exercise had life expectancies on average 5 years longer than those who jogged and 7.5 years longer than those who worked out at a health club. Those who worked out at a health club lived, on average, only 1.5 years longer than those who by self-reports engaged in no regular exercise.

I can imagine various possible explanations of this finding, but the one that seems most likely is this. The tennis and badminton players got their exercise from doing something they loved to do. This was their play, so they did a lot of it. The joggers and the people exercising at a health club were, more often, doing something they experienced as work rather than as play. They were exercising because they knew it was good for them, not because they really wanted to. Our human nature, no surprise, is such that we engage much more often and for longer periods in activities we enjoy than in activities that we don’t. My guess is that the tennis and badminton players lived longer not because tennis and badminton provide better exercise, but because they simply spent more hours at their play than the joggers spent jogging or the health clubbers spent exercising at the club. Another factor is that happiness itself promotes longevity (here), and my bet is that the tennis and badminton players were happier than the joggers and weightlifters.

Playing out rather than working out improves mental health as well as physical health. Play, by definition, is something we like to do. It adds joy to life, and mental health is, to a considerable degree, the experience of joy. Play reduces depression and anxiety. A life without play, almost by definition, is a life of depression.

How I play out

I’m lucky. I’m by nature an outdoors person. (I don’t know how I ended up being a professor.) I’ve been playing outdoors my whole life, and as I get older (I’m now 81) I find that I have ever more time for such play. In Letter #76 I described vegetable gardening as a form of play that I enjoy and has been shown to increase longevity. I also enjoy bicycling, kayaking and swimming in the river behind my home, chopping wood for our wood stove, and, in winter, skiing on woodland trails within walking distance of my home (though sadly, with global warming, opportunities for that where I live in southern Massachusetts have declined). These are all forms of play for me. Combining all these and more, I average about 20 hours a week of moderate to vigorous exercise, all of it outdoors. That’s 8 times the recommended minimal amount. The discipline problem for me is not that of disciplining myself to exercise but disciplining myself not to spend all day at these enjoyable activities, so I can get some other things done that I consider useful.

If you haven’t been getting as much exercise as you would like, think about ways of playing that you enjoy and involve moderate to vigorous physical exercise. Ideally, these should be ways of playing that are readily available to you, that you don’t have to spent much or any money for or travel to get to, things that are convenient as well as fun so you can work them into your regular daily schedule. When I lived in a city, years ago, my most common forms of outdoor play were necessarily different than those I favor now in my semi-rural environment, but no less fun or health-promoting.

Further Thoughts

Of course, there is no way to guarantee a long life. We can eat well, exercise well, follow all the guidelines medical science has to offer, and still not live to a ripe old age. And then there are those who seem to break all the health rules and still live a long life. A lot depends on genes and unpredictable factors we can’t control, which we might as well call luck. The real reason to play has more to do with living a happy life than a long one.

I should also note, by way of qualification and for full disclosure, that, in addition to playing out, I do engage in a 20-minute indoor exercise routine every morning that is not play. It involves some stretching, crunches, and sometimes some weights, all aimed at keeping me limber and combating arthritis. That routine does require discipline. So, I confess, I do “work out” a little.

And now, what are your thoughts about and experiences with exercise? This substack is, in part, a forum for discussion. Your questions, stories, and experiences add to its value for everyone.

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With respect and best wishes,

Peter

• Note: This is an updated version of an essay I published a few years ago on my Psychology Today blog Free to Learn.