Why Tennis Might Be the Best Thing You Can Do for Your Brain

And the 90-second ritual I run before I step onto the court.

Four-all in the third set. Double or nothing.

My buddy Amir and I had just gotten back from a guys' trip up the coast, wine country near Los Olivos and San Luis Obispo, and I owed him for one of the dinners. It wasn't much money, but somewhere between the drive home and our next hit at Vermont Canyon, our home court, 'I'll get you back' turned into 'let's play for it.' Double or nothing. Loser eats the dinner and the L. It was never really about the cash. It was the principle, and the principle made both of us dial all the way in.

We were both playing some of our best tennis so far this year. And right on cue, late in the match, I felt it start to slip. That familiar tightening. The voice in my head doing the thing it always does, running the math on losing before the point has even started.

This is the moment that actually decides tennis matches. Not the serve, not the forehand. It's the half-second where your brain either tightens up or stays loose enough to make a clean decision. I eventually won that day, and I won it for one reason: I kept my head quiet when it counted. The tennis was already there. The composure is what I had to go find.

I've come to believe that little half-second, the quiet head under pressure, is the whole game. And it's a big part of why I do what I do at First Person.

I came to obsess about the game the long way around

I grew up playing most of the big team sports through elementary and high school: soccer, basketball, baseball, and golf. Tennis was in the mix too, but only really recreationally. With all those other sports going, I never prioritized it, and I didn't even try out for the high school team. I was good enough to stay competitive on my own, so every now and then I'd fill in when they were short a player. Tennis was always there in the background, just never the main thing.

Then last year I picked the racket back up, and the spark came back immediately. It took over in a big way. Now I play three or four times a week: league matches, clinics and lessons to keep sharpening, and competitive sets with people who won't give me an inch. I go until my body tells me to take a day off. I'm somewhere in the 4.0 to 5.0 range these days, competitive, and genuinely trying to get a little better every time out.

As I get farther from my high school athletic days, I needed a real outlet for my competitive side, for the athlete who never really left. What surprised me was everything else it did. I'm more productive at work, not less, because when I've blocked the court time for either 8 a.m. or 5 p.m. (maybe both, if I'm lucky), I find a way to get things done faster so I can actually get out there. The game doesn't take time away from my day. It sharpens it.

My wife thinks I've completely lost it, and honestly she's not wrong. When I'm not on a court, there's a good chance I'm watching one, breaking down a pro match like it's game film. Her official position is that I'm obsessed. Her unofficial position, I suspect, is that of all the things a guy my age could get obsessed with, one that leaves me sharper, calmer, and happier is probably the best she could have hoped for.

The longest-living athletes aren't who you'd guess

There's a study tennis players love to quote, and for good reason. The Copenhagen City Heart Study followed more than 8,500 people for up to 25 years and asked a simple question: which sports actually add years to your life?

The winner wasn't running. It wasn't cycling or the gym. It was tennis, associated with a roughly 9.7-year gain in life expectancy versus a sedentary lifestyle. Badminton and soccer followed. Jogging added about three years, and health-club workouts about 1.5.

So what do the sports at the top have in common? Every one of them needs a partner or an opponent. The researchers pointed straight at it: social interaction. The most life-extending exercise isn't the kind you do alone with headphones in. It's the kind where you're reading another human across a net, laughing about a net cord, and actually caring whether you win.

Tennis is a thinking sport pretending to be a workout

Here's the part that fascinates me as someone who is building a cognitive-performance company. Exercise science draws a line between 'closed-skill' and 'open-skill' sports, and it matters more for your brain than almost anything else about how you move.

Tennis is about as open-skill as it gets. Every ball is a new problem: spin, pace, depth, angle, where your opponent is recovering, what he did last time you were in this exact spot. You solve it in a few hundred milliseconds, reset, and do it again. Researchers studying open-skill athletes consistently find stronger executive function (the brain's control tower for working memory, cognitive flexibility, and impulse control), plus faster, sharper decisions under pressure and more activation in the frontal and parietal regions that drive attention.

Stack the layers and tennis is almost suspiciously well-designed for a healthy brain. It's aerobic, which raises BDNF, the closest thing we have to fertilizer for neurons. It's a relentless decision-making drill. And it's deeply social. Cardio, cognition, and connection in one sweaty package.

If you set out to build the perfect brain sport, you'd probably end up reinventing tennis.

The 90 seconds before I walk on

Knowing all of this is one thing. Playing your best in the moment that actually counts, with break point down, sun in your eyes, and the doubt creeping in, is another. That gap is where my pre-match ritual lives. It's two of our products, doing two very specific and very different jobs.

People are surprised that I'd take something calming before a competitive match. But the thing that wrecks my tennis at the big points isn't a lack of adrenaline. I've got plenty of that. It's the self-doubt, the tightening grip, the rushing. Think Fast turns the engine up. Golden Hour keeps the white-knuckle stress from grabbing the wheel. On a good day I walk on sharp and calm at the same time, which is exactly the state you want when the match is close and the doubt comes knocking.

The new friendships are the sneaky benefit

Here's something nobody tells you. Making real friends as an adult is hard. The normal channels are work and networking, and those move slowly. The court fast-forwards all of it. There's something about competing with and against someone for a couple of hours that builds a bond faster than any number of coffees.

A lot of mine have come through my coach, Claude, who runs competitive clinics out of a private home court we've all come to call the Chicken House, because there are actually chickens wandering the property right next to the court. It is not a fancy setup, but it's become one of my favorite places. Between the clinics there and matches at Vermont Canyon, I've met genuinely great, interesting people I never would have crossed paths with otherwise.

That's not a side note to the brain science. It is the brain science. The Copenhagen researchers put social connection at the center of the longevity effect for a reason. The friendships aren't the reward for showing up. They're a big part of why showing up works.

And now my kids are out there too

The best part of getting back into it: I've got my kids playing now, at least once a week, and they love it. Watching them work out the same puzzles I'm still working on, like reading the ball, moving their feet, and keeping their heads, might be the most fun I have on a court all week. My wife doesn't play, so honestly the kids are my only shot at having tennis partners on vacation. I'll take it. If the science is right and this is one of the best things a person can do for their brain over a lifetime, then teaching it early feels less like a hobby and more like something worth passing down.

Same thesis, different court

If you want to know why I do what I do at First Person, this is more or less it. The whole company is built on a simple belief: the way your brain shows up, sharp, calm, resilient, and aging well, is the thing everything else in your life runs on. Tennis is just the most fun laboratory I've found for testing that belief three or four times a week. It demands the exact qualities we build products to support, and it pays them back with a decade of life and a brain that stays quick.

So here's my actual recommendation, no products required: find an open-skill sport, with people you like, and a little something on the line. Tennis, pickleball, table tennis, squash, anything where you have to read another human and care about the outcome. Your heart, your head, and your social calendar will all thank you, and you'll probably have more fun than you've had at a gym in years.

As for me, I'll be back out there a few times this week. Break point down, sun in my eyes, trying to keep my head quiet when it counts.

Brain on.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. First Person products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. The pre-match routine described here reflects the author's personal experience; individual results will vary. This article is for informational purposes only and is not medical advice.