+9.7y
Racquet sports associated with up to 9.7 added years of life expectancy compared to sedentary adults in a 25-year study following 8,577 Danish adults.
A Pickleball Longevity Protocol
Play for the decades. Not the seasons.
Racquet sports sit at the top of the leisure-sport longevity research, associated, in long observational cohorts, with up to 9.7 added years of life expectancy. The Long Game is the protocol that keeps you collecting on that dividend, season after season, into your 80s.
+9.7y
Life expectancy gained
Schnohr et al., Mayo Clinic Proc. 2018
−47%
All-cause mortality
Oja et al., BJSM 2017 · n=80,306
−27%
Cardiovascular mortality
Oja et al., BJSM 2017
Observational findings from large racquet-sport cohorts. The numbers are strong associations, not guarantees. See the evidence below.
Meet Dr. Joe
I learned longevity on the shortest careers in sport.
I'm Joe Krzemien. For 13 seasons I treated the Atlanta Falcons. I'm in my 10th season with the Atlanta Dream. I was inducted into the Professional Football Chiropractic Society Hall of Fame in 2025. The same recovery system I bring to a starting quarterback is the one in this protocol.
Beyond the sidelines
Twenty-three years of practice across professional sports, entertainment, and on-set production care.
- ·Film & television actors
- ·Producers & directors
- ·Touring musicians
- ·Pro athletes, multi-league
- ·On-set film & TV care
- ·Public figures · executives
13
Seasons · Falcons
HOF
PFCS · 2025
Active
Atlanta Dream · 10 Seasons
D.C.
Sports Chiropractic
The Case
Most protocols are built for seasons.
Most protocols are built for seasons.
TLG is built for decades.
9.7
Years of Gained Life Expectancy
Most sports medicine treats the body reactively, episode by episode. The Long Game treats it as a compound-interest asset. In the 25-year Copenhagen City Heart Study (Schnohr et al., Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2018), racquet sports were associated with the largest survival advantage of the eight sports compared, an estimated 9.7 added years of life expectancy versus sedentary adults. The study was observational, and the tennis subgroup was small. Treat the number as a strong association, not a guarantee.
What appears to drive the association is the combination racquet play has and the other sports do not: moderate-intensity intervals, rotational and reaching movement, and the social structure of repeated doubles play. Solitary conditioning shows smaller associations in the same data. The mechanism is plausible. It is not proven.
A separate British cohort of 80,306 adults (Oja et al., BJSM, 2017) followed for nine years found racquet sports associated with a 47% lower all-cause mortality risk and a 56% lower cardiovascular mortality risk. Separate teams, separate countries, separate decades, pointing in the same direction. The case is cumulative.
"If you play court sports, you have already activated the longevity promise. But you only collect those compound years if you protect your joint architecture."
Dr. Joe Krzemien, PFCS Hall of Fame
The Evidence Hub
-47%
Racquet sport players associated with a 47% lower all-cause mortality risk across 80,306 British adults over a nine-year period.
-27%
The largest cardiovascular mortality reduction of any sport studied, across 272,550 older adults. The strongest single replication.
+50%
Strong social relationships are associated with a 50% higher likelihood of survival across 148 studies. Pickleball is built on repeat social contact: doubles play, mixed groups, low barrier to entry. The social structure is the pattern these findings keep pointing at.
18×
Pickleball ER visits rose 18x from 2014 to 2023, concentrated in adults 60 to 79, the demographic with the largest longevity dividend to lose.
-43%
Targeted hip-strength and change-of-direction training was associated with senior pickleball falls dropping from around 44% to around 25% in an early cohort. A small study, but the broader older-adult falls-prevention evidence points the same way.
The studies cited are observational, showing clinical association rather than direct proof of causation. Longevity benefits for pickleball are inferred from generalized racquet sport studies. This protocol is general athletic conditioning support, not specific clinical medical advice.
Three time horizons. One protocol.
Built for the players who plan to keep playing. Not a series of appointments, but a structure that runs on three layers of time.
Horizon I
Daily · 5 min
The five minutes that decide your fifties.
The morning joint routine, the real warmup, and the ten-minute post-play tail. Five to fifteen minutes a day, most days. The layer that decides whether tomorrow's body shows up to play.
- Ankle, hip, mid-back, shoulder mobility
- The pre-play warmup and the post-play tail
- Sleep, hydration, protein
Horizon II
Weekly · 2 sessions
The work that absorbs the fall.
Two, ideally three, short strength sessions a week. Posterior chain, single-leg control, hip strength, keeping some power. And the check-ins that catch a drift before it becomes an injury.
- Hip and single-leg strength
- Posterior chain, rotator cuff, scapula
- Weekly check-in and trend
Horizon III
Annual · 1 deep visit
The look that catches it early.
A thorough movement and capacity assessment, once a year, that catches what daily and weekly attention cannot. The output is a twelve-month plan built for your body.
- Full movement and capacity assessment
- Asymmetry and range-of-motion mapping
- A custom twelve-month protocol
Find your stage
Where are you on the curve?
Slide your age. The protocol is the same. The priority shifts.
Each stage above maps to its own protocol block in the book. See The Book.
The Pedigree
Where the protocol was learned.
Dr. Joseph Krzemien, D.C.
Twenty-three years on the shortest careers in sport. He learned longevity by watching, very closely, exactly how an athletic career ends. The same recovery system he brings to a quarterback is the one he now brings to the recreational player who plans to keep playing for decades.
2025
The Recognition
PFCS Hall of Fame.
Inducted into the Professional Football Chiropractic Society Hall of Fame, recognizing a career spent inside professional football, where careers are famously brief, that shaped a long preoccupation with athletic longevity.
2021→
Active · WNBA
Atlanta Dream.
Ten seasons as team chiropractor for the Atlanta Dream of the WNBA, working alongside the medical and training staff to keep players available across a long, demanding season.
13 seasons
Where it was learned · NFL
Atlanta Falcons.
Thirteen NFL seasons as a team chiropractor for the Atlanta Falcons, supporting quarterbacks, skill position players, and linemen through long, demanding seasons in a sport where careers are famously brief.
The longevity roadmap in print.
COMING SUMMER 2026
Join the Book & Pre-Order Waitlist
The complete protocol, between two covers.
Everything on this page, the case, the science, the three-horizon system, and the age-banded work, is the protocol written down. The full book follows it from the longevity case through the first thirty days on the court.
A field guide from Dr. Joe Krzemien, built on the same recovery system he brings to professional athletes, and on the science behind why racquet sport may be the most powerful longevity tool you own.
Inside the book
A prescription, not a pep talk. Every Lifespan Stage in the book ships with its own protocol: the morning routine, the strength block, the recovery tail, the on-court warmup. Fitted by stage. Written by Dr. Krzemien.
The longevity case for racquet sport. The Copenhagen data, the British cohort, the older-adult replication. Why pickleball plausibly sits inside the longevity dividend, and why staying on the court is the only way to collect it.
The protocol, in three time horizons. Daily: the morning routine, the warmup, the post-play tail, the substrate. Weekly: the two to three strength sessions, the structured week, the check-in. Annual: the deep assessment that turns general guidance into a plan built for your body.
The four breakdowns that take pickleball players off the court most often: the elbow, the shoulder, the lower leg, and the fall. What each one really is, and how the system defends each before it arrives.
The first thirty days. The on-ramp that turns the protocol from something you have read into something you do. And the long view: what twenty years on the court actually looks like, and what it asks of you.
Reach Dr. Joe
Reserve The Long Game, book a speaking engagement, request a podcast appearance, or open a partnership. Goes straight to Joe's inbox.
Your message is in Joe's inbox.
Joe handles his own correspondence between clinic days and court time, so expect a real reply within a few days, not an autoresponder.