You probably know that exercise is good for you, but do you know whether you’re better off riding a bike or swimming laps in the pool?

Actually, if you want to get the biggest bang for your exercise buck, you should pick up a racket, new research reveals.

An analysis of more than 80,000 adults who were tracked for nearly a decade finds that those who played tennis, badminton or squash had the lowest risk of dying during the course of the study. Compared with people who didn’t play racket sports, those who did were 47 percent less likely to die of any cause and 56 percent less likely to die as a result of cardiovascular disease.

If these kinds of sports aren’t your racket, you could don a swimsuit and goggles. In the study, swimmers were 28 percent less likely to die for any reason and 41 percent less likely to die of cardiovascular disease than were people who stayed out of the water.

Another good alternative is to join an aerobics, Zumba or other type of active fitness class. Those who did were 27 percent less likely to die of any cause and 36 percent less likely to die of cardiovascular disease during the study period than those who didn’t.

The results, published recently in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, are based on data from 43,705 women and 36,601 men who participated in the Health Survey for England or the Scottish Health Survey. These volunteers, whose average age was 52, told interviewers how often they exercised, what type of exercise they did and how intense their workouts were.

Swimming was the most popular type of exercise, claimed by 13.4 percent of study volunteers. Cycling was second, with 9.9 percent of volunteers saying they rode a bike either outside or in an indoor exercise class. Aerobics-type classes were third (6.4 percent of people took them), followed by running or jogging (5 percent), racket sports (3.6 percent) and football or rubgy (3.1 percent). Overall, 44.3 percent of people met minimum recommendations for some kind of physical activity.

The study authors checked to see how many of the volunteers died in subsequent years, tracking them for an average of 9.2 years. Overall, 8,790 of the study participants died, including 1,909 who succumbed to cardiovascular disease.