GTA 5 Hobbies and Activities: Golf, Tennis, Yoga, and More
GTA 5 is packed with optional hobbies, from golf and tennis to yoga and the triathlon, and many of them count toward 100% or improve your stats. Here is every activity, what it does, and which protagonist to use.
Between heists, GTA 5 has a surprisingly deep set of optional hobbies and pastimes. They are not just filler: 42 of the 59 hobbies count toward 100% completion, and several quietly raise your stats or your character's mood. Here is the full menu and what each one is good for.
The sports
- Golf. A genuinely full 9-hole game at the Los Santos Golf Club, complete with realistic swing controls. Winning a round counts toward 100%.
- Tennis. A complete tennis minigame you can play at courts and at the protagonists' homes. Winning a match counts toward completion, and it is one of the better ways to burn time.
- Darts. A pub game with proper 501 rules. Win once for the checklist.
- Arm wrestling. A timing-based contest in the Enhanced edition.
Fitness and endurance
- The Triathlons. Three races of increasing length (Vespucci Canals, Alamo Sea, and the brutal Coastal) that test stamina. All three are required for 100% and they noticeably build your strength and stamina stats.
- Yoga. A set of timed pose inputs, mainly Michael's thing in the story, that boosts mood and counts toward the checklist.
- Cycling. Riding bikes raises your strength and stamina over time, the same way it does in San Andreas-style stat systems.
Air, sea, and range
- Flight School at the airport teaches takeoffs, landings and aerobatics across a series of lessons; completing it sharpens your flying and is part of 100%.
- Parachute Jumps are a set of base-jumps from fixed points around the map, each one a completion tick.
- The Shooting Range at Ammu-Nation runs challenges that improve your shooting stat and unlock discounts.
- Scuba diving and the submarine open up the ocean floor, where the Nuclear Waste collectibles hide.
Why bother
Two reasons. First, 100% completion needs 42 of these, so you cannot skip them all. Second, several build permanent stats: the triathlons and cycling raise stamina and strength, the shooting range raises your weapon skill, and flight school makes aircraft far easier to handle. Beyond that, the minigames (golf and tennis especially) are polished enough to be genuinely fun palate-cleansers between missions.
A practical plan
Knock out the three triathlons early for the stamina boost, win each minigame once (golf, tennis, darts) for the checklist, clear flight school and the parachute jumps in a batch, and run the shooting range challenges while you are buying weapons anyway. Do that and you will have most of the 42 required hobbies without ever feeling like you are grinding.
