The Benefits of Playing Sports
Playing sports is something most of us love. Undoubtedly, sports are a fun activity but they offer several health benefits too. Playing some sport regularly goes a long way in maintaining your physical and mental well-being. Sports help enhance your personality. They are a good source of both exercise and entertainment.
Sports serve as an excellent physical exercise. Those who play sports have a more positive body image than those who do not. Sports often involve physical activities like running, jumping, stretching and moving about which turn out to be a good body workout. Playing sports is energy put to good use. Engaging in sports since an early age strengthens your bones and muscles and tones your body. It helps you increase your stamina and endurance. Sports that involve jumping and stretching help strengthen the arms and legs; for example soccer and cricket. Swimming provides a full body workout. Thus sports provide the body with complete exercise and engaging in sports directly translates into overall fitness.
Research shows that sports improve Math skills in children. Sports that involve aiming and hitting skills, for example, tennis, badminton, baseball and cricket help them increase focus. They help develop leadership qualities and foster team spirit in kids. They involve competition; they involve winning and losing. This exposes children to both aspects of life, successes and failures. Sports build a competitive spirit in children and teach them to be participative irrespective of whether the result is victory or defeat. Playing sports teaches them to accept both successes and failures with a positive spirit. Sports inculcate. Sports help you become more sporting, more positive and stronger.
Playing sports is very beneficial for the development of social skills. Sports teach you to interact with people, communicate with them and collaborate as a team. Sports foster collective thinking and harness your planning and delegation skills too. Sports build confidence. Winning a game gives you a sense of accomplishment, which boosts your confidence further.
Playing sports involves directed thinking. It requires you to strategize. You need to devise ways to score goals, runs or earn points, as the case may be. You need to devise strategies to win, you need to decide whether to take an offensive stand or a defensive one. You need to judge your opponent’s strategy and modify yours accordingly. This definitely involves clever thinking, which sports encourage. Studies show that kids who play sports regularly fare well in academics and do well in school.
Sports make you happy. I know anyone would agree with this. Jumping about, running around, racing to get ahead, hitting, throwing, bouncing, kicking, shouting, clapping, cheering, falling and standing up again… all a part of playing sports. And there is no match to the happiness this brings. They give you the high by increasing the production of endorphins in the brain. In other