Benefits of Sports
You know and hear it everywhere, sports are good for health and fitness. It allows you to maintain the body, remove stress and feel better. In terms of personal development, the benefits of exercise affect both your body and your mind. The benefits of exercise are also shown in developing your mental health. In fact, sports are good for your brain. It allows you to know yourself better, fight your fears or achieve your goals.
How playing a sport can improve your Physical Health
Being physically active brings you many benefits.Sport helps you in particular to lose weight, to strengthen your bones and your cardiovascular capacities. In addition, it strengthens your motor skills. It strengthens your coordination and flexibility. Sport also allows you to improve the functioning of your brain, reduce your stress and improve the quality of your sleep. On a daily basis, it offers you a better posture. This helps you perform everyday tasks more easily and increases your sense of well-being. It is also important to note that it strengthens your immune system, which prevents excessive consumption of drugs, which are bad for your body in the long term.
How playing a sport can improve your Mental Health
Physical activity positively affects your mind and mental health. At the end of your session, you feel optimistic and relaxed. Physical activity improves creativity and helps find solutions to various everyday problems more quickly. Even walking is said to increase a person’s creativity by 60%. In addition, it has been shown that in their social and professional life, athletes are more creative, dynamic and sincere. There are many benefits of exercise :
1. Sport improves your self-confidence
Sport and physical activity improves self-esteem and self-confidence. The energy and vigor gained from physical activity helps you perform everyday tasks more easily.
2. Sport helps you achieve your goals
Sport contributes to goal setting and improves the level of performance in other areas of life. It helps you know what you want and get it. In fact, sport is complete, it appeals to your 5 senses, your muscles, your vital organs and your nerve connections, in particular.
3. Sport is a source of motivation
When you choose to practice a sport, you create motivation within yourself. This motivation will help you in particular to maintain good health, lose weight, compete. There are therefore objectives that arise from sports practice as well as motivation.
4. Sport improves concentration
Sport maintains your mental skills as you age. Studies show that combining endurance activities and muscle building is especially helpful. Sport also delays memory loss due to age, caused by the shrinkage of the hippocampus (part of the brain concerning memory, its name comes from its shape which resembles that of a sea animal’s hippocampus) . This is because moving stimulates this area to produce neurons, which delays memory loss. In addition, sport trains your mind to think calmly and find new strategies to solve your problems.
5. Sport reduces stress and depression
When you are physically active, you no longer think about the stressful aspects of your life. Sport stimulates the production of endorphin (pleasure hormone and natural anti-stress), which makes you happier and more relaxed. Before consuming chemical drugs to fight against anxiety or depression, think about adopting a healthy behavior and lifestyle by playing sports regularly.
6. Sport develops your leadership skills
Team sports allow you to train, win and lose as a team. You thus adopt a team mentality at work as well as in your friendly relations. Team spirit leads to strong leadership qualities over time. Sport therefore brings positive energy into your life and refreshes the mind, helping you to see life in a positive light. As you train, you see your progress and it boosts your self-confidence. This allows you, in your everyday life, to put things into perspective and move forward more serenely in your projects.
7. Prevention of Cardiovascular Diseases
It’s a fact, exercise reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease. Regular exercise directly fights atherosclerosis, strengthens the heart muscle and makes the blood more fluid, which prevents the formation of clots. Exercise also protects us from obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, which are risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
8. Protection from certain types of cancers
For many years, there has been a link between physical exercise and cancer prevention. According to some studies, active people are less likely to get cancer than those who are sedentary. Research has shown that physical activity protects against colon cancer and may reduce the risk of breast, ovarian, endometrial, prostate and lung cancer.
9. Sleep improvement
According to some studies, exercise promotes better sleep. It causes physical fatigue and brings mental relaxation providing a more restorative rest. Cardiovascular exercises are the most effective in increasing the quality of slow-wave sleep, the most important phase for physical recovery.
10. Weight Control
Physical activity is a great way to control weight and even lose it! The ideal is to combine cardiovascular exercises and strength training exercises. The former significantly increase caloric expenditure during exercise and stimulate the metabolism in the hours that follow. The latter increase muscle mass, which results in a permanent improvement in basal metabolism and, consequently, in a greater general caloric expenditure.
