How Does Playing Ping Pong Help Your Body?

Ping pong, or table tennis, is one of those sports that you can enjoy anywhere, whether outdoors or indoors. All you need is a table for ping pong, a lightweight ball, and a paddle, and you can start the game right away.

Aside from being a very flexible game, there are actually a lot of benefits associated with ping pong. For example, table tennis has been found to be a great cardiovascular activity that can make your heart stronger. This is primarily because this involves flexibility, agility, and balance.

But, the main fun of this game is made possible by the intense focus which challenges the human brain for functioning with exact precision. A research study in Japan showed that ping pong can trigger the highest level of activity in a person’s cerebellum and prefrontal cortex.

When you play table tennis, your brain needs to concentrate and focus, work out your spins, monitor the movements of the ball, then map out the shots using strategic hits simultaneously. Thanks to the fact that it has low risk, ping pong never fails to meet the needs of the players of various fitness levels or ages.

Some other health perks associated with playing ping pong on a regular basis include strengthened and toned core muscles, improved reflexes, improved metabolic rate, and stimulated joints. The need for adjusting dynamic balance, direction, judge the trajectory of the ball, and tempo can help keep your brain alert all the time.

If these reasons are not enough to convince you to start playing ping pong, here are some other exciting benefits that your body gets to experience when you engage in a table tennis game:

Improves Your General Fitness Levels

Ping pong doesn’t use any heavy equipment, not to mention that it has lower risks of accidents. Its swift movements also don’t cause strain on your joints. This makes it recommended for people of different ages, gender, ability, and physical ability. The cardiovascular activity of high intensity can also strengthen your heart as well as tone your core muscles found in both the lower and upper parts of your body.

This also ranks as among the most amazing aerobic exercises. When you are rushing here and there to both sides of the table, the heart rate increases, and this causes substantial spikes in the oxygen expenditure of your body. The capacity of your lung also improves because of the deeper, faster, and more intense breathes.

Playing ping pong has gentle effects on your body which makes it perfect if you are suffering from broken joints, bruises, and constraints. Being a quite addictive and enjoyable game, ping pong also significantly rejuvenates your cardiovascular system, improve your immune system, as well as enhance your fitness level as a whole.

Burns Calories

The amount of calories burned when playing ping pong surpasses the amount when walking on a treadmill because of its vigorous and exhausting movements. The body tends to respond differently to the game, and the calorie amount burnt differs in terms of intensity, weight, as well as time spent for the session.

This sport can keep you on your toes and let you burn unwanted calories in shorter amount of time. For experienced athletes, they can manage to burn as much as 600 calories every hour. Different simultaneous activities involved in ping pong such as walking, running, instantaneous thinking, and motor coordination can increase calorie depletion rate.

It makes ping pong a rather enjoyable way for burning calories with no rigor and intensity required by common contact sports. Children, overweight people, diabetic, and even the elderly can mitigate their weight related situations by simply engaging in a ping pong game.

Weight Loss

Ping pong can also help in shedding extra weight made possible by the brisk-paced movements. The amount of weight you will shed is dependent on your age, sex, intensity, muscle volume, and fitness level. Players who weigh around 120 pounds can burn at least 8.4 calories per minute. Those who weigh more than 170 pounds can burn as much as 15.5 calories per minute. The figures can amount to 570 to 930 calories burnt in one hour of playing ping pong.

Better Balance

Ping pong can help improve your balance as you get to master different coordinative movements. A player has to retain an equilibrium posture in order to generate efficient movements and enough force. Adjusting direction and maintaining balance play a vital role in the game. Enhanced dynamic balance can foster help for the older players.

Improves Core Muscles

Ping pong strengthens and draws in every single core muscle of the posterior and fore regions of your body. Movements of high energy involved in the game can strengthen your abdomen and back with a lateral twist on your abdominal muscles on the side. When you bounce back the ping pong ball incessantly with force, it can also stimulate your arm and shoulder. Chasing that ball at full speed around the ping pong table can tone up joints and prop up your legs.

Enhanced Eye Coordination

A ping pong game can improve your hand and eye coordination which further stimulates your focus, mental alertness, and fine tunes your control of your motor skills. When you play regularly, your brain will also expand at the regions which are associated with the hand and eye coordination. Being able to keep an eye on trajectory of the ball as this oscillates across the ping pong table will help you develop acuity like that of eagle eyes.

Great for the Brain

Aside from the physical benefits, ping pong also serves as an excellent mental exercise. For you to avoid any bad hits, you have to strategize your spins and always think ahead of thee opponent through responding with their shots with remarkable precision. Reaching a decision requires micro-seconds, and this improves your concentration levels as it stimulates both the short term processing zone and prefrontal cortex.

A hyperactive brain can become sharper thanks to improved cognitive ability and enhanced motor skills. The game can spur circulation of blood in your brain which can keep dementia and Alzheimer’s disease at bay. This game’s aerobic activity can also invigorate the hippocampus, that part of the brain that is responsible for capturing memories, events, and long term facts.

Without a doubt, ping pong has a lot of exciting benefits, and you too can enjoy these by giving the game a try today.