By Erik Beaston
The eyes of the sporting world are on March Madness, the annual NCAA Men’s and Women’s basketball tournaments in which a national champion will be crowned. The popularity of college basketball and the race for the postseason in the NBA shines a light on the game every year and 2023 is no different, with hours of televised and social media content consumed by viewers around the world.
Instead of sitting and watching as world-class athletes chase a Final Four berth, there are everyday fitness benefits to picking up a ball and getting yourself on your nearest court.
Basketball is a game that features repetitive, sudden bursts that can result in heavy force on the body, sometimes for extended periods. Those bursts help build endurance in key muscle groups over time.
Those playing competitively also benefit from training beyond the court, which also helps strengthen the core and back muscle groups to withstand the impactful nature of in-game movement.
Beyond muscles, there are cardiovascular, stamina and energy benefits to playing. The sprinting up and down the court builds and endurance one would not have from staying sedentary on the sofa, watching college’s best play instead.
The strengthening of bone strength is another benefit of the game.
“Another unexpected finding came out of the football study. Here, bone mineral density in elderly and young players were compared to age-matched non-active controls. Not only did the elderly players have significantly greater bone mineral density than their age-matched counterparts, they also had higher bone mineral density than the young, sedentary men, attesting to the benefits of life-long physical activity,” co-Editor-in-Chief of the National Library of Medicine wrote in a 2018 article.
The game’s many moving pieces also contribute to increased hand-eye coordination, which in turn, benefits balance in athletes of all ages.
A sport so closely linked to recreational play has a cornucopia of benefits for participants, both old and young, well beyond bragging rights. It is a full-body-fitness sport that benefits participants emotionally and mentally, too.
The game is a stress reliever, taking players’ minds off the everyday hustle and bustle of life and those who see consistent evolution in their play benefit from increased self-confidence. Increased communication skills and a commitment to teamwork round out the many positives of leaving the sofa, grabbing the rock and balling out with your friends or recCenter buddies.