NARCISO, MAIKA JEAN M.

Give at least 10 health benefits of playing table tennis. Elaborate your answer.

1. Increases Our Happy Hormones – Like most of the sports we play, table tennis
players also benefit from having an effective method of stress relief and mood-
booster. This is due to the element of excitement and anticipation that is present
in this game, which results to the brain releasing “endorphins”, or more often
called “feel good” chemicals that is helpful to both our emotional and physical
health because as they always say: “a sound body is a sound mind”.
2. Improves Our Balance – In the game of table tennis, it needs a player to have
good balance for them to react better when receiving the ball and have greater
control over their bodies. So over time, our bodies become used to the constant
moving and changing of positions that we do while playing tennis, resulting to
better balance as well as stability.
3. Enhanced Aerobic Endurance – Those who play table tennis can acquire
aerobic fitness or endurance, which basically helps their heart become more
efficient in moving oxygen through the different parts of the body. This will make
them feel more energetic and feel lesser fatigue due their increased overall
stamina.
4. Boosts Brain Power – Tennis is good for the brain as players of this sport
requires fast tactical or strategic thinking in order to win. Thus, it improves our
mental alertness and critical thinking for better judgement in which we can apply
both through sports and in life as time goes by.
5. Improves Flexibility – They gain this health benefit because Table Tennis is
also a demanding sport where flexibility is important. By incorporating warm up
exercises that are good for your joints before playing, it could actually help a lot
when playing as the game involves instances where you might need to stretch
out your arms and legs to receive and attack well or even sprint to the other side
just to save the ball. With this, extending one’s arms and legs would be much
easier from then on and it would also prevent you injuries.
6. Reduces Body Fat – As you are physically active in playing this sport, it is a
great way for us to slowly burn the calories in our body. For it requires a great
NARCISO, MAIKA JEAN M.

amount of one’s effort and energy, it would then replace body fat with muscles
and also increases our metabolism that would eventually lead to weight loss.
7. Helps Strengthen Our Bones – Regularly playing tennis which involves
footwork, handwork and lots of body movement would of course naturally result
to having healthier and stronger bones if not overdone. Once our bones starts to
adapt on the level of physical effort we exert, it would start building more cells
that clearly helps reduce the probability of us having weak and fragile bones as
we age further.
8. Strengthens Immune System – Being able to play table tennis regularly also
serves as an effective physical exercise for us which is good for the body.
Through this, we benefit from having greater immunity that can help fight off
chances of being sick from flu, cold or other illness.
9. Improves One’s Reflexes – The players of this sport gain good reflexes as it is
what aids their performance while playing. They acquire particularly a faster
reaction time for it is their fast body response that allows them to successfully
receive and return the ping pong ball to the other side every time their opponents
attack them.
10. Improves hand-to-eye coordination – Similar to having improved reflexes, a
player also gain better hand to eye coordination due to this game. Hand to eye
coordination is very useful to many sports, especially to those who require
equipment such as table tennis as it enables them to become more alert and
allows them to easily do movements the way they want to at a faster rate or the
right timing.