From the start, it is important for parents to increase their child’s interest in sports because no matter what their kid wants to become in life, being active in sports is always a better way to improve mental and physical wellbeing.
Sports can be impactful to learn important life lessons unknowingly. It’s not just about enjoyment but also a healthy way of accepting victories and losses.
When you play sports that involve groups, you learn important lessons like how to play with a team without creating a problem. Understanding the joy of giving your best, no matter if you win or lose.
Most parents advise their kids to play sports to keep them physically fit and active. But being active in sports benefits your mental health as well. Playing with your friends or with anybody makes you worry less.
Ever noticed? Whenever you feel sad, anxious or depressed, the person does not want to do anything. Physical activities are one of the most difficult things to do at that time. This means your physical activeness is linked to your mental health. Therefore, today we will discuss the benefits of sports for mental health.
Let’s discuss the benefits of sports and how sports help to improve your mental health.
Benefits of Sports for Mental Health:
1. Reduce stress level: When you exercise or play any sports your system releases happy hormones, endorphins. These hormones are good to combat stress, adrenaline, cortisol and pain. In short, these hormones help to reduce stress hormones. When you exercise or play on a daily basis, you feel calm for hours afterwards.
2. Enhance your mood: Sports work like a convertor of a good mood. When you play sports that demand your attention and focus, you automatically shift your worries aside. This helps to concentrate better and focus on one thing at a time. When you are in a good mood, you sleep better.
3. Team sports improve mental health: According to research, women who played netball and tennis in clubs had better mental health compared to the ones who exercised alone. Also, people who play group sports seem to be less stressed than people who play alone. This also happens maybe because when you play alone you end up having less fun and stress out to perform well.
4. Get rid of the addiction: As per study teenagers who actively play group sports are less likely to smoke and to try other stuff. According to researchers in Korea, teenagers who play sports are less likely to get addicted to the internet.
5. Combat depression and stress: Studies show that sports and exercises are beneficial to combat depression. People who are active in sports and exercises are less likely to experience depression and relapse. When you exercise, you get the benefits of antidepressants.
Someone who is facing mental disorders should exercise or play sports. This will be helpful to prevent severe mental disorders like schizophrenia. You can also improve the symptoms related to schizophrenia.
What are the Side-effects of Sports?
Sports and exercises are great for people but anything can lead to negative effects if you do it in excess. Elite athletes or advanced athletes, who play professionally at regional, national, international levels are more likely to feel stressed.
Yes, sports help to combat stress but can lead to stress as well. This happens when children themselves or their parents push them really hard to perform well.
This can badly affect someone’s performance despite the intense training. Even some of the popular athletes face depression and mental health problems. Sadly, the overall fitness is on a different level compared to their mental health.
There could be various reasons that lead to stress and depression are retirement from sports, injury, stress to perform well, the stress of expectations.
People who have eating disorders are also likely to face the problem while playing their sports. Athletes might feel pressure to be in a certain shape and weight to perform well, and this can also lead to eating disorders like bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa.