Why Trying a New Sport will Significantly Better Your Health

By Fitness Desk

Thursday, February 27, 2020.

Are you tired of feeling, tired? Are you looking to try something new but not sure what yet? Everyone has a moment where they feel this at some point in their lives, but what to do about it? One thing that you can try is a new sport, it gets you active and exercises more than just the body! Here are just some of the benefits of why you should try a new sport. 

Keeps You on the Move

Trying a new sport will most certainly keep you on the move, whether it be running, basketball, football, boxing and more. Each sport has its levels, whether you want to just do it for fun a sunny afternoon, or if you want to take it further and enter the ring as a professional player in the sport, that is the beauty of it. You choose the frequency and intensity of how much you want to dedicate to that sport. You do not have to end up joining the national team, you can just have fun, at your own pace. Now one of the biggest setbacks with getting into a sport, especially a new one you have never done before, is motivation. 

Motivation will always be the success, or the failure, of getting into a new sport. One method you can try to keep that motivation high, and also build the momentum so that you can bring it into your chosen sport, is videos. Videos, articles, books, magazines. Any sorts of materials, read into the sport, read success stories. Every sport will have some success stories that you can read into and then take that as motivation on the field. A great article you can read for boxing is called Top Boxing fights which could give you great motivation in the field of boxing. There are many others that you can explore, but it’s up to you to find them.

What Do you Want to Gain?

Motivation is great, but motivation alone will not help you master a new sport and will certainly not better your health. Before you go into a sport, think about yourself now and what sport would fit best. Are you trying to fix your diet? Are you trying to gain more muscle? Are you wanting to lose weight? Or are you just wanting to maintain your body as it is? There are so many factors that come to play when trying something new, as you do not want to start something and then realise that it is not doing what you want it to do. 

This is the first stage of when choosing what new sport you want to develop and go into. The next stage is finding the right one that fits your personal health goals. There are good sources online, both articles and interactive websites, that can help you choose this. The accuracy of them is mixed depending on which website, but that is down to your personal preference. A good sport to build stamina would be something long-distance, like running and jogging. A sport that is good to build your hand + eye coordination would be basketball or a sport like Cricket. A sport to enhance your attention span would be archery. There is a sport that matches every single need, you just need to take the time and figure out which one would best suit YOUR needs, which leads to the next point.

Image Source, Pexels

Does Anyone you Know do the Same Sport?

This could be a big factor that comes into your mind when choosing a sport that works for you. We are all swayed by what our friends are doing, or that person you idolize, like a celebrity or role model, is doing. It is normal to sway to what the others are doing, so you are not joining something new alone. However, what everyone else may be doing may not align with your personal goals, and you need to be ready for that. Of course, what they are doing could align, and then that makes the decision of whether to join a new sport even easier because you will join your friends and role models at the same time. But going against what your friends are doing is difficult but be prepared to do it if it doesn’t align with your personal goals.

Learn Something New / Keep Your Brain Healthy

Something often overlooked in the world of sport, is how much mental training your brain gets, as well as whole-body fitness training. Every sport comes with a set of rules you need to learn. What happens when the ball goes over a certain line, what happens when you step over a certain line, what happens if you touch the ball with your hands, kick it a certain way, the list could expand to a much longer article than this. The reality is health benefits extend further than the physical fitness of your body, your mental health also gets a boost with a new sport.

Ease Stress

Last but not least, ease stress. Life has ways of throwing stress now and then, some more than others, but sport can help relieve that stress. Less stress means a healthier mind, and doing a sport means a healthier body. There doesn’t seem to be a bad case for getting into a new sport! When you are practicing a new sport, or just sports in general, your mind switches from daily stresses and into a different zone. You concentrate on what’s happening then, your personal fitness goals, what the other members of the team are doing if you are in a team-based sport. You forget about the daily stressors in your life, even if only temporary, it is a relief to your mind. Then in turn, like the previous point, on top of stretching your mind with new rules and guidelines to learn, it also relaxes your brain but giving it a rest from stress and daily life. 

So, these points only scratch the surface, but the only and best way to learn if a sport is for you is to come off this article and your device, and go out and try some. You would be surprised!