Health Benefits of Playing Table Tennis

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Table tennis is the most popular racket sport in the world. It is a sport that can be enjoyed by individuals of any age and physical ability. There are over 20 million play table tennis recreationally in the US alone. Top table tennis players are some of the greatest athletes in the world, yet this sport is enjoyed by millions of disabled persons and folks in retirement homes. Playing table tennis is a great way to stimulate the brain and promote quick thinking while improving our body coordination. Let’s see how this popular sport benefits our health!

Improve Visual Sensitivity

When playing table tennis, both players should keep observing the swinging ball back and force at high speed. Their eye ciliary muscle would be driven to contract and relax continuously at a certain pace, which can promote the eyeball tissue blood circulation effectively, thus improving the ciliary muscle function as a result. To keep table tennis as a long-term exercise on table tennis can help increase both the visual sensitivity and the response ability of human eyes. Especially for those who have their eyes overused, if they can insist on playing table tennis, their visual sensitivity will get significantly improved.

Strengthen Body function

Just as tennis, badminton and basketball, table tennis is also a physical strength based sport. When playing this game, physical strength accounts for 60% while another 40% depends on proper technical approaches. Therefore, playing table tennis can increase one's agility and flexibility, making players react much faster. Even it is cold outside, table tennis players will sweat easily after an intensive game, which help promote the metabolism and maintain the balance of our body, improve our body function and prevent us from getting cardiovascular disease effectively.

Keeping Fit

Table tennis can help people keep fit effectively. When playing table tennis, the player need to pick up the ball and catch the ball continuously, keeping one’s wrist swinging and one’s arm gripping all the time, which give fully exercise to our ankle, knee and hip joints, both our gross and fine muscle movements thus get improved. Especially when played at an intense rate, this game can be a great way to burn calories and lose weight. A 150-pound person can burn 272 calories by playing table tennis for an hour.

Low-injury Risk

Although certain strength is needed, table tennis is also a low-injury risk sport. It help people build our body strength, speed and quickness and flexibility without adding severe stress on our joints. Those who had knee surgery, back problems or ankle ache should try table tennis to improve their leg, arm and core strength without overtaxing their joints.

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Keep Brain Sharp

Table tennis can develop mental acuity. During table tennis exercise or competition, people should concentrate on their tactical strategies regarding the speed, spin and placement of the ball, while taking initiation all the time.

Playing table tennis stimulates various different parts of the brain to improve mental alertness, which makes it the perfect game for young people to sharpen reflexes and for older people to refine tactics. Especially the aerobic exercise from the physical activity of the game stimulates the hippocampus, the part of the brain that is responsible for allowing us to form and retain long-term facts and events.

Family Sport

Table tennis is also the kind of sports that can be played at home and with family members to bring family members closer and enable them to spend more leisure time together. The family participants playing table tennis can range in age from 8 to 80. The game really helps create a great situation for young people to interact with the older generation.