As Faculty of Health Sciences students, MHSA’s members strive towards health promotion and disease prevention. It was hence vital for us to celebrate the European Week of Sport through an article which explores the health benefits of various sports and forms of exercise for specific demographics; whether these benefits are physical, mental or emotional.
Wii Sport in Sedentary Lifestyles
Millennials and Gen Zs are notoriously known for their screen time, but this might not as bad as you think!
Active gaming such as Wii Sport allows for an active lifestyle by bridging screen time and physical activity. Various Wii utilities promote cardiovascular fitness, muscle strength, and co-ordination.
The key factor that makes Wii Sport ideal towards combatting a sedentary lifestyle is the audiovisual feedback of the featured games, as they have been shown to increase the individual’s motivation while achieving a cardiovascular response that can reach that of traditional physical activity.
Tai Chi in Elderly Health
Its Tai Chi not chai tea ! This exercise encompasses a self-paced gentle exercise and stretching choreography with positions which flow from one to the other without pause, ensuring that the body is in constant motion, fluidly.
Balance, co-ordination, strength, concentration, and flexibility are enhanced when practicing tai chi. The increase in quality of these factors have shown to benefit the elderly demographic as they decrease the incidence of falls and prevent frailty which accompanies the degenerative changes of ageing.
Cycling in Osteoarthritis
Cycling, whether on a stationary bicycle, or not; has been shown to reap various health benefits, such as; improving muscle strength especially in the legs, as well as improving cardiovascular health.
It is a low impact form of exercise which provides significantly less stress to weight-bearing joints. Examples of such joints are the spine, hips, knees, and ankles.
Osteoarthritis related joint pain and stiffness have been reported to decrease when incorporating cycling into their lifestyle while such a sport has also shown to prevent its incidence in the first place.
Also a bad cycling joke just for fun: Every time my bike hurts me I punch it right back, it’s a vicious cycle.
Chess in Mental Health
Chess is a mind sport, (yes, it is an actual sport) played on a square board where opponents compete to strategically checkmate each other. This is achieved by positioning several pieces so as to restrict movement of the opponent’s king in such a way which prevents its further movement.
Chess has been shown to improve the development of the mind especially in children as it improves problem solving skills and abstract decision making, due to its strategic requirement. Additionally an increase in Intelligence Quota (IQ) and allows for logical and efficient thinking when selecting the superior choice out of a multitude.
Finally, when taking into consideration the physical aspect chess, it allows for the development of fine motor skills though the movement of the pieces along the board.
Group Exercise in Performance Enhancement
We all have that one friend who cannot survive without his or her “Boo Thang”. This might not be too bad of an attribute when working out as a group, as this has been shown to reap superior results due to factors absent in individual workouts.
Group classes offer a social aspect to exercise, whether it be attending with your “Baby Cakes” or forming new friendships, this often motivates individuals to train frequently. Friendly competition also encourages members to train harder so to outperform one another.
This does not only apply to the average Joe, as group exercise has shown to offer a significantly higher improvement in walking ability and balance of stroke rehabilitation patients, in comparison to one-to-one exercise sessions.