Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Good news guys. A new study confirms that playing with your balls is better for your health than jogging a mile. You too, ladies. When it comes to balls, the more you juggle, the lower your chances are of getting heart disease.
Don’t get confused, because the balls I’m talking about are big, bouncy and black and white. That’s right. Soccer balls are the secret weapons for living a healthier lifestyle. With all the convenience of treadmills and ellipticals, soccer balls everywhere have been ignored, gathering dust on the top shelf of a hall closet or slowly deflating in the back of a garage. But now there are more reasons than ever to bust out the balls and ditch the repetitive motions of the Stairmaster 3000.
A three-month study in Denmark put together three groups of men of roughly the same size and of the same health backgrounds and told each group to play soccer, jog or do no exercise. After 12 weeks, the soccer players lost 80 percent more weight, experienced a greater reduction in cholesterol, gained more muscle and had more energy than the joggers. Of course the group that did no exercise had no changes.
These different results are due to of the amount of physical intensity soccer requires, keeping the player’s heart rate close to maximum capacity. Soccer players constantly use different muscles, providing the same workout as using several different weight-lifting machines at once. Because trained muscles contain more fat-burning enzymes than non-trained muscles, soccer players tend to have more muscle and the hottest bods. More fat-burning enzymes also mean lower cholesterol and a lower risk heart disease.
Even if you aren’t a fairly-talented foot fairy, never fear—the KU Recreation Center offers dozens of intramural sports from basketball to lacrosse, and the best part is that you don’t have to be good at any of them to join.
I was never any good at hand-eye-foot coordination, but the best part about intramural soccer is that even if you have no idea what you’re doing—like I didn’t—you can still run around aimlessly on the field and look like you’re participating. Bonus points for yelling at the ref when everybody else does.
All in all, playing soccer got my lazy butt into shape a lot quicker than plodding along on a treadmill had ever before, and I noticed other changes I hadn’t experienced from just jogging; my smoker’s cough eased up, my abs became visible and I noticed an extra kick in the bedroom.
If not for the washboard abs, lower risk of heart disease and extra stamina in the sack, get out there and play soccer just to relieve some stress. Something about kicking something the size of someone’s head makes it a great replacement for anger management. Balls are in, ladies and gentlemen, so let’s not keep them hanging.
McLeod is an Overland Park senior in journalism and Middle Eastern Studies.
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