Volleyball and its 5 health benefits if done regularly

Compared to futsal or basketball, Indonesians probably rarely play volleyball - unless there are certain special occasions, such as the SEA GAMES championship. However, that does not mean that the benefits of playing volleyball are not as great as the two popular sports.

Apart from practicing cooperation with friends, it turns out that there are still many health benefits that you can get from playing volleyball.

The benefits of playing volleyball for body health

1. Reduce stress

The brain will increase the production of happy mood hormones when we exercise, namely endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, and tryptophan. Regular exercise can also reduce the hormones cortisol and epinephrine, two stress-causing hormones, and replace them by increasing the hormone norepineprine as an antidepressant.

All of these positive hormones will then work together to cause feelings of pleasure and get rid of stress, thus creating positive thoughts. That's why exercise is often recommended as an adjunct therapy to manage the symptoms of various mental illnesses.

The effect of reducing stress levels is also increasing in volleyball because it involves social interaction with many people at one time.

2. Helps sleep better

Exercise can make you sleep better because it helps increase enzyme activity and muscle function and helps relax your body after a long day of work. In the morning you will feel more energized.

Reporting from the Healthline page, the increase in body temperature that occurs when you exercise also helps you sleep soundly. In fact, moderate intensity exercise has been reported to help control various sleep disorders, such as insomnia.

But still don't over-exercise. Exercising too hard makes your body even more tired and dehydrated, which makes it difficult to sleep.

3. Powerful to lose weight

Volleyball is a type of aerobic cardio exercise. Cardio exercise itself is a type of exercise to increase heart rate. For 15-20 minutes or more you play volleyball giving your pulse an increase of up to 60-80% of normal.

The heart is made up of muscles that have to keep moving in order to get stronger and stronger. When the heart muscle is strong, the blood vessels can flow more blood and faster. Strong blood vessels can carry more oxygen into the muscle cells.

This allows the cells to burn more fat during exercise and at rest. That's why kardo exercise is most commonly chosen to help you lose weight, because this activity is very effective at burning fat. Volleyball regularly will also prevent overweight and obesity which is the source of all metabolic diseases, such as diabetes.

Volleyball for 20 minutes can burn 126 calories. Just imagine if you play volleyball regularly for 20 minutes for 1 full year, you can burn as much as 459,900 calories or the equivalent of reducing 6 kilograms of fat from your body. Research has found that the higher the cardio intensity you do, the more calories you burn.

4. Build and strengthen muscles, as well as joints

Apart from strengthening the heart muscles, playing volleyball also involves a lot of movement of the limbs. Starting from the calf muscles, thighs, buttocks, hips that are used for jumping and running, to the upper arms and back muscles for hitting the ball.

By playing volleyball, your joints will become stronger as they are continuously trained to run. jump, and hit. Strong joints will prevent you from various risks of injury during sports and daily activities ..

5. Strengthens bones

Volleyball includes weight training that can strengthen bones.

Regular weight training helps the body control the release of sclerostin levels while increasing the production of a special hormone called IGF-1 which plays an important role in bone growth. Sclerostin itself is a natural protein which, when levels accumulate in bone, can make bones more susceptible to bone loss.

That way, volleyball can help maintain bone density from an early age and prevent symptoms of osteoporosis in the future.