Sport: How Does It Really Improve Our Psychological Life?
Many guides who seek to provide assistance in improving our lives, both physically and psychically, advocate a series of key guidelines. Strategies and ideas that are easy to expose, even to argue their value, but which are not so easy to implement in our daily lives. They require us to change our routines, the ones we tend to follow because of the inertia we have put in place and which, through repetition, has gained a lot of weight.
Having said that, it is advisable to exercise. But what can it bring us on the mental level? Why does it deserve a place in our agendas? What is so precious that when we come home, instead of tidying up, making food, resting or learning another language, we decide to play sports ? It doesn’t look like anything, outside it’s raining and it’s windy, in the gymnasium there are too many people and there is an artificial heat there that you never get used to.
Well, in this article we will try to answer all of these questions… and a few more.
Sport takes care of the cells of our body
Sometimes our mind seems somewhat abstract, this conductor which often conceptually separates us from the body, as if its support is not this same biological substrate. There is even talk of physical fatigue and mental fatigue, as if each existed on its own. When… that’s not true.
When we exercise, a very curious phenomenon occurs, the cells of our body are oxygenated. The metaphor is simple: when we exercise, it is as if we ventilate the body, as we do every morning with our house. In truth, ventilating during the summer is natural. However, in winter, that’s another song. Usually we don’t like it too much as the cold currents flow freely from room to room. However, once the draft has passed, how do we feel afterwards? Much better, right?
Well, something similar happens with physical exercise. There are days when our body seems to like that feeling where the revolutions of our motor (heart) increase – it is akin to airing in the summer – and others when it is very, very lazy (we have worked more than d (usually during the day, we did not rest enough or we exercised too much during the week: it would be like airing in winter). However, how do we feel afterwards? Much better, right?
Sport connects the body to the mind
We have already said that the cells of our nervous system in general, by exaggerating, appreciate that we put our body in motion a little, and that we let some calories slip by jumping, pedaling or walking a long time. Sport actually induces another benefit for us in this binomial body-mind as well. This advantage has to do with communication. It’s curious, but, for example, when we talk to a regular sportsman who is momentarily injured, and we ask him what he misses the most, there is a good chance that he will answer us that he it is about his communication with his body.
If he goes a week or two without training, he may well feel that his body is no longer talking to him or that he is only doing it in the language of pain. The information he receives from his body has been depleted, and by a lot. So what we get by doing sports is that communication with our body improves, there is no need for anything to hurt us to know that we have more or less energy. On the other hand, it is a feeling difficult to explain for those who have led a sedentary life for years, without sport. They don’t remember what it feels like to be in contact with your body and in fact, so they don’t notice it.
However, enriching this communication is worth it …
Improve our social life and we saved time for ourselves
Other mental benefits that sport brings us have two aspects. One of them is the social side. Whether it is an individual sport or a team sport, it is easy for us to meet people in a situation similar to ours. The flesh and blood people who are not behind a screen, who can motivate us, with sport or with other goals in life and who will undoubtedly expand our circle of social support.
The other side of this benefit is defined by a fact: playing sports is spending time with ourselves. A moment to reflect or simply to escape our concerns. During this time, we don’t think about going somewhere, that dinner is burning or that some of our actions might displease someone or harm our image. In this sense, sport often involves an exercise in freedom, an update of our mental resources and a meeting with ourselves.
On the other hand, it is an act that is hardly going to generate any mental discomfort. It is very difficult that in playing sports we feel a dissonance between who we are or what we would like to be and what we do. There are no threats, only challenges. That of scoring a basket or running a little faster. The matter is simplified and our mind appreciates this release.
Sport, discipline, faith and emotions
An indirect advantage of sport is order and discipline. Practicing regularly generates in us a feeling of perseverance that makes us feel good. The one of: “Well, well, actually, I am able to go through with my goal.” These types of posts will boost our self-esteem and also help us on other topics for other purposes.
We see it in many people who have given up, we translate it with their words. They don’t make plans because they don’t have faith in what they can accomplish. In fact, they live in a kind of anarchy loaded with criticism because many of the decisions they make are random and the balances they build are very weak. So, you see, few activities are as good as sports for building confidence.
So many advantages, aren’t there? Well, it’s not over yet. In addition, now it is worth mentioning one of the most important: emotional regulation. Sport helps us to spend positively this excess energy that almost all of us have because of ingesting more calories than we spend. Thus, a body with less need for activity will give us more room to work on our emotions. For example, if we get angry, this control will make it more difficult to “go crazy” or explode.
Sport, for example, decreases our heart rate and tension; it will therefore take a greater stimulus to irritate us as before. This greatly expands our room for maneuver, intelligently use the information of the emotion that we feel and let it dissipate without its energy leading us to behaviors that we would later regret. In children, for example, sports greatly promote self-control and contribute, well organized in their schedule, to regulate their rest.
With all these arguments, it makes you want to get started, doesn’t it?
Our thoughts 
