Improve Health by Playing Football
Football is a pleasurable team sport that provides an all-round fitness and can be used as a treatment for lifestyle-related diseases. Men worry less when playing football than while running. Women’s football creates we-stories and helps them stay active.
The statements quoted above are the results yielded by an elaborate football research project conducted by the Department of Exercise and Sports Sciences, University of Copenhagen. The research which stretched over three years, involved more than 50 researchers across 70 countries. The team focused on the physiological, psychological and sociological aspects of the game in comparison with running. The research comprised of several studies on men, women and children who were divided into football, running and control groups.
The scientists focused on the physical effects of football training on untrained subjects in the age group between nine to seventy-seven. The results garnered were pretty straightforward and conveyed that football provides for better health and fitness as compared to running.
Senior scientist Peter Krustrup explains that, “football is a very popular team sport that contains positive motivational and social factors that may facilitate compliance and contribute to the maintenance of a physically active lifestyle. The studies presented have demonstrated that football training for two-three hours per week causes significant cardiovascular, metabolic and musculoskeletal adaptations, independent on gender, age or lack of experience with football.”
