Whether you are a scholar, student or working professional, sport can teach you many different things that carry over into your everyday life. Although many people think kicking or catching a ball has no benefit in their lives, it is more about the dynamics around sport that plays a role in who you are and how you handle easy or difficult situations that come your way.
“There is no I in team” – we’ve all heard this saying before. As cliché as it is, it teaches us that being involved in a team and having other players around us requires a degree of responsibility, not only towards ourselves but to every other player.
If someone does not attend a practice session, then it affects not only the team’s performance but also the results of the games that are played, as teammates become interdependent on one another.
“How you practice is how you play.” Discipline, accountability and time management are also important traits that are learned through team sports and sport as a whole. You cannot expect to play at the highest level if you attend one practice every second week and play one game every month.
This teaches us that success comes from consistency, and what many people don’t realize is that consistency has a compounding effect. James Clear states in his book “Atomic habits” that a 1% improvement every day leads to a 37% improvement by the end of the year.
Master the art of showing up and you will be successful. Most of us graduate from university and enter a team-oriented workspace. This goes hand in hand with playing sports. You are there to fulfill a specific roll and if you start to underperform, the pyramid will collapse.
Impact on Emotional Wellbeing
Sport also improves your overall emotional wellbeing. If you are having one of those days where everything is just going wrong and you have lost all motivation for the day, a great way to relieve frustration is by participating in sport. Participating in sport, results in your body releasing chemicals such as endorphins. Increased movement through sport also increases our energy burn throughout the day. When we burn enough energy, our bodies are forced to recover and rest which allows us to sleep better and recover better, in turn, lowering stress and increasing our mood.
As time passes, we continue to learn about the importance of mental health in society today. Sport benefits our mental health regardless of age. As a scholar, participating in sport can reduce the risk of substance abuse, which lowers the chances of teenagers feeling depressed, anxious, stressed and also reduces the chance of reckless behavior.
Once we go to university, we are faced with new challenges in our life. Many students cannot keep up with the external pressure as well as the pressure that they put on themselves and they start to feel insecure about a lot of things. The weight of the world starts to become heavier. Something as simple as participating in action netball twice a week can improve your self-esteem, improve your body image, improve your energy levels and most importantly improve your mood by acting as a form of release.
One amazing benefit that sport offers us is the opportunity to meet new people. We get to meet people with similar interests who we get to interact with outside of training sessions, strengthening our social network and support. This is a massive benefit for people who are extroverts who like trying new things and meeting new people as well as introverts who need to feel supported and understood by people who can relate to them.
Being involved in a sports team gives us practical knowledge of how to trust other people, depend on people, work as a team and sometimes pushes us out of our comfort zone to achieve things we never thought were possible which is amazing because we never really know what we are capable of as individuals.
By gsport Intern, Jessica De Lira
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