Ping Pong – Healthy AND Happy

When you think of ping pong (perhaps you call it table tennis) you probably don’t think of fitness, but when was the last time you saw an obese pro ping pong player? I know, the average ping pong player is probably very different physically than a pro, but you get my point. Any moving is better moving than no moving, right?

I haven’t really done anything physically in over a year and a half and as part of my new plan for success in life, I’d like to get fit. I’d like to lose a bit of weight and just get to the point where I feel a bit better. When I got home from my recent trip back to the US, there was a ping pong table awaiting me upon my return.

The great thing about ping pong is that there isn’t really much to it. It’s a simple game with relatively few equipment requirements. Once you’ve got the table, the paddles and balls are hardly an expensive purchase. On a lot of tables, you can lock up half the table so that you can play on your own against the far surface of the table or you can play with someone else in the usual way. While ping pong starts out at a basic level just dinking a ball back and forth over the net in a pretty awkward way, once you introduce the more advanced aspects of the game such as spin things get a lot more exciting. Spin always you to introduce a lot more force to the ball and before long the ball will be flying back and forth across the table from corner to corner as the competition between you and your partner heats up.

I started playing one day and the next I was extremely sore so I knew that I had been working muscles I hadn’t used in a long time. To top it off, once I get started I don’t want to stop. After a while dodging back and forth for the ball, I work up quite a sweat and it really does end up to be a decent workout for me, and I’m sure this only increases along with skill level. I’m not claiming ping pong should be your only form of exercise, but it isn’t a bad place to start. It’s tons of fun, interactive, competitive and it gets you moving. If you’re not great at first, don’t worry. Spend a day or two bending over to pick up the balls you’ve missed and you’ll get exercise anyway.

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