Paddle Your Way to Health with Pingpong

Excitement is reason enough to bat a small, hollow ball back and forth for an hour, say writers Hilary MacGregor and Rosie Mestel.

Pingpong burns calories according to calorimetric analysis, they report

"In fact batting the ball about the table with friends on a regular basis may offer a nice mix of mental, physical and social benefits," they write. "For starters, pingpong provides a deft mental workout."

Exercise tends to help the front part of the brain, especially if one is solving complex problems such as mapping out sophisticated strategies for winning a pitched game of pingpong, the article stated.

Pick up the paddle and your brain could change quickly, according to the article.

"And there's more," said MacGregor. "It helps forge social connections."

Of course, what you get out of pingpong depends on what you put into it, wrote MacGregor.

"If you're just banging the ball around in the basement with some buddies, don't expect to drop pounds or gain stamina," said Mestel. "But if you are playing really competitive table tennis, that's different."

All this and perhaps, no tennis elbow, according to research.

Greg Letts, who writes about sports, said one of the hardest things to master about Pingpong is the correct footwork.

"There are footwork basics that I wish I had learned when I started," he said. "It would have saved me a lot of trouble."

According to Wikipedia, pingpong is one of the most popular sports in terms of number of players and also one of the newest.

Play is fast and demands probably one of the quickest response times in terms of sports.

The winner is the first to score 11 points with each player alternating serves every two points, according to literature.

Pingpong, also called table tennis, has its origins in England as an after dinner amusement for the upper class Victorians in the 1880s.
The popularity of the game led game manufacturers to sell the equipment commercially.

By 1901 table tennis was growing in popularity when tournaments were being organized, books on the sport were being written, and an unofficial world championship was held in 1902.