Benefits Offered by Adventure Sports

By Guest Blogger, Diana S.

Benefits Offered by Adventure Sports

 

Adventure sports is an umbrella term used to describe activities that involve a certain degree of risk and uncertainty, as well as self-discovery. These sports include base jumping, bungee jumping, biking, hiking, kayaking, jet ski racing, mountaineering and rock climbing, para-gliding, scuba diving and so on. While some people feel rather intimidated by adventure sports, there are those swear by them and give them a lot of praise for allowing them to overcome their fears and step out of what they would normally consider to be their comfort zone. Here are some of the major benefits you can experience by participating in an adventure sport.

Exercising made fun

Coupling cardiovascular exercise such as running and swimming with bodyweight or dumbbell training is one of the best ways to increase your strength and improve your overall fitness. The only issue is that most of our cardio and weight training is often performed indoors and repeated time and time again until you reach that point where you’re simply bored with doing the same routines, or worse, not seeing the results. Running outside, however, helps develop balance, involves more muscle and going off trail and experiencing a new environment actually stimulates the brain by throwing in countless new variables to your training.

Improved health

Adventure sports are ideal for getting back into shape, especially now that the holidays are over. Furthermore, they can be an excellent stress reliever, namely due to the fact that during exercise, our brain is releasing various hormones, including dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin, even if the exercise in question was not strenuous at all. Adventure sports such mountaineering and rock climbing improve balance, endurance and high-tempo sports such as biking or kayaking improve the delivery of oxygen and elevate the oxygen levels in our blood and muscle cells.

Improved self-esteem

Any activity that involves adventure sports is oftentimes challenging and comes with a different set of goals when compared to other types of sports. Whereas normal sports deal with teams and winning, adventure sports are more about challenging yourself in order to complete a specific task. It’s about overcoming your own fears and limitations and experiencing the thrill and the sense of accomplishment that follow. Just don’t get too full of yourself and never avoid wearing protective gear. Professional mountaineers would not set a foot on a mountain without being fully prepared the same way down-hill bikers would not imagine racing down a hill without their lightweight year sturdy full face helmets.

Knowledge and experience 

Every sport, including the adventure variety, comes with its own learning curve. The thing with adventure sports is that most of the skills you learn from practicing them can also be carried over into other situations in life. With biking, for example, you’ll most definitely learn how to change a tire, fix a flat or straight out the spokes, while mountaineering and technical rock climbing are ideal for instilling teamwork, improving communication skills and building trust. Kayaking will teach you all about remaining calm while underwater and base and bungee jumping can show you just how frivolous some of your fears may actually be.

Adventure sports are by far one of the best opportunities you can find to challenge yourself, overcome your fears and limitations and learn from your experiences. The physical and psychological advantages adventure sports pose, such as better physical shape, improved health, clear-headedness and positive thinking are too strong and too abundant to simply be overlooked. While it may be frightening at first, the exhilaration you get from the unknown and unexpected is not only better but also way healthier than the mundane routine you would normally experience in your daily trips to the gym.

Tia, and TipsfromTia.com  is trying to keep you looking good and
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