When you watch your children engage in ice hockey, it’s easy to see how they develop skills that will last a lifetime. You can’t put a price tag on the health benefits of owning an interest in such timeless activities like this one!
It doesn’t take much for parents to invest their time and money into something as beneficial as kids’ sports. With the benefits of ice hockey, you’re not just improving your child’s quality of life, but you’ll also be improving yours.
In this blog post, I have shared 15 physical health benefits of playing ice hockey for kids, which you should definitely read as a parent to make your kids much stronger.
What Are The Physical Benefits of Playing Ice Hockey for Kids?
1. Increased Cardiovascular Fitness
The most basic physical benefit when you play ice hockey is increased cardiovascular fitness. This, however, does not mean that your child will be running on the field instead of skating on it, as most kid play hockey involve a lot of high-intensity interval training, standing and walking around.
While participating in games and practices throughout the week, your children will need to keep up with a fast-moving pace which helps increase their heart rate and get them ready for action. The more fit they are, the easier it is for them to contribute to their team’s win!
2. Better Strength and Balance
Hockey is a team sport and requires players to skate alongside one another while trying to stickhandle through one or two opponents simultaneously. So while your child may be on the defense, they will still be required to push off of walls and follow their stick to knock the puck away from an opponent.
By playing ice hockey, you’re not only helping your child increase cardiovascular fitness but also maximize their upper body strength and leg power. This sport maximizes physical capabilities that are both essential for everyday activities and larger, professional ones!
3. Coordination / Hand-Eye Coordination Skills
Puck control is one of the most important things a hockey player can learn as it requires players to do two things at once: keep an eye out for potential teammates while staying aware of where the opponents are so they won’t make any unforced errors. Keep in mind that this is all done while skating around with one or two pucks at a time!
Players will sometimes try to make up for their lack of coordination by simply kicking the puck back and forth while standing on one spot. While this may seem like an easy way out, it actually makes them rely on physical strength instead of working towards getting better at controlling the puck.
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4. Quick Response Times
Another vital skill that players must learn is to respond quickly when the puck has been passed or shot towards them. The best way to develop this skill is by participating in games that replicate real-life scenarios like trying to score on an empty net, taking a penalty shot, or even face-offs!
This will ensure that your child spends most of their time playing all types of game situations rather than simply standing around with no tasks or objectives at hand.
5. Quickness and Agility
Hockey is a lot more than just learning how to skate fast and shoot accurately. It isn’t just about playing hockey with actual pucks either, as players will need to be quick on their skates if they want to perform an array of sub-skills like stickhandling, dangles, passing, and so on. Hockey enhances children’s agility with physical skills.
In hockey, it’s all about being able to keep up with both the speed of your teammates and opponents while performing incredible displays of skating grace under pressure! Hockey improves mental agility.
6. Increased Muscle Tone / Weight Control
If there is anything parents fear about playing youth sports, it has to be weight gain which opposes the common belief that children playing sports will become fat and unhealthy.
Hockey, however, helps children develop muscle tone, which helps them control their weight much better. By playing hockey or even going out for a quick skate during the week, your child’s body will continue to build lean muscles that are ideal for physical activity!
7. Improves Cardiovascular Endurance
While there is still a lot to be said about an increase in heart rate during physical activity, it’s only when you play ice hockey that tests your cardiovascular endurance (the ability of the body to endure long periods of physical exertion) will you understand its significance. Ice skating improves the cardiovascular system.
This type of training can help burn fat while reducing risk factors for the development of diabetes and hypertension. It also helps prevent heart attacks due to a boost in blood flow throughout the body!
9. Prevent Sports Injuries
When participating in any team sport or even just playing around with friends on the weekends, kids tend to get injured because they’re not used to playing hockey regularly. In addition, hockey requires players to wear padding over their elbows, knees, and even the back of their head! You learn a lot when you play with your hockey team.
This way, they will be able to play hockey safely without constantly getting hurt because they aren’t used to being in physical contact with other people (in this case, opponents) or playing long games that can cause them to be exhausted by the end of it all.
10. Weight Control as Adults
Yes, playing ice hockey during your youth can also help you control your weight as an adult later down the road! It doesn’t matter if you’ve already started working out as a teenager or just now learning how to skate as an adult – any physical activity is better than no physical activity at all!
Playing hockey can help you improve your cardiovascular endurance, muscular tone, and even weight control which are vital components for a healthy lifestyle later on down the road! Playing hockey burns fat.
11. Boost Aerobic Capacity
Playing hockey regularly will help boost your body’s aerobic capacity, which is essentially how long you can exercise before getting too tired. This is something that most people don’t know about playing ice hockey often as a child until they get older and attempt to play in an actual game – it’s exhausting!
Most adults have a lower cardiovascular endurance than children, which is why adults will feel exhausted much more easily when playing against kids. If there’s anything in particular that parents dislike about their children playing youth sports, it has to be how tired they are each time afterward!
12. Optimal Bone Growth and Development
Playing ice hockey can help you develop optimal bone mass and density while playing, which helps prevent several conditions later on down the road, such as osteoporosis.
It also helps children form cartilage tissue in their joints, which will protect them from injuries caused by physical contact or from falls on the ice.
13. Increased Cognitive Abilities
If you are looking to play an active sport, then playing hockey is definitely one to consider! Playing sports as hockey has always been linked to increased cognitive abilities later in life, especially for young people who play sports during their teenage years.
This happens because physical activity increases the production of certain chemicals and hormones that promote nerve cell growth, and since these nerves grow all the time, playing an active sport like hockey often as a child can help improve overall cognitive abilities later on down in life.
14. Natural Muscle Strengthening
Pushing and shoving on the ice is not always easy, especially for young players who have yet to develop the ability to push their bodies to their physical limits.
However, playing hockey as a child will help your body become accustomed to natural muscle strengthening over time. This way, you won’t find playing sports such as basketball or soccer difficult later in life because your body has already adapted to this type of workout while playing as an amateur!
15. Exercise Control
Today’s lifestyles are not as active as they use to be, which is why children must stay active by playing sports! Playing ice hockey will help you learn how to control your breathing when trying to exercise harder — for example, after sprinting across the ice.
It also helps that playing this sport requires physical contact with other players on both sides of the fence, making you more accustomed to difficult situations where you need to make quick decisions!
Conclusion
With all of that said, there are many additional physical health benefits to playing hockey as well. At the end of the day, any physical activity is a good thing that helps children grow into healthy and strong adults who have an active lifestyle.
“Playing ice hockey will actually improve your child’s overall health in ways you never thought possible!”
The only way to find out is by trying it for yourself! Hockey can provide you with something that no other sport or activity can offer – lifelong memories! So why not get started today? You won’t regret it! Let them play hockey.
