For Fitness, Soccer Beats Running in Many Ways

Looking for an excuse to run up and down a finely cut expanse of green while wearing bright red shorts? Try adult soccer. It’s everywhere, it’s fun, and it’s very good for you. Geezer speaks from years of experience, and this piece the New York Times speaks from a review of research published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports.
The Times reports that researchers in Denmark recruited more than 70 women ages 20 to 47
who had no history of playing soccer as children or teenagers.
Two-thirds of the women were assigned to either a running
group or a soccer team. The rest served as a control group. After 14 weeks, during which the women in the active groups exercised by running or playing soccer for an hour a day just two days a week, both exercise groups had
improved on a number of indicators of heart health, balance and muscle
strength, compared with the control group, but the soccer players gained more fitness. The Times reports that while runners improved their maximum oxygen uptake by about 10 percent, the
soccer players improved by 15 percent. Playing soccer also led to better balance and improved
muscle strength. Perhaps most impressive was the effect on bone density: soccer increased a woman’s bone mineral
density by an average of 2 to 3 percent, for women, the equivalent to reversing three to six years of bone
aging.

Read more in the New York Times.