Playing basketball has many benefits. It could make you more physically fit, give you good social interaction, distract you from the hard stuff going on in your life, and much more. The one question that comes up when it comes to basketball is whether or not it makes you smarter. Here’s the answer.
Basketball won’t make you smarter directly, but indirectly it could give you some related benefits that may enhance your overall intelligence. These things include blood flow to the brain, discipline, remembering plays, problem-solving skills, resilience, and if you’re really good at basketball it could give you a direct reason for having to do good in school.
Below we will get into each one of these and how they could potentially impact your intelligence.
Blood Flow To The Brain
Blood flow to the brain, also known as cerebral circulation is important for cognitive function. This is because it allows the brain to get oxygen and other nutrients which helps the brain function optimally.
So if you’ve ever had basketball practice for instance, and you felt more dialed in while doing a project, or homework, or a challenging cognitive task in general, it may have been because you had increased blood flow to the brain.
Discipline
The amazing thing about sports is that they teach you to do things that sometimes you don’t really feel like doing. For instance, you can’t just miss basketball practice because you don’t feel like going. When you force yourself to go, it creates discipline. And this discipline can then extend to other areas of your life, including school, work, and your personal life.
When it comes to learning focus plays an integral role, and without discipline, you may be easily distracted in school or at work.
Remembering Plays
Remembering plays is another benefit of playing basketball. It requires you to focus on what your coach is saying, and it requires you to remember all the different things that they are telling you. This type of memory and mental focus can translate well into learning whatever it is you need to learn.
Remembering plays is not much different than remembering the curriculum of a test or project, or even remembering important details at work.
Problem Solving Skills
Part of intelligence is being able to problem solve. Basketball requires you to avoid obstacles, think strategically about your next move, and be flexible with the things that happen in a game. For example, when a team you’re going against switches from man defense to zone defense you need to figure out what to do in order to score points.
Overall, these problem-solving skills that you gain from playing basketball can help make you more intelligent overall in other areas of life as well. This is because you learn not to give up in the slightest bit of adversity, and you learn how to adapt quickly so that you can come out on top.
Resilience
Resilience, like discipline, is another benefit that comes from playing sports. This is because it allows you to bounce back quickly from a loss or mistake. In basketball, we don’t always have good practice or games. If we hung our heads every time this happened, we would never improve.
Being like this in other areas of your life including learning is very important. You’re not going to know everything right away, and things may be harder than others for you to learn, but if you’re resilient, you’ll be able to push through the tough times and get to the other side.
Life Lessons From Your Coach
Part of being smart is being wise. Some of us get lucky enough to get coaches that are also good at teaching. These types of coaches not only teach you how to play the game, but they also can teach you life lessons as well.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had a relationship like this with his college coach John Wooden.
In Summary
Although basketball won’t make you smarter directly and you have to put in the actual work to be able to get smarter, there are aspects of the game that give you the tools in order to become a smarter and wiser human being.
If you’d like to share other ways you feel basketball may make you smarter leave a comment below. Also take a look at other related blog posts by clicking on the tags below: