Matthew Bunton
English 1010
Prof. Lanham
19 November 2012
How to become a better sports player There are many ways to train and become a better sports player, no matter which sport it may be. There is weight-lifting, which will build muscles, running, to improve cardio and endurance, and even repetition to drill the body to remember certain plays. However, has anyone ever thought about video games as a way to improve one’s sporting talent? Well, it is true, no matter how absurd it may sound, there are many benefits from playing video games on the physical body as well as mental, so long as it is done in the correct manner. Some benefits include hand-eye coordination, faster response time, and quicker brain stimulation. The only hard part is figuring out exactly where the line is between benefiting and damaging the physical body. The first step to take in furthering one’s athletic ability through video games is finding the right kind of video games. There are video games that can help you, yes, however there are many out there that prove to be unbeneficial and instead tend to kill brain cells. Certain games to look for include first-person shooters (depending on the age of the person playing, make sure it is age-appropriate), adventure games with a moderate amount of puzzles and brain-teasers to figure out, and even just straight-up puzzle games. This step can be broken down into even more categories with today’s technology and can be separated into motion game systems, including Wii, Xbox 360 Kinect, and the Playstation Move, any of the three probably being preferred over sitting games, as these keep your body active as well as your mind (Consumer Reports). According to the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, a maximum of one to two hours a day should be spent on any type of media, whether it be watching TV, playing video games, or watching videos on YouTube. That’s not much wiggle room to use to fit in video games if you also add in watching TV, so one can start there in trying to figure out how to balance physical activity outside of video games and then the activity used during video game playing. If there is only roughly one hour spent a day playing video games, this is not going to hinder the body, and if the correct games are played during this hour, this will be advantageous to you sporting career. As stated before, this will increase your hand-eye coordination, which if you’re playing football, for example, and are a wide-receiver, tight end, or even a running back, will improve your ability to handle to ball and not get booed by the fans in the stadium. Quick brain stimulation is also very helpful in sports because it allows you to make snap decisions in situations where you only have a short amount of time to think about what you’re going to do. For example, a basketball player could be dribbling up the court, get to the three-point line, debate on throwing it, and if he doesn’t make a decision quick enough, could get the ball stolen from him or knocked out of his hands. A video-game playing basketball player could make the decision to either shoot or pass the ball in a split second before the defensive team has a chance to recover, allowing him to either score three points for the team by throwing the ball in himself, or passing it and allowing his teammate to score the three points.
Alternatively, there is always too much of a good thing, no matter how much some people want to believe is false. Excess playing of video games can lead to many negative effects that can hinder your sporting career rather than help it. These effects include: obesity, sleep deprivation, lack of doing other important daily activities, bad attitude and language with the coach, violence, and being socially awkward. Whereas the recommended time is between one and two hours, it doesn’t become excessive until roughly four to five hours a day, and that’s still nowhere near the worst amount of time put into video games.
There are quite a few other gains from video games that do not pertain to sports that also can improve your daily lives. Things like resource management/logistics, multitasking, recognizing patterns, mapping, perseverance, memory, and taking risks are all situations that people run into every day, and video games improve all of these to an extent. They also improve reading and writing skills, as well as vocabulary, which is always useful no matter where one goes in life.
In conclusion, video gaming is not all bad, but it is also not all good. There are extremes to both sides, which is why there is always at least one person picking one side over the other. The people who justify playing video games have perfectly good reasons for justifying them, but they don’t see why some don’t justify video games. On the other hand, people who don’t justify video games can’t see why some people do justify video games. Those who find a happy medium between these two can enjoy life and not worry about such menial arguments. Just keep in mind the fine line between just right and too much, and you can easily improve in your abilities and have fun while doing so.

Works Cited
Consumer Reports “Video-Game consoles: Choose a model with our simple strategy” 12 November 2012, Web. December 2010
Pediatrics “Children, Adolescents, and Television” 12 November 2012, Web. February 2 2001