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Journal

2011 | 12 | 1 | 24-30

Article title

"You Think You Are Too Old to Play?" Playing Games and Aging

Content

Title variants

Languages of publication

EN

Abstracts

EN
Health deteriorates with age due to hormonal changes and reduced physical, mental and social activity. In turn, this deterioration can lead to a wide range of problems including a fear of undertaking any forms of physical movements. Reports from exercise-based studies indicate there might be considerable improvement with appropriately programmed exercise workloads. However, the lasting effect of such programmes seem to be doubtful as a lot of the elderly drop out along the way, sensing it to be too "organized" and too stressful. Therefore, we claim that some traditional games, as a form of physical activity, can serve its role in engaging elderly adults. They do not require high level of specialization and technical perfection and may also be useful as a form of physiotherapy, particularly with elderly individuals who suffer age- and health-related problems.Play as a form of physical, playful activity is essential for healthy development of any individual as it seems to facilitate the linkages of language, emotion, movement, socialization and cognition. As a movement activity, it is a rather free-spirit activity that makes a positive difference in brain development and human functioning. Although rooted in biological aspects of life, play needs to be associated with cultural aspects of human development. Especially with the elderly population, this social and also cognitive stimulation is sometimes more important than physical. So in our paper we ask: what potentially positive effects can a traditional play/game have on the elderly people?Since there has been no research on the health-related effectiveness of such games, in this article we will highlight this problem from a number of different angles as a proposal for various community-based exercise programmes. This will allow us to design and adapt those games, specially to the health needs and social interests of this particular section of the population. It is also meant to serve as a proposal for potential future research.

Keywords

Publisher

Journal

Year

Volume

12

Issue

1

Pages

24-30

Physical description

Dates

published
1 - 3 - 2011
online
14 - 3 - 2011

Contributors

  • Department of Olympism and Ethnology of Sport, University School of Physical Education, Poznań, Poland
  • Department of Methodology of Teaching Physical Education, University School of Physical Education, Poznań, Poland
author
  • Department of Sport and Exercise Science, University of Stuttgard, Germany

References

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Document Type

Publication order reference

Identifiers

YADDA identifier

bwmeta1.element.-psjd-doi-10_2478_v10038-010-0030-2
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