So your fitness routine is starting to get a bit lonely doing it all by yourself, huh? Perhaps you’d feel more motivated if you had someone to exercise with. But none of the usual high-fitness competitive sports have caught your eye… have you considered handball? Better yet, do you even know what handball is? The answer, sadly, is probably no. This sport is still growing in the United States, but it has numerous benefits over similar activities, especially for the health of the participants.

Handball is very intuitive and easy to pick up. It’s essentially a racket-less version of tennis or racquetball – the ball is struck back and forth from one side to the other with one’s hands. This simple alteration to a classical game setup has impressive and drastic results. While handball is very easy to understand, it takes years to master, and the depth provided by having such direct control over the angle of the ball makes it an experience players keep coming back to. Handball has more tactical considerations than many similar games, is even faster than the already speedy tennis, and insists on building both precise coordination and raw stamina to their greatest possible heights.

Many newcomers will underestimate just how deep handball is, and in doing so get frustrated. Approach the sport with a healthy appreciation for what it requires of your body to climb to victory, and you’ll find yourself enjoying ti much more. The techniques for launching balls and anticipating the trajectories and speeds of oppsing ball launches aren’t things you can master in a day, a week, or even a month. But since all you need to play handball is the ball and an appropriate court-like space, you can start playing at practically any time.

Unlike many sports and exercises, handball works your entire body in many different areas, although perhaps the most highly visible is its improvement to cardio-related functions. It can suitably replace many different kinds of sports or other physically demanding activities, no matter what you used to do to stay in shape. Its superior ability for keeping people in shape compared to other forms of sports and exercise has been praised by pro football players and scientifically proven to be reality by universities. Whether you’re focused on your heart rate, oxygen input, burning those calories, or tracking ventilation, handball does all of it!

Without a racquet or other tool for launching the ball, the game of handball is all up to the bodies of the players. Imagine having nothing between you and the force of a ball launched from an opposing player’s hand. Imagine being able to directly control the ball with the slightest angle adjustment of your palm, or curve of your fingers. That’s the control and power demanded in handball, and many players claim that having such raw removal of artificial barriers make the sport more exciting than anything else they’ve ever played.

There are also almost no serious risks for playing handball properly, which may surprise you. While you may expect impact injuries from the ball striking palms to be common, in fact this doesn’t happen very often at all due to the limited velocity a ball can achieve through hand-based impact in the first place. About the worst you may find at risk for handball are muscle strains to the upper body, but you would have similar risks from pretty much any other exercise that worked the body even half so well. And so, there’s really very little standing in the way between you and handball, and you have a lot to gain from giving it a try. Don’t underestimate the potential advantages just because you don’t see it on tv every day.