Navin Kumar – Parkie Ping Pong Powerhouse

I’ve blogged recently about a local tennis table center which hosts a weekly night for people with Parkinson’s disease.  But now I’ve met, via email, Navin Kumar, a top-ranked ping-pong athlete who not only has Parkinson’s disease but a history of congenital heart problems that resulted in five open-heart surgeries and a partially artificial heart.

Navin qualified, because of his Parkinson’s, to compete at the Paralympics.  He is the first athlete in history to actively compete with PD at the Olympic level.  When you watch this YouTube video, you’ll see how dramatically his tremors dissipate once he takes the ping-pong paddle into his hand.

Navin – and his neurologist – credit his ping-pong workouts for keeping the disease from progressing.  (Note:  He practices up to 20 hours a week!)

Here are some inspiring quotes from one of the many articles about him:

Navin told us: “At every opportunity I tell folks how GRATEFUL I am to have my heart and PD conditions.” Why on earth would he say such a thing? “It is because it’s the DIFFICULT times in life and how we CHOOSE to deal with those difficult times that shape and define us,” he said.

And:

Navin’s experiences with table tennis have taught him that: “there are definite cognitive benefits associated with the sport. Just the fact that the ball moves so quickly and one’s brain has to work so fast to establish strategies for good ball placement and good technique, it’s a no-brainer that table tennis is good for the brain,” he says. Navin is living proof of the benefits of the sport of table tennis.

And what does the doctor say?

Virginia Beach neuropsychologist Dr. Scott Sautter agrees. He describes table tennis as a game of “aerobic chess.” “It’s great for eye-hand coordination, reflexes, balance, planning, strategy and a stress reliever exercising the mind and body in a safe activity,” he said.

Of course, this is backed up by research on ping-pong and the general elderly population.  According to the Washington Post,

Table tennis has been linked to improved cognitive function at least as far back as 1992, when Japanese researchers ran tests on frequent players. Their conclusion: “It is evident from this study that table tennis players preserve far better mental ability even in the older age compared with non-players.”

And then there’s the study of elderly Korean women, which found the following:

[R]esults indicated that table tennis exerted a greater influence on cognitive function than other types of exercise did.

Until last week, I hadn’t touched a ping-pong paddle since I was a child.  But now…now I have, and it seems like a good thing to do.  Not to mention fun!