© 2024 WYPR
WYPR 88.1 FM Baltimore WYPF 88.1 FM Frederick WYPO 106.9 FM Ocean City
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

How Sporty Is Your Sport?

When it comes to sports, there seems to be something for everyone.

There are team sports and activities you can do alone. There's exercise that requires equipment, or none at all.

But how much benefit you get from each one depends on a lot of factors, including how much you weigh, how long you play and the intensity of the activity.

People play sports for personal enjoyment and health, according to NPR's poll on sports and health in America. The poll, done in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, finds that other reasons include losing weight and staying in shape.

So how athletic are some of the sports Americans play? Playing golf burns almost as many calories as baseball. But how does dancing compare with playing darts?

We looked at the caloric expenditures of a variety of sports to see how moderate levels of activity stacked up for the average American woman.

Join us on the video tour created by California animator .

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Meredith Rizzo is a visuals editor and art director on NPR's Science desk. She produces multimedia stories that illuminate science topics through visual reporting, animation, illustration, photography and video. In her time on the Science desk, she's reported from Hong Kong during the early days of the pandemic, photographed the experiences of the first patient to receive an experimental CRISPR treatment for sickle cell disease and covered post-wildfire issues from Australia to California. In 2021, she worked with a team on NPR's Joy Generator, a randomized ideas machine for ways to tap into positive emotions following a year of life in the pandemic. In 2019, she photographed, reported and produced another interactive visual guide exploring how the shape and size of many common grocery store plastics affect their recyclability.