Day +1780 : Sport stacking

I am fine today.

My wife purchased sport stacks for our children. It is a game that involves stacking specialized plastic cups in specific sequences in as little time as possible. The set including the cups and an electronic timer cost RM225. More information about the game is available here.

There are many benefits to play the game, and I quote from Wikipedia the following benefits:

Proponents of the sport say participants learn cooperation, ambidexterity and hand-eye coordination. Scientific research actually confirmed these claims:

• A university study by Dr. Brian Udermann, currently at the University of Wisconsin-Lacrosse, confirms that stacking improves hand-eye coordination and reaction time by up to 30 percent. (published in the scientific Journal "Perceptual and Motor Skills" in 2004 ^[12]
• An EEG-study by Melanie A. Hart, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Health, Exercise and Sport Sciences at the Texas Tech University support the claim that cup stacking does utilize both sides of the brain. During the left-hand condition, activity in the right hemisphere was larger than the left, while for the right-hand task, the left hemisphere was greater than the right. Their scientific poster on that topic got awarded by the AAHPERD ^[13][14] On the other hand, Hart could not get the same results as Udermann when studying improvement on reaction time.^[15]
• A third group (Gibbons, E., Hendrick, J. L., & Bauer, J. State University of New York, Cortland) studied the effects on the reaction time and confirmed Udermann rather than Hart, stating "that the results agreed with the claims made by Speed Stacks, in which practicing cup stacking can improve reaction time." ^[16] They also state "Even 60 minutes of cup stacking practice can improve reaction time in young adults."
• The Department of Kinesiology of the Towson University, Towson, MD studied the influence of participation in a 6-week bimanual coordination program on Grade 5 students' reading achievement with Sport Stacking being the bimanual activity. A significant increase was found for the experimental group on Comprehension skills, proving that Sport Stacking may improve students' reading comprehension skills, regardless of sex. Published June 2007.^[17]
• In 2007 Cupstacking itself got a scientific test in a study at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.^[18

There are plenty of videos on youtube that shows how the game is played, and I choose one of them here for your reference.

See you next post :-)