SO, YOU WANNA BE AN ATHLETE?

Unstructured play has benefits for all

It’s a cliché to bemoan the lack of exercise Canada’s kids are getting. They’re chubby and lazy, we hear, sitting in front of the television, absorbed in their smartphones, or playing video games instead of building tree forts and scraping knees as they fall off their bicycles.

But things become clichés because they contain a nugget of truth.

So, yes, 23 per cent of Canadian kids are overweight or obese. They do need more physical activity. Yet it’s not just activity, per se, that’s the issue. As the Citizen’s Wayne Scanlan reported this week in a special series, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. Some children are spending too much time on a single sport.

How’s that a problem, you wonder? After all, if kids are out playing hockey at a special school or enrolled in after-school programming and summer camps, at least they’re getting exercise.

True, but what Scanlan found is that young people overall need more play and less regimented sport. All the hockey camps in the world can’t make your kid into a top-notch or wellrounded athlete. Fundamental athletic skills come from unstructured play — and children aren’t getting enough of it.

As an example, volleyball coach Jay Mooney notes that serving a ball requires a certain amount of technique. But if a youth has generally learned to throw a ball at high speed, that fundamental skill will make for a better volleyball player. If the child never played pickup baseball, or tossed a football around with friends, it’s hard to imagine he or she actually acquired that skill.

General physical activity, not restricted to just one sport, builds something called “physical literacy” — basically, the confidence and ability to participate in activities such as kicking, running and throwing on a variety of surfaces, explains Leigh Vanderloo with ParticipACTION, adding that fewer than half of all Canadian kids are physically literate.

Those skills can be built through a variety of different sports and activities.

“If you are specializing too soon, you do miss out on those other opportunities, so you don’t have that diversification, which is really key to helping you condition yourself into a being a prime athlete,” says Vanderloo.

Schools should offer more activities. And parents should be good role models. They should push their kids to get away from screens and outside screen doors. And since adults have fitness challenges too, they can even go outside with them and toss that baseball. The weather will soon get nicer; now is as good a time as any to start.