How to build an athlete
PERSEVERE: IF YOUR CHILDREN DO NOT CUT IT STRAIGHT AWAY, DON’T ALLOW THEM TO GIVE UP
The question most young parents ask me is: “How do you know what sport to put your child in” and the next question is “When do you tell them that they are not going to cut it and move on?” These questions might seem a little harsh but they are incredibly important queries parents must agree upon.
What frustrates me the most is when parents decide that their child will never be good at a sport because they might have two left feet or that their tennis lessons are not working and their child is not winning or even remotely looking like a tennis player. So, parents take the approach that it “wasn’t meant to be”.
I chuckle to myself at the way parents behave, but as young Jedi apprentices in the making, which they are, one has to be patient in teaching and educating them correctly.
So, let me give you an analogy. Your eight-year-old son comes to you and says, “daddy, I suck at maths and I am not doing well at it”. The teacher is concerned because he is struggling in class and not keeping up with the other kids. The other kids seem to grasp maths a little more easily than he does?
What do you do? If you took the same approach that you did for tennis, your son probably would have to leave school because he would not have persevered enough to develop the skills and tools to understand maths – or any subject, for that matter. Instead, you as a good parent, hire a tutor to teach him the skills he needs to have at the level of the class and his peers. You soon find out the tutor is not too effective and even though she has a bubbly personality and is very likeable, she is not making an impact on your son’s maths. His marks go up but not enough to justify the money you are spending. What do you do now? If you took the approach which you took that your son has two left feet, then he would just not be cut out for maths, and he never will be, so he is better off just doing something else. But, instead of being the good parent you are, you change the tutor by screening them first and making sure they have a proven track record of teaching maths. Perhaps, even asking for a money-back assurance that your child will improve. You hire the teacher, and miraculously, with incredible challenging work and perseverance, soon your son’s marks begin to climb. Your son’s teacher begins to praise him in front of the class. He is solving maths problems on the board and his confidence is growing by the day.
The lesson learnt here is that, you simply don’t give up on maths and you don’t shatter his dreams of becoming a mathematician, engineer or architect. He is only eight years old and hasn’t been through all the development phases needed for him to become an amazing person. Instead you need to take a leap of faith and keep persisting with developmental tools for success.
The next time you see your daughter fall all over the hockey field, don’t you dare think of pulling her out of the sport because she simply doesn’t like it anymore. She hasn’t learnt to love the sport because she hasn’t yet learnt to play it correctly, and that brings me to my next point. When dealing with children, they need to play every sport pre-puberty, and once they get to 13 and 14 years of age, they need to start narrowing it down to what they love the most. As they get older and have acquired years of quality development, that is when they are in a space to say, “well let me try to make the varsity cup team” or maybe “let me give it a go and try become a professional athlete”. Unfortunately, at primary school, the level and quality of coaches is very poor. In their opinion it is not glamorous to coach an eight-year-old. Top performing people want the glory, the professional players and professional teams. The sad reality is that the very best development coaches are needed at youth level. That was and still is the biggest drive in starting my business 14 years ago. We wanted to give the young athlete the very best sports science training at a young age. If we teach the youth of today the right running mechanics, how to jump, how to land and be more agile, then they have years ahead to practice their good technique, which ultimately decreases their chance of injury and increases their chance of sporting success.