I came across a short story today in my in box. I believe strongly that children are often pushed to be in just one sport like basketball, football, soccer, hockey in hope by their parents that some how the will be the next Crosby, Bries, Beckham or Bryant. WE HAVE BECOME TOO STRUCTURED AND IT IS KILLING ATHLETICISM IN OUR KIDS.
So everyone knows this is my son having fun running and playing with the agility ladder when he was 1.5years old. We did not force him he just started playing on it and having fun.
Think back to you youth, did you always play organized sports. Yet with our busy lives we are now driving our kids to only structured sporting events. The youth of today is not playing outside as much with their friends they have play dates now. Did you have play dates as a kid? I think Not! You told your mom that you were going over to Mikes or Matt's or Jane's house then going to the school play ground to play soccer, or the back ally to shoot hoops or play street hockey. And all the kids from the neighborhood would show up, some were even a few years older then you right!. So WHY do we do it to our kids.
You might want to call me a hypocrite as I do have parents paying me to train their over structured children. But I will say that we try to break up the structure with them to help them develop better motor patterns and learn how to move first and i encourage all my young athletes to play more that one sport.
And just so you know HOCKEY KIDS are usually the worst coordinated when is comes to running movement patterns and body control. As many of them do so much skating that they are not developing muscle to run and cut directions and move well off the ice also affects them on the ice.
Why well think of this hockey skates lock your heal in so you have no plantar flexion in the foot (foot pointing) and the power come from a sideways 45 degree movement from the hips. so they become hip walkers. So please get your kids playing at least street hockey and some other sports.
Neurologically children develop best when they are learning to move in multiple ways and directions without structure.
Think about the best athletes through out history Pele, Gretzky, Jordan etc. do you think that the became great just by doing structured organized sports and agility drills, and team practices, hell no. They learned on the frozen ponds, the beat up courts and the make shift dirt fields with divots and no shoes and a ball the didn't role true.
So getting children involved in multiple sports will help them develop athleticism and coordination. My favorite sports to expose kids to are Recreational gymnastics develops connection through out the body upper and lower, swimming is a skill that all kids need and develops coordination, soccer develops coordination and fine motor control in the legs unlike any other sport, and running in multiple directions because everyone should learn to run and move with grace.
But more importantly we need to keep encouraging our children to learn to play in unorganized pick up games of hockey, basketball, soccer and other activities because this is where imaginative play happens and real skills are created away from the eyes and ideas of adults. It gives them confidence to try new things and tricks on the field with out the perception that they have failed. Otherwise we will have failed to create athletic individuals of the future.
so here is the story.
"There's no research to suggest that young kids who love their sport will risk burnout, says Joe Baker, a professor of Kinesiology and sports health in York’s Faculty of Health, in a Globe and Mail story Aug. 26 about the impact of year-round sports and the pressure to excel on young athletes.
But even if a child is mentally and physically prepared for a hectic sports schedule, new research suggests throwing a kid's sports eggs in one basket can make him a worse, not better, player.
Baker has been collecting data on athletes considered the best of the best. "Some of the data we have shows they spent a lot more time playing at their sport in an unorganized way," he says. Fewer rules and drills appears to promote a flexibility in the way kids think about problems on the court or rink."
So let your kids play.
I know that the best player I every played with and against played multiple sports had imagination, speed, coordination on the field and that they developed it through play and not through structured drills and agility exercises.
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