3 Ways to Develop Athleticism in Kids

When we talk about athleticism in kids, we are mostly referring to their coordination and physical literacy. Kids need the physical competence to play outside with their friends, ride their bikes, go for a swim, etc., normal kid activity. Every parent wants their kid to have the ability and confidence to do these things. Further, every parent wants their kids to succeed in their sporting endeavors, and these same physical skills are the foundation to success in sports.

With that, here are 3 ways to develop physical literacy and coordination in kids:

1.       Go play outside with them. Catch, hide and go seek, tag, kickball, basketball, soccer, it doesn’t matter. All these activities help to develop athleticism in kids, and you being out there actively engaging with them will make them happy and help them develop a positive relationship with activity.

2.       Try a new sport. Pick any sport your kids haven’t tried yet and sign them up for a league, camp, or clinic. Playing a new sport will expose them to new movement stimuli that their body hasn’t been exposed to yet, and will help them develop new physical skills. If you’ve tried every sport, try an active hobby like ice skating or rock climbing.

3.       Sign them up for one of our programs. We help kids develop these underlying physical skills so that they can live normal kid lives and have success in sports, while developing a positive relationship with activity. Many say it’s the most fun they have all week, and by participating, they are setting themselves up to thrive in every aspect of their lives.  

That’s it, 3 ways to develop physical literacy and coordination in kids so that they can live happy, healthy, and active lives. If you want to leave it us, take a peek at all of our upcoming programs.

Sports Should be Fun for Kids

Life should be fun for kids. In my realm, that means creating positive sporting, movement, and athletic experiences that allow them to develop the physical skills they need to live happy, healthy, and active lives.

In order to accomplish this, kids can’t be trained like mini-adults or elite-level athletes with boring repetitive exercises. Frankly, I don’t even do this type of work with my high-level soccer players because this type of work doesn’t actually translate to success on the field.

Instead, everything should be gamified. This means creating fun and engaging games, challenges, and competitions that allow kids the freedom to explore movement, solve problems, and naturally develop their physical competency and athleticism.

Training in this way will create a generation of kids who are:

1.       Physically competent

2.       Less likely to get injured

3.       Love activity

Do you want these types of sporting and movement experiences for your kids? Check out our current programs and sign them up to watch them play their way to physical literacy, confidence, coordination, and a positive relationship with activity.

What Happened to Youth Sports?

One of the reasons I enjoy working with kids is much is because of the constant effort and energy they bring to every session. They are eager to do well and teeming with excitement each time they show up to train. A coach has the opportunity to either enhance or crush that excitement during an athlete’s most formative years. If the coach makes training boring or puts too much value on the outcome at too young of an age, then that excitement is quickly replaced with boredom, a lack of engagement, and a negative relationship with that sport and activity is fostered, causing athletes to be excluded or drop out far sooner than they should. Unfortunately, this has become common practice in youth sports, as many coaches now value winning over development and a competitive team over player enjoyment.

Youth sports should be all about creating positive movement and athletic experiences so that children develop their athleticism and a positive relationship with sports and activity; sports should be fun for kids. Youth sports have become more intense and competitive than they were ever intended to be. Coming from someone who hates to lose, I can understand developing a healthy competitive spirit in kids and teaching them the value of competing hard, but it should never come at the cost of kids hating or being excluded from sports. Nobody remembers the results from their 1st grade soccer games and landfills are littered with past Little League Trophies for results long forgotten, yet we have come to treat winning in youth sports as the only reason to play. Instead, we should focus on providing these kids with positive movement experiences and the physical tools they need to live happy, healthy, and active lives.

The Problem with Early Specialization

One of the many problems facing youth sports today is early specialization. Youth sports were originally designed to be fun, expose kids to a variety of athletic/movement stimuli, and give them positive movement experiences so they can develop a positive relationship with activity. Unfortunately, the model has shifted to one of extreme intensity and competitiveness, putting more pressure than was ever intended on young athletes to perform, succeed, and win. This has led to the need for kids to practice, develop, and specialize in one sport way earlier than they were ever intended to.

This is a problem because being exposed to many different sports is one of the best ways to develop the foundational movement skills they need to be successful in sports and life later down the road.

Beyond that, early specialization also leads to:

·       Boredom

·       Increased dropout rates

·       Missed critical windows of opportunities to learn other skills

·       Increased risk of injury (due to the repetitive nature of one sport and the lack of a well-rounded athletic foundation)

Thankfully, our Little Athlete Academy is designed to combat early specialization and put the fun back in youth sports. Our athletes balance, grapple, jump, tumble, throw, kick, react, dodge, climb, and play their way to physical literacy and coordination.

Don’t believe us? Check out this short clip from a previous program and see for yourself: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn8HArCvbNS/ 

Three Tips to Improve Balance in Children

Last week, I explained why balance is so important to youth athletic development. If you missed it, then you can check it out HERE. This week, I want to give you three tips to develop balance with your kids.

1.       Stand on one foot while brushing your teeth (or doing any other mundane/daily habit such as watching tv or doing the dishes). Challenging them to incorporate balance into their daily tasks are simple to implement and will pay huge dividends in the long run.

2.       Try a new sport or hobby. New sports and active hobbies bring new movement challenges and new balance requirements. Trying a novel movement activity will force the body to adapt to these new stressors. Some less-common sports that really challenge and improve balance are:

a.       Hockey/Figure-Skating/Ice-Skating

b.       Dance

c.       Martial Arts

d.       Rock-Climbing

e.       Gymnastics

As a side note, these five sports are some of the best to develop physical literacy, coordination, and athletic development in children as they challenge the body in ways that align with deliberate youth athletic development. In our Little Athlete Academy, we pull the best aspects from all of these sports and combine it with our own movement-principles to provide young athletes with everything they need to develop optimally and live happy, healthy, and active lives.

3.       Get them off the screens and playing outside. All of the games you and I played as kids helped us passively develop our balance, and unfortunately, kids no longer play the same games. Tag, hide and go seek, kickball, pickle, catch, relay races, and simply exploring outside are all activities that passively develop balance.

There you have it, three tips to develop balance in your children to prepare them for future athletic success and set them up to live happy, healthy, and active lives.

If you are interested in a more deliberate approach, check out our Little Athlete Academy, where we provide young athletes with the best-possible training experience. It may be the best decision you ever make for them.

The Importance of Developing Balance in Kids

Balance is probably the most important physical attribute that needs to be developed in kids. Balance is so important because it’s the foundation of future athletic development. Every athletic movement requires balance. Running, skipping, jumping, throwing, cutting, sprinting, shuffling, and all other athletic movements require a tremendous amount of balance. Even exercises that enhance athleticism like split squats and single-leg dead lifts require a tremendous amount of balance. As children get older, faster, and stronger, their balance demands will increase exponentially. Without developing a solid base as a child, athletes will be left behind on the field of play and struggle to reach their athletic potential.

Even if athletics aren’t your thing, balance is a key factor to living an active and healthy life. Deliberate balance training reduces the risk falling and sustaining an injury. One of the first things adults lose as they age is the ability to balance. Years of developing a solid foundation will lead to a slower decline and will set children up to live happy, healthy, and active lives.

The beauty of balance is it can be (and should be) developed both deliberately and passively. Kids can deliberately train their balance through systematically designed programs and exercises. In our Little Athlete Academy, balance is at the forefront of everything we program. We start every training session with deliberate balance development and get kids moving in ways that greatly develops their balance. Kids can also develop their balance passively through play. Trying a new sport, playing games outside, or taking on a new active hobby will all passively develop balance in kids.

If you are interested in setting your child up to develop their balance, maximize their athletic potential, and live a happy, healthy, and active life, explore our Little Athlete Academy. It may be the best decision you ever make for them.

Three New, Fun, and Overlooked Activities Your Kids Will LOVE this Winter (And you will too!)

With the new year behind us and winter in full-swing, if you’re like most parents, you may be struggling to find new, fun, and engaging activities for your kids this winter. Snow brings sledding, snow-angels, forts, snow-men, and skiing/tubing/snowboarding if those are your things. Winter, however, also limits many common outdoor activities that kids enjoy, and not only is snow required to take advantage of those aforementioned activities (and if you live in New England, sadly, we hardly get snow anymore), they also get old and stale fast, with kids foregoing them in favor of more stimulating screen-time. With that in mind, I wanted to share 3 New, Fun, and Overlooked activities that your kids will LOVE, and you will too because it gets them moving, laughing, and having the time of their life. Fun Fact: if you choose to participate, they will love these activities even more because they secretly yearn for you to participate with them.

1.       Laser Tag. Cheap, easy, and unbelievably fun. Laser tag is SO MUCH FUN. I had the chance to play this summer for the first time in my life, and couldn’t believe how much fun I had. I played three fifteen-minute games, and each game felt like it was 90 seconds. Beyond that, it’s also one heck of a workout. Forty-five minutes of constant moving, cutting, crouching, and reacting to other players will leave you sweaty, smiling, and sore. Jump in with your kids for a great workout, a fun time, and a happy child.

2.       Indoor Rock Climbing. Another activity I just recently took up, rock climbing is one of the three best activities (outside of our Little Athlete Academy) that kids can participate in to maximize their underlying physical literacy and coordination. The body movements used while climbing (hanging, pulling, pushing), are some of the fundamental components of our Little Athlete Academy programming. Beyond the physical advantages rock climbing provides, it also builds fearless and resilient kids, teaching them how to persevere through failure and experience genuine gratification when they do succeed.

3.       Ice Skating. Grab the skates, head to the local rink, and go for a twirl on the ice. Not only does ice skating challenge kids’ balance, coordination, and stamina, it also opens the door to winter sports like hockey or figure skating. New to skating? No problem. Most rinks will have tools to make it easier to balance while learning that can slowly be taken away as your/your kid’s balance improves (kind of like training wheels on a bike!).

There you have it, 3 new, fun, and overlooked activities that your kids will LOVE this winter that gets them out of the house, away from the screens, and moving in a way that develops their physical literacy.

Interested in maximizing their athletic development this winter? Check out the following link to learn more about our Little Athlete Academy and set them up for future athletic success: Little Athlete Academy

Your Fall Season’s Over…So Now What?

As the weather gets colder and fall seasons come to a close, I want to take a few minutes to discuss some viable next-steps for the winter depending on your age, goals, and ability level, to improve at your craft and come back next fall ready to take the world by storm.

First, let me make something extremely clear. I am adamantly against early specialization. For those that don’t know, early specialization is exactly what it sounds like, specializing in one sport at an early age/early in athlete’s development. Early specialization has become a huge problem in this country for many reasons, and is far too expansive a topic to dive into in this blog, but be on the lookout for deceptive coaches pushing athletes to specialize early for their own financial gain. Without going too deep, early specialization leads to overuse injuries, a lack of physical literacy, coordination, and movement development in children, and early burnout.

With that in mind, it’s hard to pinpoint an exact age or ability that children should begin to specialize in one sport, because in an ideal world, they never would. Playing multiple sports allows them to develop their athleticism safely, utilize different muscles/movement patterns, and be introduced to a plethora of different stimuli that force them to solve new problems. Not the mention they will develop great social and character skills by playing multiple sports.

With all that being said, in today’s cut-throat sporting landscape, it’s hard to feel like you child isn’t falling behind if they aren’t investing copious amounts of time/energy to their sport, and it sort of makes sense. At the end of the day, consistent effort will most likely breed success, so the more consistently an athlete invests effort into their sport, the more they will develop. While this principle bears out, an athlete must train smartly to ensure that he/she is developing appropriately and avoiding the common errors of early specialization and winter training.

So, with that context established, let me give you some viable options for this winter to continue to develop without worrying about putting your child at risk or in harms way.

1. If your child is younger than 14 years old, get them in some sort of movement-based program, martial arts, or gymnastic-type training to compliment their primary sport. The components of these kinds of activities will build the fundamental movement skills and coordination athletes need to have success in their sporting endeavors, while doing so in a fun, exciting, and safe environment. Putting your child in a program like this is far and away the best thing you can do as a parent for their long-term athletic development.

2. If your child is 14 or older, get them in some sort of formal strength and conditioning/athletic development program. Do NOT allow them to join the gym on their own, where they will develop bad habits, put themselves at risk to be injured, and most likely set back their athletic development, making them worse at their primary sport. At this age, training harder is not always the best option because athletes typically don’t know what they are doing. Training with smart coaches who will keep them safe, teach them lifting principles, and get them comfortable in the weight room, is a much better option.

3. Look for a 1-2 day/week sport-specific program. Here’s where the magic of balance truly happens. Once your child is playing a different sport/enrolled in some sort of movement/athletic development program, find a program where they can work with a coach 1-2 days/week for sport-specific development. I would steer clear of anything more than 2 days/week, and 1 day/week truly is the sweet spot. It’s the spot where athletes can continue to invest effort and improve in their primary sport, without being subjected to the risks of early specialization.

There you have it. Hopefully you now have a clear picture of what to look for this winter, and what to steer clear of, if you hope to continue your child’s development in their primary sport. As a conclusion, I want to give you as a parent a quick checklist to follow to simplify this process:

1. Enroll child in secondary sport.

2. Depending on age, enroll child in some sort of movement development/athletic development program with a coach who will keep them safe and develop them properly.

3. Enroll child in 1-2 day/week sport-specific development program.

If you want to inquire about working with us for any of these services, please do so HERE.

Thanks for reading, we hope to work with you soon to safely develop your child and allow them to reach their athletic potential and dominate their sporting endeavors.

Until next time,

-JL