One theory for this decline is largely attributed to the inherent dangers present in the sport. Namely, the long-term repercussions related to recurring head trauma. In recent years, prominent figures such as best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell have prognosticated the demise of football. The recent hit movie Concussion also highlighted the possible long-term health consequences from playing football. Even the President of the United States weighed in, commenting, “I would not let my son play football.” Still, despite the violence and potential health consequences, football remains immensely popular as a spectator sport. Of the 50 most watched televised sporting events in 2013, an astounding 47 of them were football games (46 were NFL games as well as the BCS championship game). According to Forbes, the value of the 32 NFL franchises is $62.9 billion That’s nearly as much as the 30 NBA and 30 MLB teams combined. Still as popular as football is, most kids would rather watch it than participate.

Where Have All the Sports Gone?

Some kids may be avoiding helmets and shoulder pads in favor of safer alternatives, but the focus on violence misses the mark of the real issue at large – it’s not just football that is in a state of decline, but youth participation in all major sports is declining. In fact, statistics by the 2015 report by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association revealed a drastic drop in participation over the past five years by children ages 6 to 17. This startling finding begs the question, why? Kids today are more apt to use technology for entertainment, and some point to the rising out of pocket costs for sport participation. Furthermore, kids nowadays have more choices such as new non-traditional ‘sports’ that have evolved in recent years (e.g., lacrosse, ultimate frisbee, Pokémon GO). But statistics suggest that kids play fewer sports in general regardless of which type. Even the ever-popular youth sport of soccer has been steadily declining in youth participation.

The modern model for sport where both winners and losers are equal is an outdated and antiquated concept. Kids don’t want to participate when there is at least a fifty percent chance that they will lose or fail. The harsh reality of sport is an affront to the new-world concept of equality and trophies for all. Team sport is a zero-sum prospect. For every winner, there must be a loser. In individual sport the odds are stacked against participants to an even greater degree. There’s only one gold medalist, tournament winner, or race winner. Everyone is judged or ranked in an individual sport from first to last. With such daunting prospects resulting from sport participation, many kids would rather play games online where they can simply start over when they lose or spend time on social media where they can count friends and “likes.”

Children who learn to handle adversity on the field are more adept to manage life’s struggles. [Photo credit: Pixabay]

But losses, “dislikes,” defeat, and injury aren’t just part of sport, they are part of life. How we face these traumas are the very mark of our character and identity. Hall of Fame basketball player Michael Jordan says, “I’ve missed over 9000 shots in my career, lost almost 300 games, missed the game-winning shot 26 times. I have failed over and over again in my life. That is why I succeed.”

Jordan’s speaks to the crux of the importance behind sport and competition. It isn’t the example of Michael Jordan and his flashy dunks and six championships that are important to remember him by. Rather, it’s the fact that the greatest player of all time was cut as a freshman from his high school basketball team. And not only in sport has Michael Jordan suffered defeat. He lost his father who was tragically murdered by gun violence. From this loss, Jordan recently spoke out against senseless violence and pledged two-million dollars of his own money to strengthen the bond between law enforcement and the communities they pledge to serve. One might contend that the examples of Jordan’s failures tell us more about the man then his wins.

Compete for Life

Now more than ever it’s important to realize the necessity to compete. Globalization threatens our job security, random violence threatens our personal security, and record levels of stress threaten our physical and emotional well-being. We all need to compete to prepare for such rigors, including our kids. According to Harvard scholar and author Hilary Levey Friedman, PhD, who has studied the effect of kids and competition, kids who compete in sports acquire important life lessons, which she calls “Competitive Kid Capital.” Friedman notes five specific lessons that kids need to learn: internalizing the importance of winning, bouncing back from a loss to win in the future, learning how to perform within time limits, learning how to succeed in stressful situations, and being able to perform under the gaze of others.

Furthermore, renowned TED talker and leading expert on vulnerability Brene Brown suggests the most important aspect of becoming whole is experiencing struggle. She writes:

“Hope is a function of struggle. If we want our children to develop high levels of hopefulness, we have to let them struggle…If we’re always following our children into the arena, hushing the critics, and assuring their victory, they’ll never learn that they have the ability to dare greatly on their own”

Of course, if that logic is valid for kids, certainly its valid for adults.

Let Kids Win and Lose

This summer, the Rio Olympics featured athletes in the throngs of ultimate competition – not for fame or money necessarily, but for pride and country. For every medalist, there were dozens of losers. The stakes in the Olympics are high – four years of training boiled down to one moment in time. This is exactly why the Olympics are so compelling. Sometimes in life too, four years comes down to a single moment. Last year, more than 39,000 kids applied to Harvard. Only 2,037 were accepted. Ninety-five percent of the incredibly smart kids who had the courage to apply to Harvard failed. Sometimes you wait four years to fall in love, land that job, or win the big contract. But sometimes after four years of hard work the marriage fails, you get downsized, or you lose the contract to a competitor.

Sport and competition are as important as school, church, and family in preparing us for life. I’m not a parent, but if I were I’d let my kid play football, basketball, tennis, or any other sport for that matter. Competing is an essential part of what it means to be human. The lessons learned from competition far outweigh the risk of injury and disappointment of failure.

Have your kids played outside today?

Protect Your Kids From the Dangers of Taking No Risks

The post The Case for Competition in Youth Sports appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Each child in the study was eight or nine years old and had never performed any training outside his sport. The researchers wanted to determine if strength and conditioning training would improve the performance of these young athletes. They designed a 26-week training program layered on top of the players’ existing soccer-specific training. They broke the players into two groups: a control group of athletes who performed their usual soccer-specific training, and a test group of kids who added strength and conditioning training to their soccer training. The researchers tested each child before, during, and after the program to compare results.

The strength and conditioning program used in the test was very simple. Children trained twice a week for thirty minutes per session. The session involved quarter-squats, jumps, weighted jumps, and sprinting. At the end of the 26 weeks, researchers compared the control group to the strength and conditioning group.

The strength and conditioning group improved in jump height, endurance, and flexibility, while the control group that only played soccer actually became worse in all those measures. Curiously, both groups displayed worse fifteen-meter sprints than before the research. Researchers theorize this might have been due to the changes in height and proportions the children encountered over the course of the test. Nine-year-old children grow quite a bit in half a year, and their changes in proportions seem to have made their sprint times worse, regardless of how they trained.

This research adds to the myriad other studies showing that kids can perform strength and conditioning training just as safely and effectively as adults. Strength and conditioning training is also much safer than traditional youth sports. Rates of injury per 1,000 hours of training are much lower for weight training than sports like soccer. If that’s surprising, run through a quick thought experiment with me. A kid in a gym being supervised by a strength and conditioning professional is well controlled. The professional can precisely monitor loads, reps, and technique. The professional can tailor the training to the kid’s current ability. Now imagine two children running full-speed towards each other on a soccer or football field. When they collide, that is an inherently uncontrollable event with unpredictable consequences. Which carries the higher risk, strength training or sports?

I don’t want to dissuade you from involving your child in sports. I want to show you that strength training is much safer than youth soccer, the darling activity for the kids of thirty-something moms everywhere. So why wouldn’t you want your child to be involved in strength training?

References

1. Carlos Ferrete, et al. Effect of Strength and High-Intensity Training on Jumping, Sprinting, and Intermittent Endurance Performance in Prepubertal Soccer Players. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. February 2014 – Volume 28 – Issue 2 – p 413–422. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0b013e31829b2222

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Kids Who Lift Weights Are Better at Soccer appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Chronological age (the one we normally go by) is not the same as biological age, since some athletes mature physically at a different rate than others. Much like in academics, chronological age isn’t always the best way to determine where a child’s placement in sports. However, most professionals are better prepared to test children for academic placement than athletic placement.

The researchers acknowledged that although measuring bone growth is the most accepted method for determining physical maturation, it is also the least accessible. To measure bone growth accurately requires expensive medical testing. Generally X-rays are involved, and although the researchers in this study stated that the radiation levels are safer than we usually think, it’s something many parents would seek to avoid.

Assessing sexual maturation is another method, but it too can only be undergone in a clinical setting by doctors. This option requires great care and concern for the child’s wellbeing and is less accurate of a method, anyway. Thus it is perhaps the least useful of all methods.

A final method that seems to be both practical and fairly useful, is called peak height velocity (PHV). PHV is the time in a child’s life in which they attain the most rapid height growth. PHV tends to coincide with sexual maturation and rapid changes in bone structure. In girls, this typically happens at around twelve years of age, and in boys at age fourteen, although it can occur more than a year before or after these estimates.

PHV can only be accurately ascertained with long-term height measurements, but is nevertheless a useful method for determining whether or not a child has achieved the level of maturity needed for certain exercise routines. The researchers in this study suggested that hypertrophy-based routines are only useful in youth athletes who are beyond PHV, since the hormones required are not present in sufficient quantities until after that point. The researchers also noted that resistance training is appropriate – within an otherwise safe environment – for any youth athlete. However, the recommended program for children who have not yet reached their PHV should focus more on strength and coordination, as neural plasticity is highest at that time.

So the focus of training should be based on physical maturation, which can occur at various times depending on each child’s individual variations. The simplest and yet highly effective method for determining this seems to be PHV, but it needs to be tested regularly. The most important feature of any youth training program, regardless of maturation, is fun, so keep training positive at all times.

References:

1. Rhodri Lloyd, et. al., “Chronological Age Versus Biological Maturation: Implications for Exercise Programming in Youth,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, DOI: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000000391

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

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