School is out and it is that time of year that has somehow gotten to be known as “summer time” in our land of wet and dry seasons, and moms and dads are going to be busy trying to find “summer camps” to sign their children into.
While the convenience of knowing your child is being looked after and being mentally stimulated in some sort of structured fashion for anywhere between five and seven hours during the workday is a huge relief for the parents, for the child it is an opportunity to change focus from academics to something else, be it music, art and craft, culinary, language or athletics.
Selecting which camp would likely be based on something already known to be of interest to the child. For obvious reasons if your child enjoys playing football, more than likely a parent would put them in a football camp, likewise for swimming, squash or gymnastics.
It is a great opportunity for the youngster to focus on developing their technical intellectual acumen for their sport. Rather than competing for time against the usual victors of school/extra lessons/homework as is the norm during the academic term, the child can switch gears, exploring his potential in a setting outside of the classroom.
While I completely support the use of the July/August vacation time to further your child’s skills in the sport of their passion, I challenge parents to step out of this comfort zone as well for a week or two of this holiday period. Consider taking advantage of this time to expose them to physical activity outside of their main sport. Obviously, the direction in which you take this must be carefully considered as you do not want to enrol a child into something they will miserably endure and instill possible feelings of having misplaced your precious earnings but it is possible for a child passionate about cricket to enjoy spending their time riding a bike or swimming, the physical and mental benefits of which can be easily dismissed.
Most of the injuries that I see with youngsters, particularly teenagers, are related to overuse due to early specialisation. Just to be clear, early specialisation refers to the year-round participation of a child to one sport (jeeze! Just to write that out really emphasises how absurd that notion is for a young, developing body). It is further characterised by such participation at a high level of intensity early in life in both training and competition in order to enhance performance and be a recognised contender in the sport.
Over the past five years or so, the 10-year/ 10,000-hour rule which states that it takes 10 years or 10,000 hours of conscious effort towards practice to reach the highest level of performance has pretty much become common knowledge and accepted truth.
Daniel Coyle, the New York Times bestselling author of books such as The Talent Code, and Lance Armstrong’s War, focuses on this 10,000-hour rule in his blog posted June 7, 2013, called Forget 10,000 Hours—Instead, Aim for 10 Minutes.
In it he mentions the gathering of about 300 coaches, players, general managers, and talent-development experts located globally at the “Leaders in Performance” conference held in New York this year where it was criticised that the 10,000-hour rule has created somewhat of a mindless obsession amongst parents and coaches, seeing programmes that go as far as requiring athletes to clock in and out of their practice times like factory workers with time cards. Instead, they return some of the credit to a focus on quality and not just quantity to create excellence.
In remembering that balance of quality and quantity, keep in mind the counter-effects of early specialization in young athletes. High intensity training before reaching physical maturation increases the risk of injury significantly which can shorten their athletic career and impact on their long-term quality of life.
So, in exploring ways to occupy your child during the July/August vacation, consider making a deliberate effort to step away from their main sport not to hinder the progress but possibly promote it by reminding their muscles of the dynamic other ways it can work thereby returning some measure of balance.