A
lot of parents want their children to be serious about youth hockey. There’s
certainly nothing wrong with that. After all, hockey can ultimately lead to
scholarships and to great future opportunities.
With
that said, however, the big mistake that many parents make is choosing to have
their kids focus ONLY on hockey. Some parents won’t allow their children to try
or play any other sports, thinking that the more their children focus on
hockey, the better they will get.
Is
this way of thinking accurate? The answer may just surprise you.
A
World of Skills
One
of the first things to know and understand is that hockey requires all kinds of
skills in order to be successful. These include skills like balance, strength,
and overall power and stamina.
Hockey
practice and training teaches a lot of these skills. However, it can’t teach
all of them, nor can it teach them as fully as certain other sports and
exercises do.
Thus,
when you deprive your kids of participating in other sports, you actually
deprive them of the opportunity to build skills that could be useful to them in
hockey. Think of the coordination that baseball teaches or even the balance of
something like ballet.
Basically,
if your child has a sport he or she is interested in other than hockey, go
ahead and let your child participate. Chances are it will only improve
performance on the ice.
The
Possibility of Burnout
Burnout
is a very real problem among many of today’s young athletes. Kids, as you
probably know, have short attention spans, so it makes sense that they would
quickly grow bored and disinterested if you make them practice the same sport
day after day.
Fortunately,
there’s an easy way to prevent burnout, and that’s by allowing your child to do
other things. If those “other things” include sports, that’s great. As
mentioned, participation in other physical activities will only help their
hockey game.
Even
if your child is interested in totally unrelated pursuits, however, such as
taking an art class or just spending time with friends, allowing these types of
activities can prevent your child from growing bored with hockey and ultimately
refusing to have anything to do with it.
Physical
Injury
Finally,
keep in mind that if a person- especially a young and growing person- does the
same activities over and over again, he or she is very likely to develop
related injuries due to stress and overuse of certain muscle groups.
Injuries
can be serious and even lifelong. Fortunately, if you allow your child to take
breaks and switch up sports, you can reduce the possibility of these types of
injures.
The
bottom line in all of this is that, while it may seem counterintuitive to allow
your child to focus on sports other than hockey, doing so can actually help him
or her to ultimately have great success in the sport, as well as a longer, more
fulfilling career in it.
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