CORELATION BETWEEN SPORT, KIDS AND COACHES PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

 When it comes to sport and the development of the human brain their are a lot of correlations between the to. Playing sports at a young age teaches kids key development for success throughout life. Socially, sports helps development social cues from within that even the shiest kid can develop into an outgoing individual. Human to human contact is key in the development of children, especially with friends and sports is the perfect environment to reinforce that key development trait. 

Kids who do not play sports often find themselves sitting in front of the television too much playing video games which is in turn hindering their mental capacity in remembering certain things and even staying focused on a certain task at hand. Parents want to do anything and everything to make their kids happy, but too much screen time is just hindering their personal development and can have a long term affect on them mentally. Mentally, you are drained as a result of looking at a screen for too long, mix in video games and you can start to feel nauseous and tired. Switch video game screen time with enrolling into a sport and excelling at it and that mental fatigue will start to go away as a result of the physical activity being done. 

A sport like soccer for example teaches kids a lot about themselves and their personal development.        They can push themselves and when they see their friends on the team excelling as well, the natural compete level goes up. When playing a sport and competing at a competitive level or any level for that matter, be sure to have S.M.A.R.T goals for both yourself as the athlete and be sure that your coach has S.M.A.R.T goals defined for the team as a whole to keep the development at a realistic level. Having goals that are Specific to the team, Measurable to the development, Attainable for the current landscape, Relevant to the specific time and that is most importantly Time-Bound is critical to an athletes growth/development. 

Personal Development Planning include but is not limited to the following: 

1. Self-Assessments - Learn about your skills, personality and interests. 

2. Self Discovery- Identify Strengths and weaknesses by self assessing your skills. 

3. Goal Setting- Develop short term and long term goals to turn your vision into reality. 

4. Action- Work on achieving your personal development goals. 

The above personal development planning is just as current in an athletes development as well. When self- assessing yourself, assess yourself at what you are good at in terms of the sport, your personality towards the sport and what you are interested in learning more about to get better as a player in terms of growing your athletic development. Self- discover yourself by identifying strengths and weaknesses in terms of your skills and work on setting goals in your development as an athlete. Last but not least, this is not done at all without action which requires continuous work on achieving your personal development goals to benefit yourself.

Personal development goes for coaches as well, not just your athletes. Coaches can enhance their growth by educating themselves further, learning from other coaches, assessing themselves weekly of what they are doing well and what they can further do a better job on and have someone at a higher level do an assessment on their coaching. 

Feedback is the most important tool that someone can have for their personal development in anything that they do, but it is extra important in the sport setting. When personal development enhances in kids, it resonates throughout the team and it helps the coaches coach their group easier. Learning how everyone develops, makes it easier to coach your team and understand the strengths and areas of improvement. 

I hope you found this insightful and thank you for reading about the correlation between sport, kids and coaches personal development. 

:)