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School Starting, But Kids Seems Out of Shape
by Randy Gardner
School for almost all of our children is just around the corner, with some starting as early as this week.. With this comes the kids getting back into sporting activities.
With my kids it’s soccer. I’m saying that the summer brings a lot of laziness and the kids are not ready to get back into physical condition. It’s funny because this is happening not only with my team but with many other coaches I talk to.
Many have said that they’ve had between five and 10 actually throw up on the first day after physical conditioning and it’s really not even that hot outside.
Is this the start of the demise of the young athlete who excels, I remember training for two months ahead of time just to get ready for the season when I played. I think you have two sets of kids right now, the ones that train and are totally ready to go and then the opposite end of the spectrum where they have no idea how to get ready.
Unfortunately, this leads to a lot of kids getting cut from teams and also getting injured early in the season. It’s a shame that when you start your training programs for the season you almost have to go back from Peg one and start with the physical condition and getting them ready. They should be ready in with the onset of practice that is when you work on specific skills and gain planning, if you’re a coach out there you know exactly what I’m talking about.
It’s almost 2 steps backwards and one step forward. How are you portray this to a parent of a child like this, that is usually where it all starts. A child sees his parents being lazy and in active and feel that they can too. I am curious to see the world of young sports over the next 10 years to see the level of competitiveness if it continues to drop the way it is right now.
I know this column has had me on my soapbox at times, but without that connection to the world with TV and the Internet it really makes you sit and ponder other things in life. I promise next time I will get back to talking about all the sports we love.
Turning Off the TV and Internet
What a weird and wonderful experience I have had over the past 30 days or so. I went from a world of constant TV and internet being on and around to not having either. I have not watched a sporting event, the news or anything. I don’t know what any teams are doing and haven’t been plugged into what is going on around me.
The only thing I have been concentrating on is my family. What a wonderful experience it has been. I never thought that I could even go a day without a tv or internet, but I did and you can. Once you get over the initial shock of it, its actually pretty good. At night instead of lounging in front of the tube, we go for a walk, instead of getting up and immediately getting on the internet, we watch the sun rise and experience what is going on around us. It is a life changing experience.
I know this can’t last forever as I will be going back to normal life here shortly as the kids go back to school and we need to be plugged into the world again, but its sad how we are all so consumed by things other than what is really important in life.
I had a chance to go away a few days with my family and we were sitting at a restaurant and the family next to us were a family of four. Two small kids and a mom and dad, the entire time all they did was play on their phones and not talk to each other. This is what we are becoming, the kids of today do not know how to operate without a wi-fi connection. My 6-year-old is constantly saying, we need our data connection back.
What happened to playing outside in the yard, building a fort and just being a kid. It is all gone. I am trying to find out numbers on recreational kids sporting activities to see if they are going down right now. I can imagine they are as kids just don’t want to be active anymore. It is really sad. I hope if you get a chance, you can unplug for a bit and try and experience life without being connected, its really an eye opener.
