This week, we had the pleasure of sitting down on our podcast with longtime IPC member and friend Anthony Federico to discuss a variety of topics that got me fired up and inspired to write this blog post. It’s been amazing to watch him pursue a career playing the sport he loves and make a living doing it, and an honour to play a small part in the process. It was equally powerful and refreshing to recount all of the lessons he’s learned through the trials and tribulations of pursuing a professional football career. While there is certainly no athlete who ever had an easy path to the pros, Anthony’s journey has been tougher than most, chock-full of trials and tribulations that likely would have deterred many people from persisting: but not Anthony. Today, we’re going to discuss some of the main reasons why today, more than ever, our youth NEED to be involved in sports!
One of the most obvious, but arguably most important, reasons for kids to participate in sports is to help them maintain a healthy bodyweight and overall lifestyle. Childhood obesity rates are at an all-time high; it’s estimated that obesity rates among children have nearly TRIPLED in the last 30 years! This is due to a variety of factors, including (but not limited to) more sedentary lifestyles and poorer food choices being made. It’s also understood that the majority of youth who struggle with obesity will unfortunately likely continue to do so in their adult lives. As we know, obesity can lead to a variety of other undesirable health outcomes such as high blood pressure and heart disease, type-2 diabetes, sleep apnea, bone and joint problems, reduced balance, low self-esteem and poor body image, depression, and more. While certainly not the only way to be active, sports can be a fun and engaging way for many to do so.
While kids could certainly just force themselves to exercise in order to maintain a healthy bodyweight and lifestyle, sports provide so much more than just the physical aspect. There are so many lessons that can be learned and skills that can be practiced through sport participation that will transcend into the rest of your life. Speaking as a former university-level athlete, I sincerely believe that there is no better medium in this world to learn and practice these skills and habits.
Time Management and Accountability
As an athlete, you will be forced to learn how to effectively manage your time. Especially for those that make it to the varsity level, athletics can occupy 30-40 hours of your week: sometimes more. That’s like a fulltime job in addition to all of the school work you’re doing! You’re held accountable to being at practice, team lifts, and film sessions on time, all the while maintaining a high academic standard to be eligible to play your sport. Not to mention, athletes are not allowed to receive full-ride scholarships like our American counterparts, so many of us also held part-time jobs on top of everything else going on. While difficult at the time, this lifestyle and these demands certainly prepare you for life after sports.
Thick Skin For The Win
Athletics also provide one of the best opportunities to learn how to give and receive feedback. Coaching can be harsh at times, but we encourage athletes to always hear the message, not the tone. For the most part, coaches who are being hard on you truly believe in you, care about you, and want to see you succeed. An athlete who has become accustomed to receiving this frequent feedback will be better equipped to do so in the working world upon graduation.
Additionally, the best coaches I’ve been around will also frequently ask for athlete feedback. Whether it be feedback on practice plans, film sessions, or tactical preparation, good coaches realize that communication should be a two-way street; after all, they’re not the ones on the field on Saturdays! While this can be nerve-racking initially, it once again serves as a unique and powerful opportunity to learn how to have adult conversations that may not always be easy, but are necessary.
The Highs Are High, The Lows Are Low
Playing competitive sports teaches our youth how to work hard, especially when things aren’t always going well. Anybody can work hard when the team is 10-0; what happens when we’re 0-10? Life won’t always be easy, and we need to be able to work hard regardless of circumstance; sport offers us a very unique and powerful opportunity to learn how to do so.
Confidence: Flexing The Mental Muscle
Sports can also help foster and build confidence. Whether you’re the MVP of the league or the athlete who started the year out on the bench, worked their ass off, and earned some playing time, sports can teach you how to work towards something and improve confidence from it. Joe Kenn said it best; we may not be able to concretely prove that improving an athlete’s squat or bench press makes them play their sport any better, but experiencing the process of working hard and improving in any aspect will give them newfound levels of confidence.
Your Network Is Your Net Worth
Sports also provide a very unique and powerful opportunity for networking. Whether you’re a high school athlete looking for a summer job who gets hired by your coach or a parent on the team, or a recent university graduate looking to enter the workforce, using sports to build your network is paramount. After all, your network determines your net worth!
Communicate, Collaborate, and Compete
Sports will teach you how to communicate, collaborate, and compete, especially with people from all different walks of life who you may not always be best friends with or agree with! This skill will become especially handy in the work force. It’s not natural to expect to be on a team or staff with 10, 20, 30, maybe even 90 other people and be best friends and get along with every single one. What keeps everyone on the same page, though, is the constant reminder that we’re all working towards a common goal, be it athletic or professional. We must remember that no man is above the mission. There’s also power in the shared suffering that you go through as an athlete, knowing that as hard as you may think you have it at times, the guy or girl beside you is going through the same thing.
STUDENT-Athlete
Athletics can also be a powerful tool to assist athletes in pursuing a postsecondary degree or diploma who otherwise may not have. I’ve met plenty of athletes over the years who admitted they never would have even gone to College or University if it wasn’t for their desire to play their sport at the highest level: not only attending classes and scraping by, but maintaining minimum academic requirements to be eligible to play and receive scholarship money. Upon completion of your athletic career, you’ll have not only an athletic career you can be proud of, but a degree or diploma that will set you up for lifelong success in the working world. You’ve got to use the game, because the game’s going to use you.
Active for Life
As strength and conditioning professionals, we hope to encourage life-long healthy habits. Our hope is that having played organized sports will help teach our athletes not only how to train for performance, but will engrain these habits into their routine to help them remain active and healthy for life. We all hang up our skates or cleats at some point, but the hope is that our healthy habits last forever.
Team vs. Individual Sports
Oftentimes, arguments are made for and against participating in team sports vs. individual sports. Each have their own individual benefits, so I say: why choose? As mentioned above, the team sport environment will force you to learn how to collaborate and communicate with a variety of individuals to work towards a common goal, which is very transferrable to life after sport. Having said that, there are also plenty of benefits to playing an individual sport where you have to learn how to take all of the responsibility for your process and outcome (both good and bad). In a perfect world, when possible, I would typically recommend an athlete tries to play at least one individual and one team sport while growing up to get the most out of both their athletic and personal development.
A Caveat
Please notice that in the title of this blog, I never said every youth athlete needs elite sport. While post-secondary athletics (and beyond) is the goal for most of our competitive youth athletes, it statistically will not happen for every single one of them, and that’s OK! All of these lessons can certainly be learned from playing high school and club sports as well. For any of our youth out there who may read this and be discouraged if they haven’t found their sport yet, please don’t give up. I truly believe there’s a sport out there for everyone; you just might not have found it yet!
In Conclusion:
While we hope to encourage healthy habits for the entire lifespan, sports provide a host of benefits that simply exercising alone may not. The most important one, that I purposely left until the end, is the FUN factor. In the pursuits of wins, losses, records, scholarships, and contracts, we must never lose sight of how FUN sports can be. Sports allowed me to make memories that I’ll never forget and friendships that will last a lifetime, and for that I’ll be forever grateful.
