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How Confused Adults Are Crippling True Athletes.
I was having a talk with my cousin and he was telling me about all his training and preparing he was doing for basketball season. I thought, that’s cool and admirable so I let him continue on. Then his mom came over and started gushing about how much he practices shooting at the gym, and how no one can take him off the court. Once again i’m internalizing my thoughts, and in my mind i’m thinking “There’s kids all across the nation that live on the basketball court, he’s not special.” But of course I didn’t say that, that’s family, I believe he’s special, but in reality that work ethic isn’t unheard of.
So my next question I ask them is “Well, what other sports you tryna play?” The room was met with an eerie silence and I look around wondering what I had said wrong. My cousin looks at his mom and simply puts his head down, but his mom tries to hold her smile as she says “I’m don’t want him to play other sports, cause I don’t want him to get hurt for basketball.” I took a deep frustrated breath and simply shook my head, but then I just smiled and said “OK.”
I’ve played sports my whole life, I went to college to play football, I’ve had a uniform on every season of the year since I was four, but the misconception that you need to train your hardest in one sport to make it, is a sad reality that needs to be addressed. The one thing that people fear is injury when it comes to playing multiple sports, and there’s no need to even fear that, you can get injured by simply stepping off the side walk wrong, so that is a piss poor excuse. Every sport teaches you something about yourself, your body, and your athleticism with each venture you take. No TRUE athlete just plays one sport. Look at Lebron James, he was an all-state football player, and basketball player. Kris Humphries was a nationally ranked swimmer, and basketball player. Deion Sanders played baseball and football. Micheal Jordan played baseball, basketball, and he golfed. You know why these greats all have different athletic backgrounds, because each sport trained their body in a different way for their main sport.
Why do you think you see so many athletes are doing karate, or boxing it’s not just to train, but because they’re training new muscles in their bodies. David West is a professional basketball player who loves to box, because of his passion for boxing and wanting to get better, he is now a golden glove boxer. You know what’s most important about the fact that he is a golden glove boxer, he’s found another passion outside of his job. Regardless of whether you want to look at playing sports as a job or not, just know that it is a job. Everyone needs a vacation and other hobbies outside of there job to keep them from getting burned out. So you need to play other sports just as a way to not only get a break from your job but you will also open up your world and see other things that you enjoy. You know Dwayne Wade wasn’t just a basketball player, he said that his first love was actually baseball, then he actually fell into basketball in his latter years. Me too, football was never my first choice, Baseball was always mine, but I always opened myself up to other athletic adventures and it paid dividends. I didn’t get really passionate about football until my sophomore year in high school. What you’ll find is that most athletes have a very similar story. Most parents and coaches cripple their children athletically by having them commit year round to only one sport. The athlete truly may not get to their full potential because your burning them out day to day with the same routine and that is no good. Even when exercising and you’re trying to either gain weight or lose it, the best thing to do is to switch up the workout so that your body doesn’t get acclimated to a specific routine and you can truly make progress. Lets say your child wants to play football and basketball, but your scared he’s gonna get hit to hard and may hurt something. Guess what, they can get hit in basketball as well, and their career could be over so the injury excuse is just not a very good one. The child may need to get hit in football in order to gain a tougher mentality on the basketball court, but you’re holding them back from that by having him only play basketball. I hope that i’m making sense.
Another way that you’re crippling your athlete is not just mentally but physically as well. Do you know how many different sports teach you how to use different muscles. I’ll give you some examples: Soccer teaches you beautiful and artistic footwork, basketball teaches you leaping abilities and trajectory, football teaches you how to be tough and control your emotion and how to react quickly, boxing teaches you quick reflexes and quicker hands, baseball teaches you great hand-eye coordination, track teaches you how to run and run correctly and you will also increase your speed. So by withholding all these different sports from your child do you see how maybe you’re not truly helping them reach their full potential as an athlete. If the athlete can truly stay active in every sport they will have so many skill sets for their sport that it’s practically unfair for opponents. But you’re afraid that your child will get hurt so you tell them to just practice hard in one sport and they’ll make it. Which I can respect that mentality, but lets look at the reality, the child truly can make it but they need an edge, because their going against kids that have superior athletic genes like Lebron James, Dwayne Wade, Deion Sanders, David Beckham, Michael Phelps, Cristiano Ronaldo, I mean that is very tough competition to go up against. How do you beat out your competition, you make sure that you are more prepared and have a better and smarter skill set than your opponent, then you truly flourish.
Bottom line is don’t hold your kid back simply by being afraid of injury or whatever else you may see on the news. Honestly the main sport that you think your kid should be training for actually may not be the sport for them. Your athlete could truly have a better shot at going to college or to the pros by playing another sport but they’re being told to only train in this sport because it’s their best shot. Parents and Coaches don’t punish your athletes and children simply for being athletically curious, embrace it, and when they come back for the season, you’ll see a more focused and better athlete. Tis’ All, I’m Out
