Sideswipe in the NZ Herald featured a reader story where their 5 year old daughter had been given a bracelet by the local gymnastics club which said “Champions train, endure pain, and don't complain”. It highlights many issues around sport, what it's for, and how to approach it.
Athletes from most countries have many advantages over ours – larger populations giving depth of selection, stronger domestic competition, more access to high level international competition and more opportunity to be a professional athlete.
I had the opportunity to speak to a former Chinese athlete about her background; as a primary school student she was selected for a particular sport based on her body type, and taken to a school which combined training with schoolwork. Essentially she was a professional athlete from that age. The training she endured while a member of the national team would not be acceptable here.
This is what our sports organisations' are up against competing internationally – however, only a relatively small number of athletes will ever compete at this level and the vast majority participate for a whole raft of reasons. SPARC takes the widest possible view of sport and recreation and its importance – for 0-5 year olds it makes the following observation “Children learn from movement and physical activity. It is important for healthy brain development that children move“ - a healthy population is one where everyone is physically active.
Achievement at the highest level by a country's athletes is good for the national psyche, and as our sports are dependent on people voluntarily joining international success is an important draw-card, so there can be an emphasis on how athletes at this level train. The trick for sports organisations is to cater for all level of athlete, while ensuring that potential high performance athletes are identified and developed early enough to have any chance at all against top level competition.
The tone of an organisation's approach is set in its policies. For example, TNZ has a code of practice for coaches that includes the statement “The overarching principle is that Taekwondo training and competition should be a positive, fair, healthy and enjoyable experience for all involved”, and principles that include “Coaches are responsible to ensure that the health, well-being and development of players takes precedence over the win/loss record” and “Coaches provide a physically and emotionally safe environment for training and competition”.
How an organisation structures its teaching is also instrumental in ensuring all groups are catered for; best practice is to divide the athletes training by age into a number of broad categories that reflects their development in the sport. At primary school age the focus is on learning basic skills and having fun - “training to train”. Once the athlete starts to physically mature the focus comes on ensuring that they adapt to the physical and mental requirements of the sport - “training to compete”. As the athlete peaks physically and mentally in their early twenties the focus changes again - “training to win”. This ensures that all the sports participants have a solid grounding in the basics of the sport, and as they age it streams them into an appropriate level of competition.
We improve physically by adapting to stress, once the stress is removed and the body recovers. Athletes will usually as part of their training diary complete a “rating of perceived exertion” to ensure they don't overtrain i.e. they don't stress their body past the point of adaption and towards failure. Stressing the body causes pain the athlete must work through – but pain can also mean there is something wrong; body imbalance caused by the specific demands of the sport, stress fractures or any number of problems. Pain is like the yellow traffic light – a warning. An experienced athlete with good support staff will ensure that they only suffer “good” pain. The key is good communication – it is beneficial to “complain”.
Yes, New Zealand suffers great disadvantages competing internationally. But good practice for children is to put the focus on learning and having fun rather than the deadly earnestness of competing, to provide a safe environment, to ensure that their physical adaption is balanced and not causing them injury, and to listen and have a dialogue with them about their experience; something I find one of the most rewarding parts of coaching.
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