Are you stressed about your teen being less interested in sports? Do you think that your teen is not that active as he or should be? Are sports and physical activity the first priority of your child? Are you struggling up with all these questions in your mind? Just relax, this is the common issue nowadays that parents are facing.
Teens playing sports offer more than just physical benefits for kids who participate in the activity. It also helps them emotionally and mentally as well. There are also social aspects of team sports that children will enjoy when they get to know about it. The positive experience that sports and an active lifestyle bring play an important role in a teen’s life.
In this article, we will focus on the various amazing benefits of playing sports for teens. It will also focus on the ways that can make the teens engage in sports and physical activity as this a challenging segment for today’s parents.
Reasons Teenagers Should Play Sports:
Being a teenager is challenging and more challenging for parents to engage their kids in sports activity. Adding athletics to the mix to kids can seem like a tremendous feat for the parents. The Student-athletes have to balance academic loads, their complex social lives, and extracurricular activities while maintaining a demanding physical training regime for their sport activity (R).
Keeping the athletic team a practice schedule is not just difficult for teens, but also for parents who often shuttle teens to and from practice and competitions. Life would be so much easier for parents to enjoy a lazy Saturday or Sunday at home without stress, instead of being at a tournament, meet or competition.
Check Out These Amazing Benefits Of Playing Sports For Teen
There are so many reasons teenagers should play sports and has a lot more benefits from it also, the benefits of sports for adolescents are as follows:
Benefits of Sports for Adolescence:
1. Self Esteem:
Self esteem is one of the best and important benefits that are learned or adopted while playing sports for teen. When a teen wins while playing a game with his team, he/she feels accomplished and recognized by it. Even when he doesn’t win a game, he can learn a valuable lesson from it that you can’t win every time. Losing with his team can also increase self-esteem, as he learns to hold his head high and feel proud for trying his best. The best part is that your teen will come to know that everything he can do rather than focusing on “can’t”. The gestures like high five, thumbs up, pat on the back are some of the simple ways that can build confidence in kids.
2. Team Work and Problem Solving Skills:
The very best benefit of playing sports for an adolescent is learning how to work within a team. While playing a sport, an individual learns to relay and depend upon each other and motivate for one with others in order to accomplish a single goal. This helps them to adopt true sportsmanship. Through sports, the individual actually comes across a life lesson of teamwork. The teamwork what they learn through playing sports will also carry forward with them into the working world. Through playing sports, your teen learns to work with others who may have a different background or skill set than their own, but who can, when working together within the group, make great things happen successfully.
3. Academically:
There is a close relationship between the teen who plays sports are quite good enough in academically (R) too. The reasons behind it are playing sports always focus on memorization, repetition, and learning skills set that are directly related to academically of class work. The determination and goal-setting skills sports requires can be related to classroom teaching. The recent research on the neurological benefits has demonstrated the brain-enhancing benefits of exercise (R) that works great at a cellular level resulting in enhancing the brainpower. In contrast to the dumb jock stereotype, of being involved in sports not only help in cognitive performance but also lead to improved academic functioning (R).
4. Friendship:
Playing sports enable teens to create friendships. The friendship develops when teens play together from different schools, backgrounds, communities, etc. The friendship that they gain continues even if they don’t play quite often. It is a life lesson for the kids.
5. Time Management:
The adolescents who play sports learn time management. Natalie Hawkins found that teens of sports-minded children would often hold of accountable when it came to getting to practice or games (R) on time. Playing sports teaches time management and commitments. Focus and time management are two important and crucial traits in adolescents who get things done and accomplish their short and long term goals. Teammates often support each other on and off the field, helping one another keep track of schedules and academic responsibilities.
6. Better Communicator:
Playing sports put the teen in many social situations where they need to express themselves and explore others as it promotes teamwork and foster relationships with one another. Kids also become better at communicating with one another. Playing sports also instills self-esteem and self-confidence. Children not only communicate better but they do so with great confidence and grace.
7. Regular Exercise:
Regular exercise is one of another benefit of playing sports for teen. This build up their level of stamina in them. Playing sports helps your teen to stay healthy and physically active. The ideal body weight helps the teen to ward off diseases associated with obesity. Playing sports will help the teen to burn the calories that make them obese.
According to the Mayo Clinic, physical activity helps control weight, combats health conditions and diseases, improves mood, boosts energy and promotes better sleep. The health advantages (R) of participating in a sport far outweigh the dangers of actual injury.
8. Teach Respects:
One of the important aspects what sports teach us is respect. It teaches the value of how to take and give respect to one another. Sports just not teach kids the fundamentals of playing, but it also instills respect for authority and rules among the players.
At a very young age, the teen who plays sports learns the consequences that come with not following the rules and regulations. The teens playing sports are taught to respect their coaches who guide them and the officials who work to ensure the games are fair enough. The teen also learns good sportsmanship and to treat their opponents respectfully no matter whether they win or lose a game.
9. Decrease Risky Behaviour:
The very best reason a teenager should play sports is that it decreases the factors that are related to risky behavior. According to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, the youth sports helps to deter negative behavior, such as joining a gang, explosive to drugs and alcohol, excessive smoking, etc as competitive sports provide an outlet for expression, friendship and controlled aggression. Teens who have positive influences and friends feel less of a need to participate in risky behaviors (R).
10. Reduce Pressure and Stress:
The best benefit that contributes while playing sports for a teen is that it burst or reduce pressure and stress. It maintains a healthy mood swing with pleasant emotion. Stress is the way in which our body responds to any kind of demand or threat. Stress triggers the fight or flight response in order to fight the stressor and this is possible only by playing sports. When the teen feel pressure or stress, they can call up their teammate, and head to the gym and play it out.
11. Coach:
Most trainers and coaches act as role models for teens who are playing sports. Your teen may not listen to you, but he will not say no to his coach and act as per the coach instruction. The teen’s coach will mentor him and teach him about the importance of discipline in life and future .for Providing wisdom and encouragement the coaches can be a very good role model. The relationship that the teen develop with your coach is very important to the success of the team and playing sports. Positive coaching helps to bring the team together and gives players all the right tools to push themselves academically and physically.
Health Benefits of Playing Sports For Teen:
Some of the health benefits of sport playing for children include:
- reduced risk of obesity
- increased cardiovascular fitness
- healthy growth of bones, muscles, ligaments, and tendons
- improved coordination and balance
- a greater ability to physically relax and, therefore, avoid the complications of chronic muscular tension such as headache or backache
- improved sleep
- mental health benefits, such as greater confidence
- improved social skills
- improved personal skills, including cooperation and leadership.
Reducing inactivity may be more effective in achieving overall increases in energy levels in a young teen than putting the emphasis on increasing involvement in sporting activities. Taking steps to reduce children’s sedentary time is too important.
Mental Health Benefits of Playing Sports for Teen:
It is found that regular playing sports have many positive effects and benefits. First of all, playing sports results in overall improved psychosocial health. Specifically, sportsperson experience lower levels of depression and anxiety (R) than nonathlete sportspersons. Team sports demonstrate even more benefits than more solitary activities. Some researchers speculate found that it is due to the social aspect of being on a team. Others go so far to highlight the importance of adolescents or teens participation in team sports suggesting it is essential for their development in the social realm of a child.
Interestingly researchers have found that children who participate in team sports are more socially advanced than the nonsports participating peers and children. Sports playing involvement promotes mentorship and sportsmanship relationships and also provides the teen with many opportunities to navigate various social situations. The teen behaves to be decisive and work as a member of a team. It results in adolescents who are more competent, decisive, better at managing their time management while providing teens with a sense of community and belongingness in teens.
Sports for Teens:
The teen will highly benefit from playing one or more of the varieties of sports:
- Basketball
- Cricket
- Football
- Athletics
- Tennis
- Badminton
- Volleyball
Sports safety Tips:
There are certain sports safety tips that are needed to remember or followed. They are
- Always wear appropriate protective gear.
- Mouthguards should be worn for all contact sports.
- Wear knee, elbow and wrist guards for all sports that include a risk of falling, such as inline skating or skateboarding.
- Wear shin pads for sports like hockey, softball, and cricket where injuries to the front of the lower leg are relatively common.
- Helmets can reduce the risk of eye and face injuries.
- Make sure to thoroughly warm-up and cool down.
- Cross train with other sports to ensure overall fitness and strength.
- Use good form and technique.
- Allow adequate recovery time between sessions.
Sports has an ample number of benefits and plus points in a sportsman’s life. From the above article, you can draw the idea behind the amazing benefits of playing sports for teen. The article also focuses on the best sports for a teen that they need to focus on in order to gain their physical activity and strength.
