Sports in childhood

Physical activity

The practice of sport has benefits for all ages, including children. Its practice alone, in a group or with the family helps to promote health. The main benefits in the long and short term are:

• Avoid obesity
• Prevention of osteoporosis: sport helps to have a better quality of bones
• Improves endurance and muscle strength: prevents muscle injuries
• Improves flexibility and agility of the child
• Helps to better develop coordination skills
• Enhance the knowledge of your own body
• Decreased cardiovascular risk: increases cardiovascular endurance
• Decreased risk of some tumors
• Avoid joint problems such as osteoarthritis
• Prevent type II diabetes
• Feeling of physical and mental well-being: improves mood and is a good tool in adolescence to channel all kinds of negative emotions
• It favors social relationships and teamwork: it favors integration in the peer group
• Promotes positive values: respect for the rules, spirit of improvement, compensation for effort and improvement of self-esteem
• Promotes autonomy
• It helps to gain self-confidence, since the fact of overcoming previous challenges makes our child feel capable of facing others of greater difficulty
• It favors autonomy, since our son realizes that he is able to dominate his body in the environment (space, mats, obstacles, jumps, etc.). This makes him aware that he has a great capacity to act independently.
• His improvement makes him feel valued by others: his classmates call him to participate in their games, his teachers congratulate him and his parents too
• It helps you feel brave in different situations, both physical and social, and that gives you security
• Feels more independent, able to decide for himself when and how to act or not to act
• Prevention of drug abuse in adolescents

In the latest surveys, approximately 80% of the population does not engage in physical activity. Children move less and less and lead a more sedentary life. Ideally, your child should have a regular physical activity plan depending on his age: daily walks, outdoor activities on the weekend, and the routine practice of a sport once or twice a week. Spring and summer are good times to start an outdoor sporting activity: walking, walking, hiking, swimming, mountain biking, etc. You have to limit sedentary activities such as excessive television and video games (no more than one hour a day).

Sports in childhood

Physical activity can be defined as any voluntary movement that produces an additional energy expenditure to maintain vital signs. Under this concept we could encompass many daily activities: walking, playing, dancing or practicing some sport. When physical activity is planned and your goal is to improve fitness, it is called physical exercise; a common practice would be practicing a sport regularly.

Parents can guide their children on what sport to practice; in adolescents it is more complicated, since they are influenced by sports or fashionable athletes.

From a perspective of correct child development we can recommend the following:

• Sports without risk, considered beneficial: swimming, cycling, handball, basketball, skating ...
• Controversial sports (depending on the starting age and level of competition): tennis, squash, horse riding, gymnastics on the floor, classical dance, judo, fencing, skiing ...
• Risk sports: rugby, trampoline and lever jumping, weightlifting, wind surfing, water skiing ...

The bases of the healthy practice of any sport in children are:

• The child must be guided when choosing a sporting activity, but always respecting their preferences
• Sports activity has to be in accordance with the qualities of the child and their body constitution.
• You must practice it with a playful nature, without involving sacrifices or suffering.
• It may have a competitive component, but within limits, and of course, we must avoid instilling in it the desire to be "the best, the first, because being the second is a failure." Parents often inadvertently stimulate the competitive instinct and are sowing future frustrations.
• Sports activity must contribute to the integral development of the child. If you opt for a specialized sport, it must be complemented with other activities that neutralize the effects of a specialization and that help to avoid imbalances and physical asymmetries. Swimming is an ideal complement to other activities.
• Bone growth is essential for the child, it must be respected and sports that may be an attack on the growth plates and the balanced development of the bones must be avoided.
• You have to get used to doing the necessary warm-up, preparing the body for the activity that is going to develop, and at the end of it, doing relaxation and stretching.