Fitness and focus for kids

There is a window of opportunity in a child's forming nervous system to enhance athletic capability. A byproduct of specific movement practices is that they will also increase mental potential. This means that by encouraging a routine of certain simple exercises, your child not only has a better chance of getting picked for the team, but their schoolwork will be enhanced as well.

When we are born and our growth journey begins, each system forms daily. Our bodies are laying down a foundation -- let's refer to it as our electrical system. It is the stimulation of movement that generates a natural maturity of our nervous system. It is our nervous system that determines factors such as:

Mental:
• how we learn to deal with stress and stressors
• focus/concentration
• listening
• thinking
• remembering

Physical athletic abilities:
• balance/equilibrium
• agility
• read and react skills
• hand-eye co-ordination
• gross motor co-ordination

This is a condensed list -- there are many others.

A very important milestone for your child is crawling. The act of right arm, left leg and then switching facilitates the right and left side of the brain to co-ordinate efforts. The action of crawling is a stage to encourage. There are many cases of children that exemplify lack of co-ordination at a later age, if they neglected to crawl. An example is during a BLAST Sport & Fitness session with teams of 'seemingly' athletic children enhancing secondary fitness components such as balance, agility and co-ordination. Often during the straightforward co-ordination hurdle drill, those that failed to crawl as a baby now exhibit confusion, discomfort and frustration. I often look for the origin of a problem and when I ask, 90 per cent of the time the parents' response is that the child started walking and never crawled.

Don't worry if your child skipped this stage -- we will give you some routines that will help enhance these abilities. It's helpful if you are able to work with your children earlier, before the age of 12, before the nervous system is fully developed.