47 Child's Play - FUNdamental Lessons from Youth Development in Sport
Purple Patch Podcast
Matt Dixon
4.8 • 647 Ratings
🗓️ 20 November 2018
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Take a moment to revisit your childhood. Do you recall spending hours on end riding your bike around the neighborhood, exploring backyards for unknown treasures, splashing in the pool with your friends, or playing in the snow without thought or fear of the cold?
Ahhh…the glory days of childs’ play.
Hopefully, you engaged in a variety of activities, both structured and unstructured. You likely played soccer, or little league, or swam on your swim team. With luck, those days provided positive memories and awarded many positive traits that you carry with you today related to teamwork, leadership, creativity, passion, resilience and the importance of failure. Yes, the importance of failure.
That is the framework for Matt’s highly personal episode this week about childhood development in sports: the value of sports for children, setting up your kids for long-term performance, and the mindset and approach to being a supporting parent in their journey.
Matt takes on this important topic from three perspectives: as a former elite athlete, as a coach, and most importantly, as a father of a six-year-old son.
- What are the global benefits of participation in sports as a youth?
- Why should you build in unstructured play as well?
- How do you set up your children for success?
- How do you set them up for failure?
The journey of an athlete at any age extends well beyond physical development. It is a gateway of imagination, adventure, and shared journeys. It is a confidence booster and, quite often, a catalyst to problem-solving.
Most importantly, though, it should be fun.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Matt Dixon and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time-starved people everywhere in a great sport into life. |
| 0:20.2 | And welcome once again to the Purple Patch podcast, as ever, your host, Matt Dixon. |
| 0:25.6 | And I want to tell you a little story to start today. |
| 0:28.2 | It's about my son, Baxter. |
| 0:30.2 | You see, a few weeks ago, my six-year-old, future professional athlete, Baxter, |
| 0:35.0 | yes, I'm saying that with an ironic twist based on today's subject. |
| 0:39.4 | Well, he participated in the kids' one mile running race in the days leading up to the Hawaii Iron Man World Championships. |
| 0:46.6 | One mile, as fast as possible. His first race. He began smooth, accelerated like a rocket, and then spectacularly blew up with 100 |
| 0:56.0 | meters to go. Huffing and puffing, he reached for my hand in support, as I, luckily, was running |
| 1:02.1 | alongside pacing. He finished. He got a medal. He smiled. It hurt, but he was proud. After the |
| 1:10.6 | race, I asked him two questions. |
| 1:12.5 | Number one, did you have fun? |
| 1:14.9 | Number two, did you try your best? |
| 1:17.9 | And in a funny way, I hope that these questions remain the two questions |
| 1:22.7 | that I continue to ask through his youth, and no, through his life, as he decides on, well, whatever |
| 1:29.7 | passion he chooses. Today, we're going to talk about kids and athletics, the value of sports |
| 1:36.8 | for children, setting up your kids for long-term performance, and the mindset and approach to be a |
| 1:42.4 | supporting parent in their journey. |
| 1:50.0 | Oh, and at the end, I'm going to tell you the best advice I've been given so far in my journey as, well, hopefully, a supporting dad. |
| 1:52.7 | But before we do that, let's go to Word of the Week. |
| 1:55.8 | We like the way he thinks, serious with a wink. |
| 2:00.3 | Let's open the book. It's time to take a peek it's the dixenary word of the week |
... |
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