Do You Hold Yourself Back?

4 crucial reasons to play a sport for academic excellence

Academic excellence is of prime importance to us parents.  For us the hallmark of successful parenting is the child getting into a reputable university for a good course.  All we want is for our children to have a safe and secure future.

However, in our focus on academic excellence, we forget one key element that contributes towards it but is often neglected or ignored. That is playing a sport. 

If you are wondering, what is the correlation between academics and sports, read on.

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Consider this real-life scenario below from one of my coaching sessions:

"He works so hard for his exams. I know he puts in a lot of effort. But on the eve of the test or exam or performance, he gets so nervous that he can hardly function. He would just sit quietly in a corner, paralysed. Or he would be on his device, for hours together." An anxious parent commented.

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It is easy to get nervous when the time of performance comes. The brain goes in what is known as "fight or flight" mode. Our mind has been designed to keep the body safe. When it perceives threat or danger to the body, it kicks itself into actions. It releases adrenaline. The job of adrenaline is to speed up the heart rate and flood our muscles with blood supply. In short, our body is ready to either take off, or fight the enemy. In modern times, most of the signals that the brain receives are not life threatening, they are just perceived as such by us. An example of this is exam fear. The brain cannot distinguish between real and imaginary stress, so it carries out the same mechanism as if were under threat. One would usually visualize flight as someone taking off or running away physically. Shutting oneself off is one of the ways of "flight" or staying clear of the "danger".

So how is this information relevant to our topic of discussion? We are talking about achieving academic excellence. If the brain, which is the central unit for all cognitive activities, goes on a freeze, would it be possible to for the child to reach their highest potential?

There are numerous articles on the health benefits of sports. When we say health benefits, we are usually thinking and talking about physical health and capability of our bodies to fight diseases. The benefits of playing a sport are countless and go far beyond this. In this article, I enlist the contribution sports has on the youth in the development of their physical mental, personal and academic well-being. 

This list is not exhaustive. What I include here are the elements that students need not just to excel in the studies but also to live a confident life in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

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Calm Mind:

The flight-or-flight response (described above) is meant to be followed by a burst of activity. That's the whole point. But the situations we stress about today, which leads to the activation of flight-or-fight response of the brain, does not result in bodily action. The "fight" is mostly done with limited body movement like an exam or a performance. And the same goes for "flight". Most children just end up playing video game to release stress or watch something on the net.

Instead, they should be moving their body. Exercise is a simple and effective way to calm the nervous system. It not only uses the energy created in the body, it metabolizes (breaks down) excess stress hormones. Lower levels of stress hormones mean a calmer body and mind. A calmer mind is a productive mind. It concentrates to its capacity on the focus area. This in turn, contributes to easier assimilation and retention of knowledge. 

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Perseverance and hard work:

Living in the era of smart devices, children today are used to instant gratification. But as we know from our own experience, any form of study takes practice, effort, time and patience. Learning is an uphill journey.

Practicing a sport can come handy in imbibing important life lessons of hard work and perseverance. Any form of sport requires one to practice same movements again and again till it is the way it should be. For example in swimming, practice same movements or the leg movement till you get them right so you can get the stroke right. Getting the stroke right would give speed and elegance. When they see themselves improving, slowly but surely, it is imbibes in them the value of hard, incessant work. It is easier to see the progress that one makes because of regular practice in the physical worlds than in the academic world. The lesson learnt in the sporting world, crosses over to the academic arena and eventually into the professional and personal areas. Perseverance and hard work are essential traits, which once imbibed, manifest themselves in the academic and professional settings also. 

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Social Intelligence:

Social Intelligence, as is obvious from the name, is the capacity to know oneself and to know others. It is also known as street smartness by some people. Quite unlike intelligence, which is inherited, Social Intelligence is a learnt trait. It develops from experience with people and learning from success and failures in various settings. 

It entails following elements:

• Knowing the rules of the games and working with it and around it to your advantage.
• Non verbal cues: 80% of communication is non verbal.
• Understanding what makes people tick.
• Expressing oneself assertively.
• Being aware of what makes other people happy.

Social Intelligence is at the heart of any sport one plays. One needs to understand the rules of the games, follow the instructions and while doing all that learn to use them to one's advantage. Understand the body language and non-verbal cues of the opponent and anticipate their moves so you can plan your move accordingly. Know what makes you teammates and partner tick so that you can have a harmonious relationship and a good game. 

Team sports require you to think about other people while working towards a common goal. Along with this, they are required to deal with competition amongst players, groupism, inappropriate jokes, just to name a few of the challenges. 

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Team Work:

These are the challenges they are going to face when they step out into the real world. Playing a team sport, makes them aware that these things exist. They eventually learn the skills of dealing with these things. (Use life skills like collaboration, thinking on the feet, decision making strategy)

Playing a team sport makes them alert and aware of the non-verbal cues of their fellow players, both on and off the field. While playing team sports, one of the things that becomes very strong is: Communication skills. 

They learn to be a good listen by following the instructions of the coach properly. They learn how to verbally communicate message to their team members depending on each personality. One of the essential parts of communication is non-verbal communication.

Many universities provide opportunities to their students to start clubs of their choice as long as they are able to find people to play the sport.

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If we look carefully, these are the elements that are expected of us in any setting: be it academic (school or college) , professional (work) or personal (family). 

As is evident from above, exercising or playing some form of sport helps in shaping a well-rounded individual. When a child is young, it's a good idea to expose them to a variety of sports rather than pick a sport the parent thinks that would suit them or look good on their resume. The idea is to first get them to develop a love for the sport and physical activity. 

These days there are so many to choose from and most sports have instructors, coaches and institutions providing sporting classes. 

Expose them to team sports like soccer, netball, volleyball, hockey, rugby, cricket, rowing, basketball.

Some of the individual sports one can enrol for: dancing, gymnastics, martial arts, badminton, swimming, boxing, golf, skiing.

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Lastly, gone are the days when Universities used to look only at grades. It is a well-known fact that, all top universities looks at grades, extracurriculars and super-curriculars (what you have done beyond books and classrooms in your area of interest). All this cannot be achieved from only focusing on books and tuitions. One needs an alert and active brain coupled with traits like perseverance and hard work. Sporting activities are a good way to pave a path for that. Not to forget its lot of fun. Encourage your child to develop a love for sport and watch them grow into balanced, healthy citizens of tomorrow. 

Photo Credit: Tom Wang

Do you find it challenging to get your child to do what you would like them to do? Explore our range of program offerings for parents and teenagers. 

By Shalini Bindal

About the Author:

Shalini Bindal is a Transformational Coach certified by the International Coaching Federation (ICF). She brings about change in mindset, behaviors and habits through personal and group coaching sessions (in person or virtual). She focuses her coaching efforts on Parents, Teenagers and Women. Before becoming a Coach, she was an HR professional and a Corporate Facilitator. A mother of 2 teenagers, Shalini has lived in India, Belgium and now Hong Kong.