Integrating Mindfulness Into Youth Sport Is Necessary.
Allowing for creativity within sport can teach resilience and support good mental health.
Sean Tuohey is the founder of Intellectual Athlete and believes that the mental health challenges of our youth can be helped by integrating more mindfulness into youth sport.
Welcome to edition 203 of The Physical Movement. In edition 195, TPM documented the benefits to mental health of physical activity. Tuohey’s work with the Intellectual Athlete has a supplemental spin on these benefits using mindfulness.
The premise is that youth sport offers opportunities to practice the skills required for resilience. The ability to breath, visualize, relax (forms of self-regulation) and be aware in the moment calms the mind and has shown to have an positive impact on reducing anxiety/nervousness and stress. This ability to self-regulate then translates outside of sport experiences, to those faced in real life.
This is something we see at the pro/elite level, with athletes using sport psychologists and mental performance coaches to help them focus using techniques around breathing, visualization and being in the moment.
For this to occur in a youth sport setting, Tuohey mentions in a recent article in the San Diego Tribune that coaches will need to relinquish some control and allow the young athletes to develop creativity through their play.
This is extremely difficult in the highly competitive year-round pressure filled win at all cost model we see too often. However, developing creativity through play could exist in an environment that was not always coach controlled.
Mini games during practice rather than constant drills are one example.
Using opportunities during competition to teach young athletes how to self-regulate is another. While on the bench in hockey or basketball, on deck circle in baseball or sidelines in football are opportunities to visualize, relax through breathing techniques and be taught how to transfer this to non sport situations like job interviews or taking a test.
From the Tribune article: “This idea is called the Self-Determination Theory, pioneered by psychologists Richard Ryan and Edward Deci. The theory’s fundamental premise is that people of all ages perform better and live happier, more satisfying lives when they experience themselves as living in accordance with their own internal desires and decisions rather than being driven from outside sources by rewards, punishments and demands from others.”
Tuohey’s point is that the “current achievement-based model that youth sport is founded on, delivered in drill format, is churning out a generation of anxiety-ridden box checkers who know not how to think for themselves.”
Solving problems.
Thinking for themselves.
It seems like skills harder to come by in today’s youth, likely because they are not given the opportunity to discover for themselves.
This is where free play came in years ago. Understanding that open play in the neighborhood is gone forever, the solution can then lies in creativity within youth sport.
It is not only about coaches giving up control however, but also about teaching our youth how to clear the brain to support having more fun. This will likely lead to performing better which becomes a positive circle leading to more good things.
In August 2021, TPM published an interview with Coach Doug Mckeen who applied many of these concepts with a focus on better performance in baseball hitting. His focal point is tracking and focus on the path of the ball from leaving the pitcher’s hand to contact point at the bat.
While better performance was the goal of Coach Doug’s methods, the Intellectual Athlete’s Tuohey would likely add that coaching this way teaches resilience, ability to clear the mind, and be in the moment which are the skills that support better mental health overall.
2023 is a different time.
Our youth are facing challenges we never did. The mental health challenges faced are well documented and the consequences are significant.
Integrating mindfulness into our youth sport experiences is a way to help build skills towards resiliency, something that is very much needed.