Competitive sports started in childhood have many advantages, but they can easily become harmful if the special individual aspects of the athlete’s child (individual abilities, psychological and anatomical features, gender, age, biological development) are ignored.
Does it reduce stress or increase it?
Advantage: sport helps to deal with school expectations, family conflicts, and other psychological negative effects. Protects against mental disorders (depression, addiction), relieves stress, and relieves anxiety.
Yes! Competition at the level of elite sport, and the result of coercive stress, can adversely affect the mental balance of an immature athlete. Training can provoke adverse effects, for example, even if the degree of load on the athlete is not adjusted correctly. The definition of the latter is in the competence of the coach, to which he can help, the performance physiological survey. In doing so, objective parameters can be used to determine the level of fitness, which can be the starting point for the development of an appropriate training plan to avoid overload.
How does it affect personality?
Advantage: by completing the challenges, regular sports also have a positive effect on self-confidence, in addition, it educate hard work, self-discipline, perseverance, willpower effort, and teaches fighting. In addition, there are many opportunities in sports to practice solving situations that require risk, courage, determination, and concentration.
Yes! Intense sports activity can disrupt self-esteem, especially if the child is unable to meet coaching and parenting expectations. This can cause defeat and failure.
What about body image?
Advantage: sport directly helps the acceptance of the body, the formation of a healthy body image, and strengthens self-acceptance.
Yes! It is common for athletes to struggle with a body image disorder, in fact, in many cases; the sport itself can be a tool in maintaining this distortion. For example, the physical expectations of the development of eating disorders, respectively, may result in aggravation. This typically occurs in aesthetic sports (e.g. rhythmic gymnastics, Gymnastics).
Do you have time to study and rest?
The advantage: regular sports structure the child’s time give frames instead of boredom. If you play sports regularly, you have less time to play electronic games, computers, or watch TV.
Yes! For a young person, in addition to increasing school expectations, regular sport, if it involves several hours of training per day, can lead to fatigue and loss of motivation after a while, and then to the cessation of the sport. For this reason, children’s training and schedules must be carefully planned so that they have enough time to study and rest.
What impact does it have on social relationships?
The advantage: sport provides company for the child. This is especially true for Team Sports, which has a community-developing effect, where the achieved result is achieved as a result of the joint activities of several athletes. Here the players work together, and unite, taking into account the common goal. After a while, a sense of responsibility towards others, and a renunciation of individual interests for the benefit of the community becomes the defining element of the individuality of athletes playing in a team. The latter also has a personality development effect.
Yes! Elite sports can disrupt the formation of normal social relations. If sport becomes an addiction and the focus is only on it, the individual may become isolated from everything else. As a result, his social relations become poor and superficial.
What does the specialist psychologist advise?
It can be seen, therefore, that regular sports activity is largely beneficial for the psychological development of the child, however, only if the above aspects are also taken into account. In addition to proper physical preparation, it is also very important to devote time and energy to the mental support of the young person, for this it is recommended to consult a specialist psychologist. The Professional provides support in enhancing performance, as well as in developing skills that help the athlete child to overcome each obstacle himself. Lastly, the psychologist of Sports suggests that “the most important thing is for the child to enjoy sports activities, not to be forced to enjoy,”
