Moving to Learn & Learning to Move

If you want to learn about how to move spend fifteen or twenty minutes and watch kids play. I mean free non-directed play with no adult supervision or guidance. There are no limits, few inhibitions and no constraints. There is an unbelievable flow to what they do. We need to learn from this. The more we encourage and let our athletes be kids again the better they will be. Instead we start “coaching” them at young ages through explicit learning drills and skill “progressions” that turn them into robots. We tell them what they can’t do and because we are adults they believe us. As coaches and adults we need to take a giant step back and reassess how we are doing what we are doing with young developing athletes. Let them be more childlike. Let them explore all dimensions of movement, give them a task and let them find the movement solution. It may not look like we want it to look, but then again how should some of this look anyway? We need to see movement through a child’s eyes, it will open up a whole new vista in your coaching.