We must tangibly teach kids to manage expectations and emotions.
“One of the most overlooked aspects of youth athletic development, is what I’d argue to be most important:
Emotional Preparedness.
We will hammer skill acquisition & development into oblivion, but when they struggle with managing expectations and emotions:
Lip Service.”
-Ray Zingler on Twitter
The Athletic Development pyramid looks like this, starting from the ground up:
1. General Physical Preparedness (i.e. general fitness level/work capacity development.)
2. Specific Physical Preparedness (i.e. specific levels of physical preparation as they relate to a specific sport – Cross Country preparation is going to look different from baseball.)
3. Skill Development (i.e. developing specific skills as they relate to specific sports. Hitting, throwing, catching, routes, wrestling moves, etc.)
4. Emotional Preparedness (i.e. the management of expectations and day to day fluctuations that happen within the realm of sports/life.)
As much as this pyramid is extremely fundamental in nature, far more frequently than not, the typical youth athlete in America has the pyramid flipped upside down on its head.
And no, this pyramid isn’t my opinion, this is physiology.
This is how it works despite possibly preferring it work a different way. You can argue a lot of of things, but you cannot argue concrete processes.
You skip steps, you increase the risk of adverse consequences and I don’t think I need to point out the youth injury/burn out rates in America to prove my point.
But in this post, I am going to focus on the tip top of the pyramid: Emotional Preparedness.
Again, most families in America skip over GPP (base of pyramid), touch on what they think is SPP (middle tier of the pyramid) and then sell completely out on what they believe to be the tip of the pyramid — Skill Development.
Not only will all the skill work in the world not make up for a lack of GPP & SPP, it most certainly won’t shelter an athlete from the most important piece of the puzzle, emotional preparedness.
You see it all the time.
Highly skilled individuals folding mentally because they’ve never been taught how to manage expectations and the spectrum of their emotions.
Parents often treat it like a “rub some dirt on it” or “it’s just a phase” ordeal, but it’s much deeper than that.
Because our physical world is heavily digitized and our kids are lacking real depth of connection, mental health in and of itself is a struggle.
Now you compound it with highly competitive, politicized athletics?
We must tangibly TEACH kids how to manage and deal with expectations and emotions.
