Someone thinks it is sad for some parents when they read some news, they would shift the whole family and follow the advice in the news, then try to make their child into something they weren’t. The chances of their children becoming the sporting star they weren’t are still quite remote even if someone followed some researches exactly. However, anything is possible.
A 15 years old golfer named Jim Liu turned the youngest player to ever win the U.S. Junior Amateur last week. Liu took the record as the youngest winner away from a famous golfer named Woods who you might have heard in the past.
Liu and Woods actually have several things in common. For example, they have shared a golf teacher, John Anselmo. Anselmo coached Tiger from the time he was about 9 until he went off to university and now Anselmo works with Liu. Given this similarity, you might guess that Liu and Woods probably took comparable paths to reach golf success. However, this isn’t actually the case. Jim Liu and Tiger Woods became winners by way of pretty different practice and training histories and, recent sport science research suggests, that it is Jim Liu’s environment – not Tiger’s – that is most likely to cultivate a champion.
Tiger Woods was raised to play golf by his father, Earl Jones. Woods started hitting balls as soon as he could hold a club and didn’t do much throughout his childhood that wasn’t tied to the game. Jim Liu, on the other hand, swam and played tennis early on. In reality, Liu didn’t pick up a golf club until he was near to about eight-years-old when his family moved to a house on a golf course in Smithtown, NY. It was then that his father decided it would look odd if no one in the household actually played the game. Smithtown is not large, a population of 115,714 people according to the 2001 U.S. Census. This is in contrast to the sprawling about 2.9 million plus metropolis of Orange County that Woods grew up in.
So, what does all this have to do with making a superstar? A few years before, sport scientist Jean C?té and his colleagues found a fact they termed the birthplace effect. While poring over the statistics of over 2,001 U.S. and Canadian athletes in the NHL, NBA, MBA, and the PGA, the research workers noticed something interesting a relation between the size of the city kids grew up in and their likelihood of making it on the professional sports sceene.1 It turns out that growing up in a smallish city such as Liu’s Smithtown, and having the chance to sample different sports as Jim Liu did, were better ingredients for sports success than specializing in one sport early on.
The sport scientists discovered that the percent of specialized athletes who came from cities of fewer than a half million people was higher than what would be expected by chance alone. In contrast, the percent of qualified athletes who came from cities with more than 499,000 inhabitants was a good deal lower than what you would expect by chance. While nearly 49% of the United States population resides in cities with more than 500,001 people, such cities only produce about 14% of the players in the NHL, 30% of the players in the NBA, 16% of the players in MLB, and 12% of players in the PGA. Dr. C?té and his collaborators have now confirmed that this same phenomenon holds for American women in the Women’s United Soccer Association and the LPGA.2
Maybe for the reason that there is fewer competition to create any one team, children in smaller cities get the chance to sample many different sports and competitive environments. Exposing children at an early age to a variety of pressure-filled situations helps them adjust to whatever comes their way when the stakes are high.
Sampling a variety of activities also lowers the likelihood of burnout in one sport and increases children’s feelings of confidence because they get to see the consequences of their hard work in different settings. In addition, playing different sports lessens the occurrence of sports-related injuries that may end an athletic career. It’s general today for a 9-year-old baseball pitcher to need the tendon replacement surgeries for an injured elbow that were previously restricted to college and major league pitchers. This is the type of injury that sports medicine doctors argue is the direct result of arm overuse and sport specialization at too young an age.
Findings like the birthplace effect imply that we require to rethink the thought that children should receive year-round training in one sport early on. Although this early specialization certainly worked for Woods, for most children, less sport-specific training seems to be the key to athletic success. Of course, this doesn’t mean limiting practice overall. In reality, lesser cities offer more opportunities for unstructured play than bigger cities, which results in more possibilities to hone general coordination, power, and athletic skills. These longer hours of play also allow kids to experience successes in different settings, which likely toughens their attitudes in general.
The end result appears to be athletes like Jim Liu, who when asked whether he will feel some additional difficulties now that he has won the Junior Am said, “I like stress. I don’t think of it as that big of a deal. If you’re intended to succeed in the competition, it’s just going to be your day.”
Actually, I think we need less sporting champions and more life champions. Let your kids enjoy their childhood, even if some sporting coach says your child is quite talented. Play sport yeah, but play music, make art, stuff around and dance, they only have one childhood.
A 15 years old golfer named Jim Liu turned the youngest player to ever win the U.S. Junior Amateur last week. Liu took the record as the youngest winner away from a famous golfer named Woods who you might have heard in the past.
Liu and Woods actually have several things in common. For example, they have shared a golf teacher, John Anselmo. Anselmo coached Tiger from the time he was about 9 until he went off to university and now Anselmo works with Liu. Given this similarity, you might guess that Liu and Woods probably took comparable paths to reach golf success. However, this isn’t actually the case. Jim Liu and Tiger Woods became winners by way of pretty different practice and training histories and, recent sport science research suggests, that it is Jim Liu’s environment – not Tiger’s – that is most likely to cultivate a champion.
So, what does all this have to do with making a superstar? A few years before, sport scientist Jean C?té and his colleagues found a fact they termed the birthplace effect. While poring over the statistics of over 2,001 U.S. and Canadian athletes in the NHL, NBA, MBA, and the PGA, the research workers noticed something interesting a relation between the size of the city kids grew up in and their likelihood of making it on the professional sports sceene.1 It turns out that growing up in a smallish city such as Liu’s Smithtown, and having the chance to sample different sports as Jim Liu did, were better ingredients for sports success than specializing in one sport early on.
The sport scientists discovered that the percent of specialized athletes who came from cities of fewer than a half million people was higher than what would be expected by chance alone. In contrast, the percent of qualified athletes who came from cities with more than 499,000 inhabitants was a good deal lower than what you would expect by chance. While nearly 49% of the United States population resides in cities with more than 500,001 people, such cities only produce about 14% of the players in the NHL, 30% of the players in the NBA, 16% of the players in MLB, and 12% of players in the PGA. Dr. C?té and his collaborators have now confirmed that this same phenomenon holds for American women in the Women’s United Soccer Association and the LPGA.2
Maybe for the reason that there is fewer competition to create any one team, children in smaller cities get the chance to sample many different sports and competitive environments. Exposing children at an early age to a variety of pressure-filled situations helps them adjust to whatever comes their way when the stakes are high.
Sampling a variety of activities also lowers the likelihood of burnout in one sport and increases children’s feelings of confidence because they get to see the consequences of their hard work in different settings. In addition, playing different sports lessens the occurrence of sports-related injuries that may end an athletic career. It’s general today for a 9-year-old baseball pitcher to need the tendon replacement surgeries for an injured elbow that were previously restricted to college and major league pitchers. This is the type of injury that sports medicine doctors argue is the direct result of arm overuse and sport specialization at too young an age.
Findings like the birthplace effect imply that we require to rethink the thought that children should receive year-round training in one sport early on. Although this early specialization certainly worked for Woods, for most children, less sport-specific training seems to be the key to athletic success. Of course, this doesn’t mean limiting practice overall. In reality, lesser cities offer more opportunities for unstructured play than bigger cities, which results in more possibilities to hone general coordination, power, and athletic skills. These longer hours of play also allow kids to experience successes in different settings, which likely toughens their attitudes in general.
The end result appears to be athletes like Jim Liu, who when asked whether he will feel some additional difficulties now that he has won the Junior Am said, “I like stress. I don’t think of it as that big of a deal. If you’re intended to succeed in the competition, it’s just going to be your day.”
Actually, I think we need less sporting champions and more life champions. Let your kids enjoy their childhood, even if some sporting coach says your child is quite talented. Play sport yeah, but play music, make art, stuff around and dance, they only have one childhood.
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