Balancing Academics and Fitness: Tips for Busy Teens
Balance and coordination are developed in children when they play, jump, climb, run, or engage in outdoor activities. Braving uneven landscapes and playing catch with the ball also improves them and parents never had to worry much about these things, as they were naturally imbibed. But that is no longer the case in the 21st century. Due to a severe lack of outdoor life, children nowadays often trip and fall, need to sit down to wear pants, or get scared to hop multiple stairs at home. Instead, they possess a different, virtual sense of balance and coordination in the video games they play at leisure. As a result, both those traits along with your kid’s physical fitness suffer. To avoid such instances, elucidate the importance and benefits of balance and coordination in strength development to your older kids while making fitness fun for your younger ones.
Your kids must develop proper attention skills and be able to focus on it for an extended period of time, despite being under physical or mental stress. This will improve their concentration and resilience. Also, make them aware of their body parts, their respective movement, and function. They must understand the movement of different body parts in space in relation to other limbs and objects to develop good awareness and coordination skills.
In sports and strength training, bilateral integration and hand dominance matter a lot. The former refers to using both hands for a single function, while the dominant hand leads the process and the other assists. For example, a tennis player uses his dominant hand to hold the tennis racquet while the ‘helping hand’ adds stability and balance to the player, while ramming back shots.
Quick sensory processing is crucial for accurate hand-eye coordination. You must help your kid develop the ability to process any environmental sensory stimulation quickly for appropriate physical and mental responses to the action or movement. And as your child develops quick sensory processing, their hand-eye coordination improves, be it in writing or catching a ball.
Consistent practice and development of muscle strength eventually lead to muscle endurance. The ability of a group of muscles to exert force against resistance is its strength. And the prolonged ability of those muscles to withstand stress without giving up is their endurance. Daily fitness practice and consistency are enough to develop proper muscle strength and endurance to improve coordination and balance in kids.
Self-regulation is an important trait for your child to inculcate. It is the ability to maintain or change alertness levels based on the task at hand. Learning the delicate art of balance and coordination is necessary as it aids in life-long ventures, be it at the workplace or home. Self-regulation is also key to proper postural control as it is the capacity to stabilize one’s neck and spine of free will to ensure proper coordination of the mind and limbs during work and daily life.
Balance and coordination play multiple important roles in developing muscle strength, endurance, posture maintenance, hand-eye coordination, and concentration. But it is your role to make your kids understand their health benefits and get ready to develop these various important traits in them.