“Failure” in Sport
Failure is a part of sport and life…
Children get a unique opportunity in sport to experience “failure”, put it into perspective- and learn from it.
Kids often beat themselves up after making mistakes. As caring coaches it’s our jobs to put their failures into perspective, and help them to learn from it.
We need to build their confidence so that they tackle the next challenge without fear.
They need to learn that every failure is a step towards success.
The only real failure its to give up trying.
Failure Starts Before the Performance
Athletes, young and old, often have high expectations about their performance. These expectations need to be put into perspective and dealt with before their game or competition. They often tell themselves they’re going to win the game for the team, or make no mistakes.
The Gym Wizards competition is an ideal opportunity for kids to experience this desire for success in safe, and friendly environment. We often see kids who walk into the competition believing that they will win a trophy. For most kids this expectation will not be met. This is why each and every child gets a medal for being brave enough to take part.
As caring adults we need to prepare them for the possibility that these expectations might not be met. Kids can be very hard on themselves when they feel that they have failed, or disappointed a mentor. This can hurt their confidence and willingness to try again if they are not prepared for the possibility of failure.
Learning to Love the Challenge
In all sport and in life, risks are the key to growing and learning.
If a child never fails at something they won’t learn how to bounce back and move forward. A winner makes things happen because they take risks and learn from their mistakes.
The Gym Wizards curriculum, breaks all the major skills required for Tumbling and Trampoline into smaller more achievable steps. This provides a lot of opportunities for kids to learn that even if they did not master the complete skill the first time around, with perseverance and hard work everything is possible.
They start to believe they can do it, by mastering the smaller, more achievable steps.
Learning From Failure
When a child makes a mistake and looks at the coach or parent, the adult can add some humour and do something like make a flushing motion, which means: “flush away the mistake, move on.” This also shows the child it’s okay.
Parents and coaches should not remove kids from a sport after mistakes, or punish them.
Instead, keep them in the sport, support them, and tell them it’s okay.
They need to know that making a mistake or failing at something is part of the process.
They need to get up and try again.
It’s the kids that show commitment, hard work and push through when things get tough that end up on top one day.
The Gym Wizards Star skill system gives our students a list of the skills that they need to master in each level. A skill being ticked off on their star chart gives them that sense of accomplishment and motivation to try the next step.
There are so many skills, that even if they haven’t mastered all of them, they would have definately mastered some- and so overall, there is a sense of achievement!