They play the game of life far longer than they play sports.
“Average length of competitive sports career: 72 Months.
Average length of time Strength, Health, & Fitness are needed: 80 Years.
Teaching kids to positively associate with training will help them today, but more importantly, in the ‘game’ they’ll be playing far longer.”
-Ray Zingler on Twitter
I’ll tell you why I am really doing what I am doing.
100% it is absolutely because I want to help our kids with their current sporting careers and help them develop increased confidence, but it is much bigger than that.
I understand that work ethic, training, and making healthy choices are not assumed traits and actions. They are learned.
You don’t just accidently stumble into working hard, exercising, and eating healthfully.
Especially not in an automated, convenience-focused, give you everything you want right now world that we are living in.
Our kids are being conditioned to outsource everything to that app, the latest supplement ‘fixes’, and they assume that the drive thru is where food comes from.
If you think I’m being silly, take a look at the obesity epidemic and welfare systems in America.
I am doing what I am doing because my prayer is that the kids I have the ability to influence in their younger, most impressionable years, will take a snippet of what they’ve learned from me with them for the remainder of their lives.
If we get a kid at 12 years old and he trains with us twice per week until he graduates high school at 18, that is 600 chances (2x/wk x 50 wks/yr x 6 years = 600 sessions) we get to influence him that this training thing is a net positive.
Sure, maybe right now it’s about squat strength and running speeds to him, but what if over time, I am able to slowly but surely engrain the concept of training into his DNA?
What if when his sporting career is over he is fully capable and equipped with the knowledge to set up a simple training program for himself?
What if because he’s built the HABIT over YEARS, he knows no different and chooses to workout on his his own twice per week?
What if he is still doing it regularly when he is 37? The same twice per week discipline that he’d been doing since he was 13?
Then by sheer chance, that kid, now adult will have increased his quality of life by default.
All because I made a simple strategic investment in him before his age had the word “teen” in it.
That is why I do it.
