Let Them Play
At a fundamental level, the Providence Children’s Museum in Rhode Island is a lot like other museums. It’s full of interesting facts and figures and gives kids an opportunity to learn. But it’s also a lot different. Around every corner you won’t see fossils or statues, you’ll find endless opportunities for children to do one thing: PLAY!
The first exhibit in the museum is full of small signs that hang from the ceiling. They say things like, “Kids practice collaborating, negotiating, helping and leading while they play together, playing helps kids take risks and gain confidence in their abilities, kids challenge themselves and push their own boundaries while they play and when kids play, they follow their own interests and develop their unique identities.”
And then my favorite:
This doesn’t necessarily happen during organized team sports. This doesn’t and won’t happen in an overly structured training environment. It happens when kids have a chance to play!
Beyond the obvious benefits in things like collaboration, leadership and confidence, it’s also very apparent, if you take a second to watch, that unstructured play can play a huge role in athletic development as well.
Just watch a game of tag and you’ll see movement that can never be created in a drill.
Go find a playground (maybe take a kid with you though so you don’t look creepy) and watch kids walk across balance beams, swing on monkey bars and climb up and down rope ladders. If you look close enough what you’ll really see is the development of balance, coordination, spatial awareness, upper body and core strength and so much more!
As strength and conditioning professionals, we know this. And what we see in our society is a drift away from these opportunities for kids. Everyday, more and more 8-year-olds are driving by playgrounds on their way to their “elite team” practice and spending more time with skills trainers and less time with their friends down the street.
We can’t control the ebbs and flows of the athletic culture that we work in, but we can control our own programs. If we look at the overwhelming evidence of the value of play, then finding ways to let your athletes play is a worthwhile goal for your programs! And maybe this doesn’t just apply to adolescents. Maybe, just maybe, there’s something to be gained from giving all your athletes an opportunity to play.
The sky’s the limit on ways to accomplish this goal, but if you’re in need of some ideas, here’s a few good places to start.
Tag
We don’t think there’s a better change of direction drill on the planet than a good old fashion game of tag! During tag, adolescent athletes have an opportunity to explore different movements that come natural to them. They can develop those and learn to add new movement to their tool box.
There’s a ton a coaches out there nailing this! Jeremy Frisch from Achieve Performance Training is certainly one of the people leading the pack:
As it relates to your older athletes, tag actually does a really good job of mimicking sport. We see things like coaches setting up cones for their athletes to weave through because in sport, acceleration rarely happens in a straight line.
You know what does an even better job and takes no equipment? A game like Sharks and Minnows or a game we like to call Razzle Dazzle that combines ultimate frisbee and touch football. Throw in the benefit to conditioning that you get and you won’t find many “drills” better than that.
Chase
If a big game of tag seems a bit too unstructured, try adding some elements of it to other things. Partner your athletes up, give one of them the simple cue of “don’t get caught,” and watch your acceleration work go to the next level.
If you work with older athletes and think the sport coach you work for wouldn’t buy in to this concept of play, this is a great way to sneak a little in. Competition drives excellence. We think they’ll love what they see. The possibilities with chase drills are endless. Here’s one off of a push-up start:
Relays
Some of our kids might get fired up for conditioning, but all of them get fired up for some relay races. Age doesn’t really matter here either. If you have high-level athletes that are placed in a scenario where you’re asking them to go as hard as they can in an attempt to win and they can’t get excited about it, maybe they aren’t so “high-level” after all.
Turn your favorite change of direction drill into a relay race and watch the quality sky rocket. Your athletes might even have a little fun during their agility work!
Jumping Games/Hopscotch
Call them “low-level plyometrics” if you want to sound real legit, but a little old school playground hopscotch is a great way to work force absorption, balance and stability in the lower body.
Want to make it even more valuable? Don’t coach it so much. Let the kids come up with and explore their own way of jumping or hopping through. Put one athlete in charge of the pattern each set and foster leadership development at the same time.
These thoughts are far from revolutionary, but hopefully they at least make you think. It’s with near certainty that we can say your young athletes probably aren’t playing much, if at all. PE is no longer a daily requirement in schools and select ball has replaced playground ball.
So if we understand the immense benefits of play and we know our young athletes don’t have many opportunities to do it, then we ought to do our part to create those opportunities.
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