Winter is definitely here in London, and this Caymanian happily skipped his msot recent Sunday morning cycle when it was pouring with rain and 6c as I woke up. As an island boy, also happy for newspaper delivery, so no actual need to leave the cosy comfort of indoors.
As I opened the Sunday Times one of the sections I read was the Style section. No, I am not a fashionista, but the editor, Lorraine Candy, in and amongst the fashion stuff, consciously features thoughtful articles and interviews each week that are all about uplifting and inspiring women, and each week there is always something in there that inspires me too. This week featured an interview with Dina Asher-Smith, at 22 one of the fastest women in history, yet so much more than that. One particular section of the interview really got me thinking about the power of youth sports for our children and the impact and value this can have for us and our mindset as adults and leaders, in whatever leadership roles we play in life.
I’ll begin with my own highlights in bold to an extract from the interview:
I question her on how she feels about body image, having been in a catwalk show. How important is it for you to be slim, I ask? “I really don’t care,” she says. “I am grateful to have been in competitive sport for so long, because I see bodies for what they can do, not what they look like. When I was looking at those models, I was thinking, ‘Look at the length of those legs and those muscles’, and ‘I wonder how high she can jump, how fast she can run with that body.’ ”
This is a healthy mindset and one she believes we should be more positive about when teaching teenage girls about sport at school. In the UK just 12% of girls aged 14 meet official guidelines for physical activity.
“I think much more emphasis should be put on sport for girls at school, but not about winning, more about good mental health. There are so many transferable skills with sport, it gives you self-confidence, it helps to relieve anxiety and it is healthy for young women. Winning isn’t everything in sport, which may sound odd coming from an Olympian. That’s what I love about track and field, running a good race is as valuable as winning a race sometimes. It’s not black and white, and you have to teach girls that sometimes grey is completely fine in sport.”
Let me share thoughts on those two highlighted themes.
Body Image
“I see bodies for what they can do, not what they look like”
Powerful and concise words. This theme is particularly powerful for me. For me, my boys and their mother, each of us went through our teens and college years with bodies that genetically conformed to what society expected (ie slim as well as strong) as well as allowing us to be able to perform at sports. However, I have also been closely exposed to cases where this was not the case and I share two here.
First, a friend’s daughter was amazing at what her body could do at her chosen sport, all about power and timing. At the same time, though, she did not and does not fit the mould of what her (very slim) parents see is “right”, so I observed them “fat-shaming” her throughout her teens as a youth athlete, so much that this was a key reason why she quit her sport.
I also observed similar behaviour from another set of parents over the years of another young woman who was an amazing dancer of grace and power and dedicated her teens to many forms of dance, yet her parents kept pushing her to lose weight.
In both cases, these young women have had their self-confidence and sense of self-worth negatively impacted by their parents words and beliefs, whereas if instead they had accentuated the positive of “what their bodies can do” the opposite could have been the case. I witness this negatively impacting them both to this day, years later.
Now, from Dina Asher-Smith’s words, my mind then went to adult friends and family who excelled in sport to the best of their ability as youth and college age athletes.
I emphasise “to the best of their ability” as a key element. As Dina said, it is not about winning the Olympics, it is about “running a good race” ie mentally and physically stretching oneself to the best of one’s ability. The people my mind went to are so different physically. Women and men of adult heights between 5’0″ and 6’10” and builds from powerfully muscular and powerful to twig-like and svelte. As an example, I know athletic women of just over 5′ who are of weights between 50kg and up to 75kg, a wide range for sure, yet it is not the weight that has any relevance, it is, as Dina said, about what bodies can do.
Mindset and sports
The second section of Dina’s thoughts that I highlighted finishes with the thoughts that “winning isn’t everything”. As a buzz-phrase that is without meaning, so it is the words before it that give her use of that phrase definition:
“.not about winning, more about good mental health. There are so many transferable skills with sport, it gives you self-confidence, it helps to relieve anxiety and it is healthy”
So much emphasis is placed on encouraging physical activity in young people due to massive rises in obesity in the population. Absolutely, I totally agree and endorse this, but today my focus is on mindset, as I feel that is under-emphasised.
First I want to talk about the power of positive reinforcement by parents, then close with thoughts on what I have observed in adults who have this background in sports when younger and what that has meant for them in their lives and leadership.
So, I noted above about the negative impact of parents, clearly well-meaning, “fat-shaming” their children despite what their bodies could do, focussing instead on what they looked like. Imagine if, instead, they had focussed on the positive. An example. A few days ago I saw this tweet :
1) For parents with 9-12 year kids, tell them training is about a) having fun, b) listening to your coach c) technique d) skills.
It isn’t, make sure you are at the front of the lane & make sure you are training in front of little Johnny or Jane.— Swimdad34 (@swimdad34) October 25, 2018
I replied:
Agreed. One tweak, not for ages 9-12 but 1-99. Focus on these four things at source and you’ll get the results you seek. Worked for my lads” #didyouhavefun
The lens of “swimdad34” was, I assume, that now he has kids who have entered into the world of training for competitive swimming, which is indeed a point at which parents often get, shall we say, a little over-involved. My reply was a subtle tweak, emphasising to use positive reinforcement at all ages and stages.
A story of my own as a swim parent, then. Throughout our lives, I and my three sons’ mother have been very active in multiple sports (running, netball, basketball, squash and more), yet our two oldest boys chose to focus most of all on swimming. Whilst we could both swim, that was about it. So, very early on when our oldest start competitive swim training (aged 8), I asked an experienced parent for advice around this sport and how I could help my son. They recommended that the only four words I would ever say to my boys after a race be:
“Did you have fun?”
No stopwatches on the pool deck, no screaming coaching instructions before or during a race, no critiquing afterwards (even if they asked for it). Coaching is for their coaches, parents have one job. Love the child. Encourage them. Positive reinforcement.
Now, my two older sons had and did realise the potential to go as far as to swim at the Commonwealth Games, so through this, I was an active swim parent for 15 years. For all of that time, including after their last races at such an elite level, all I ever said to them as they greeted me after their races were “did you have fun?”.
This began in March 2003 with my oldest son’s first race at a swim meet outside his club, which was also that 8-year-old island boy’s first time swimming indoors. He was so nervous playing with his goggles that he snapped the strap before his race, but his quick thinking coach ran and got him another pair while his father sat powerless at the diagonally opposite end of the pool as a volunteer official. When I got to see him after the meet session I asked him “did you have fun”, then gave my tiny son a big hug.
In July 2014 that boy was now a powerful 20-year-old man swimming at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. After the meet session he came out to greet an adoring group of family and friends in his father’s country of birth. After they all spoke to him, we greeted each other. Before I could speak he gave me a look, as if to say “I know what you are going to say, Dad” and yes, my first words were “did you have fun?” and yes, a big hug to that 80kg man.
Fast forward to April 2018 and my middle son, again 20 years old, came out of the amazing 10,000 seat arena in Gold Coast, Australia, having swum what only a very few knew was his last competitive race. Same look from a son to a father, same words: “did you have fun”, and same hug.
I’m still an active sports parent as our youngest, now 15 years old, is currently representing Cayman in two other sports (football and squash) and I continue to adhere to my maxim of “did you have fun?”
Beyond sports, I’ve seen the massive value of that sports experience for all my sons, and particularly the two older ones as they make their way in adult life. Sports are priceless for mindset, particularly with positive reinforcement.
In closing, earlier I referred to thinking of many adult friends and family who had been active in sports when younger and all of the rich diversity of body shapes amongst these people.
With all of their physical diversity, I do see clearly that they do have much in common from their sports experience. As my mind scans over my sense of each of them, being active in sport and achieving to their potential has given them levels of self-confidence and self-knowledge that they have then carried with them throughout their adult life.
My sense is that I can tell quite quickly after meeting and talking to someone a) whether or not they had a background in sports before they immersed themselves in “adulting”, and b) to what level their parents and others around them were supportive of them, and in particular with girls, whether their parents supported what their bodies could do rather than any societal bias as to body image.
Last thoughts. Positive reinforcement is simply powerful at every level, from self-talk to leading others. When your child gets their school report, emphasise their success at least as much as you focus on the “could do better”. At work, look to “catch” your team members doing it right more than what they did wrong. When you get home from work, discipline yourself to share three things that went well that day with your family before downloading all the stuff that was negative.