28 Dec. 2000 - 3 Jan. 2001
Issue No.514
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 28 Dec. 2000 - 3 Jan. 2001 Issue No.514 |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
It's all in the mind
"Winning is everything," scream the t-shirts and sweaters. "Gold means everything, silver means nothing."
They are the advertising slogans of popular clothing brands such as Nike and No Fear -- the brands that young boys and girls buy with almost blind loyalty. They must have the socks and shorts, the shoes and caps; Nike, after all, is the coolest name around.
It's great that such popular brands tell children to push themselves and persevere. They tell them that they need to feel the pain of training and exertion and that they can set their minds free by pushing their own athletic limits. And, of course, it is wonderful that Nike's trademark slogan tells sports enthusiasts to "Just Do It." But people around the world are beginning to question just how good it really is to tell children that they absolutely have to win.
Should children be taught that to win is everything? Should they be made to feel that they are failures if they lose? And should they grow up believing that to come third or fourth or fifth means they are no good?
These questions hover around classrooms in the United States, where educators are just now beginning to question what exactly is the right way to nurture children in sports.
"Shouldn't they be told that winning is what they feel inside and that if they try their best and play their best, yet lose, then they are actually winners? Don't you think young children in sports should be given medals and trophies even if they come fifth or sixth?" asked an educator and journalist at a New York seminar last spring.
They should, responded an audience of journalists and sports enthusiasts. Of course, they chanted.
But then they thought about it more.
"If you give them consolation prizes just for trying, though," he continued, "then they'll grow up to be bad sports who can't deal with losing!"
He had a point.
So what is one to do when training young children -- whether for future careers or for fun?
Nasser Abdallah, a physical fitness trainer for many top-notch athletes in numerous sports, says the key is to help children set individual goals for themselves.
"You tell athletes, 'this is where you are, this is where you want to be tomorrow, next week, a month from now, and so on'," he says. "They learn to challenge themselves based on their own level at a given point in time. If a runner clocks two minutes for the 400 metres, he won't accept anything less from himself. It will start with him wanting to improve the time by two seconds, then four, then five, until eventually, when he can run it in one minute, he begins dealing with macroseconds."
The competition, then, is actually the one the athlete sets with himself or herself.
Realistic?
"I've found that when athletes' goals are set according to standards of competitors, their performance is actually hampered," Abdallah explains. "It's unrealistic for someone who has been playing tennis for one year to expect to enter national-level tournaments and win lots of matches," he continues. "What happens when athletes are left only to assess themselves, based on the performances of those around them, is that they put themselves down, are too harsh on themselves and their confidence and enthusiasm go down."
One of his athletes -- an 11-year-old tennis pro hopeful -- is now at the heart of this personal, goal-oriented programme.
"I work closely with the tennis coaches and we coordinate together," Abdallah says. "If Basant has a match against one of the top-ranked girls, we assess her fitness level at that time, her mental strength, the consistency of her strokes, and say, for example, that she should be able to win at least two games against the girl. It's like a mini-goal," he explains. "At other times, the goal is to keep the ball in play for at least four baseline exchanges. Even if she loses every single point of the match, it's fine, as long as she can keep the ball in play."
His method works well, with players such as Basant saying that they never feel they have failed.
"Captain Nasser sets realistic goals," she says. "If I set my mind to it and really concentrate, there's no reason why I can't reach them."
The personal touch is the key, psychologists argue.
"Even if it is just soccer for nine-year-olds, every single child has to be assessed individually," Margo Lehner, a Chicago-based sports psychologist is quoted in a paper entitled Sports and the Child. "An educator should nurture the child's ambitions by reaching within the child. It is up to the child to then go on and set independent, long-term goals based on the performances of other athletes."
The attitude is important not just for those children who opt to pursue a sport professionally, but for all children.
"The thing with children," Lehner is quoted, "is that they internalise everything. If you tell a child today that winning is important, it will reflect on everything later in life. They will feel that they have to come out first in everything -- sports, academics, whatever."
It's not so easy though, say some.
"Society is the problem," says Ahmed Bahr, a tennis coach at the Gezira Sporting Club. "Athletes are told that they have to win. The winners get all the attention and everyone loves them. The losers get nothing. Abroad it's easier on those players that aren't the best. Here, unfortunately, it is a lot harder."
Harder because local sports federations don't have the money to encourage those who aren't destined for great things. To them, it is only those who win that are worthy of the time and attention. The others, in essence, are simply a waste of time and money.
Those who are pushed aside and told they can't have one of the limited places in a federation's heart are basically left in the cold; no one will help them accomplish their athletic dreams and there's no one to help them deal with the rejection.
"A big problem in this country is that we don't focus enough on the mind," says Abdallah. "If one has a kidney problem, they go to a doctor. If they have a heart problem or an ear problem or something wrong with their arm or leg, they go to someone to take care of it. But nobody takes care of the mind. Nobody bothers to strengthen the mind as they do the other organs. If your heart and lungs are stronger, physically, you can endure more. With the mind, it's the same thing. If one's mind is strong, they can get through more, deal with things better. We need to start focusing on the mind."
We need to start, though, when the children are young. "It's no good to start working on an athlete's mindset after they start winning and become number one," Bahr agrees. "It needs to begin at a young age."
Like he says, though, the problem is society. Just like the pressure is to be thin and beautiful, athletic and smart, the pressure is also to appear to be strong.
"Even if one is crumbling from inside," Nasser says, "they have to pretend everything is fine. It doesn't work that way."
Not for students or housewives or investment brokers and certainly, he stresses, not for athletes.
It would be nice if all young children who had potential were taken under a federation's wing. It would be nicer if everyone who had an athletic dream was trained, encouraged and told they could make it. But for now, it would be quite a good start if society simply began to take care of the mind.
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