Most schools have a “sports period” somewhere in between the hectic class schedule. It has long been held that playing sports can help break up the monotony of academics and teaching in the classroom. Students who sit in class for long periods of time benefit from sports as well because they are able to release stored energy. Sports, on the other hand, offer more than just that. Children learn values through sports, which aid in the development of extremely useful skills and provide extremely useful benefits. Let’s look at some of the benefits of sports for students and children.
Health and Fitness Physical fitness comes to mind as one of the most obvious advantages of sports. Today’s children spend a lot of time sitting and engaging in minimal physical activity via smartphones and social media. As a result, cases of obesity and lifestyle diseases are showing early onset among children. In this context, physical fitness is an extremely useful outcome for children engaging in sports. Active engagement in fitness activities prevents children from various lifestyle complications such as obesity, high blood sugar and blood pressure levels. Indulging in various fitness activities improves their appetite, and sleep quality, and keeps the children energetic and in good spirits.
Motor skills
Sports require quick mental and physical coordination. Most games including cricket, football, and tennis require heavy physical activity in addition to seamless coordination between hands, legs, eyes and our other senses. Children will need to be able to react quickly in sports, which can be fast-paced. Children’s motor skills improve as a result of this. Right from holding a bat to seeing a ball coming to them at speed, judging its height, and distance and catching it involves complex motor movements and coordination. Engaging in such sports from a young age helps in the healthy development of motor skills for children.
Cognitive skills
Sports are not all physical. They require a lot of thinking, planning, strategizing, and solving problems. While sports such as chess are largely mind-based, even other non-board games such as football, cricket, basketball, and tennis, require teams to strategize against their opponents, identify their strengths and weaknesses, devise a strategy to exploit the opposition’s weaknesses and deliver the winning punch. When children play sports, it sharpens their cognitive skills. They acquire the ability to devise original solutions to issues that their team faces on the playground. One advantage of sports is that the kind of cognitive development that occurs on playgrounds can sometimes outpace that of classrooms, both in terms of magnitude and speed. Teamwork
The majority of sports require children to collaborate with one another in order to compete and win. Cricket and football, for instance, involve eleven players on the field and a few more on the bench. For the team as a whole to succeed, each player has a specific role to play, and they must play that role well. It’s not just important to do a good job of your job; it’s also important to help your teammates do their best work and deliver results. In team sports, individual performances rarely result in victories. These important lessons are taught to children who participate in team sports right out of school. Goal orientation
You don’t just score goals in football, but if you see, the benefits of sports are about achieving a goal. Whether it is chasing down a score your opposition has set in cricket, breaking that 100-metre sprint record in your school, or beating the best tennis player in the tennis club. Sports teach students to be goal oriented and strive towards achieving those goals. Goal orientation is one of the vital leadership skills which holds students in good stead not only in school but throughout their life journey.
Hard Work, Discipline and Dedication
It is not easy to achieve goals; it takes dedication, discipline, and hard work. Competing in various sporting events teaches children the virtues of hard work, discipline, and dedication. Students realise that shortcuts might work occasionally, but to win consistently, there is no substitute for hard work, discipline and dedication.
Morals at work Sports are highly driven by rules and sportsmanship. In sports, there are severe penalties for breaking these rules, whether written or unwritten. It is a good lesson for students to learn and helps in building positive work ethics in them. They get adjusted to the concept of having rules and following a set of guidelines and directions, even if they may not sometimes agree with the ruling of the referee, judge or umpires. Children learn to respect authority and persevere in the face of difficulty through sports. Children who take part in sports develop character fortitude and excellent work ethics that they carry with them for the rest of their lives. a sense of accomplishment, confidence, and self-worth While one may not win all the time, simply competing and giving their absolute best develops a sense of achievement, self-esteem and confidence in children. If they do win, it will also help students grow in self-assurance and leadership skills. In school and college, haven’t we all admired and blindly followed the leadership of our team captains? For those students who struggle academically, this is especially helpful. The playground then becomes their source of a confidence boost. A sense of achievement in some form or field is essential for children to develop self-esteem and self-confidence. This sense of accomplishment may come from their playground tools for some. In many cases, this positivity from the playground also rubs off in the classroom and students start showing improved academic performances as well after achieving a significant milestone in sports.
Handling Emotions