The benefits of sports for children
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High Performance Psychologist Michael Gervais, PhD, explains the various ways that playing sports benefit children as they grow and get older.
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One of the benefits of sport is that it teaches us who we are. It teaches us how we manage ourselves in challenging situations and situations that are going that we hope they go. Sports are a wonderful vehicle to learn more about who are. It’s also a really powerful opportunity to teach focus because to perform sport we have to be in this moment and that’s where life happens anyway. So sports a great way to teach our minds how to refocus on this moment which is an essential skill to string together moments in life where we’re fully engaged and we’re present. So it’s a great way to do that. Sport is also a great way to coach structure, to be able to show people how to operate in a framework where there’s a particular goal and there’s thing that we need to cultivate, develop and train to be able to reach that goal. It’s also, sport happens to be very predictable in scheduling. And so inside of that students are able to manage their time and learn the value of managing their time because when it happens in the elite level time management is at the center of being able to stay on a path toward to being really good. There’s so many distractions along the way that learning how to be structured with the things that need to get done is really valuable process. Another lesson that sports teaches us is the opportunity for us to be aware of how our mind works. Because inside of sports there’s public scrutiny. There’s people that are observing performance and with that, there’s that temptation to pay a lot of attention to the value of what other people think of us. So sports a really great environment to re-center towards what matters most is my experience in life and how I engage with other people along the way. It’s great for a handful of skills and strategies for people to be able to learn more about who they are at the center. And for that opportunity sport’s a great experience.
High Performance Psychologist Michael Gervais, PhD, explains the various ways that playing sports benefit children as they grow and get older.
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Michael Gervais, PhDHigh Performance Psychologist
Dr. Michael Gervais, a licensed psychologist and industry visionary, is a founding partner of Pinnacle Performance Center. He focuses most of his time on people at the "top of their game," from NBA players, to Olympians, to military personnel. Dr. Gervais has a clear understanding of how performers become and consistently excel at a world-class level. Spending years in the trenches of high-stakes circumstances, Dr. Gervais has developed clarity for the tools that allow people to "thrive under pressure."
Dr. Gervais is a published, peer-reviewed author and a nationally recognized speaker on issues related to high performance for those who excel on the largest stages in the world.
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