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4 Fitness Pro Tips to Help Your Kids Prepare for Sports Tryouts

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4 Fitness Pro Tips to Help Your Kids Prepare for Sports Tryouts

As a parent you want to do everything you can to calm their nerves. You tell them, “it will all be OK, just try your hardest,” and “I’m proud of you no matter what happens.” While these words are comforting, for some kids they may not be enough to really relieve the stress.

So, to help you and your child better prepare for sports tryouts, here are few tips from Cooper Fitness Center.

  • Get familiar with the sports or activities your kids want to try out for and then get them familiar with them. Next, practice, practice, practice—but only as much as they can handle. You don’t want to burn them out on the sport prior to tryouts. Practicing is especially important if your child has never played a particular sport and doesn’t know the rules or technicalities of the sport. If it’s basketball, get on the court and practice shooting the ball. If it’s baseball, go hit and catch with someone who knows the game.
     
  • Know the physical demands of the sport or activity and then have your kids perform exercises that will help them get better at meeting those demands. This is where a program such as Cooper Fitness Center’s IGNITE!—a program that works on general movement patterns used in sports—could be beneficial a month or two prior to tryouts. If they are trying out for cross country, they need to get out and run. If it is soccer, they need to practice running and changing directions. If it is volleyball, they need to practice jumping and running short sprints.
     
  • Start preparation early. A week before tryouts is not too late to start learning the sport, but your kids will have the greatest chance of success if you start their preparation long before the season begins. This is why every sport at the high school level and above includes off-season conditioning and pre-season competition.
     
  • Involve your kids in multiple sports over the course of the school year. Kids who play multiple sports at an early age are exposed to more conditioning and movement demands than kids who play only one sport year-round. This helps to improve coordination and develops a wide variety of skills that any single sport may not involve. It also gives your kids to more opportunities to figure out what sport(s) they are good at and may want to focus on more exclusively in high school and college.

For more information about Cooper Fitness Center’s youth programs including sport-specific camps and clinics and the IGNITE! movement training and athletic development program, visit CooperYouth.com or call 972.233.4832.