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    The Sporting Parent: Everything you need to ensure your child succeeds in sport and in life
    The Sporting Parent: Everything you need to ensure your child succeeds in sport and in life
    The Sporting Parent: Everything you need to ensure your child succeeds in sport and in life
    Ebook241 pages3 hours

    The Sporting Parent: Everything you need to ensure your child succeeds in sport and in life

    By Nathan Parnham

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    About this ebook

    Author Nathan Parnham draws on close to two decades of experience in the athlete development space in both the amateur and professional ranks to provide you with the key insights and knowledge you need to help your sporting child, the right way. 

    It's a no-holds barred 'go to manual' to help you navigate your way through the confusing

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Sporting Parent
    Release dateJun 21, 2021
    ISBN9780646841823
    The Sporting Parent: Everything you need to ensure your child succeeds in sport and in life
    Author

    Nathan Parnham

    Nathan Parnham is a strength and conditioning specialist located in Brisbane Australia. His career spans over two decades in working in both amateur and professional sport. This includes setting up several successful high school athletic development programs to being one of the select few not only to progress into elite professional sport but flourishing across both genders (NRL and Australia Women's 7s). Voted development coach of the year in 2021 by his peers, along with being a member of the High School Advisory Committee for the Australian Strength and Conditioning Association Nathan has amassed a wealth of knowledge. Nathan endeavors to share rare insights from the inside to ensure not only do you succeed but positively influence a generation to come.

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      Book preview

      The Sporting Parent - Nathan Parnham

      Part 1

      How We Have Failed a Generation

      Chapter 1

      Every weekend in Australia

      Being a parent is tough, let alone being a sporting parent. In many instances the upcoming Saturday weekly sporting fixture turns into a meticulous project to ensure that your child/children and their kit and equipment are packed, primed and delivered on time. When that mission is successfully completed, you have to do it all again the next weekend… and on it goes for another 4 months or so… and that’s just one sporting season for one sport.

      It can feel like an endless road trip across the State to a venue, especially if you get there and your child realises they’ve forgotten their boots or mouthguard. Arggggghhhh!

      Every week in Australia approximately 3.2 million children (69%) participate in organised sport outside schooling hours.¹ That’s a big market for everyone from school recruiters, private sporting academies, talent scouts and trainers. An estimated $2.3 billion is also spent yearly on children’s sport and physical activity participation fees. The niche market that is youth sport has never been so strong.

      And guess what? You’re in it! Waist deep in it. Your pockets are heavily lined just to participate in it, before you even start thinking about it shaping your child’s future.

      Yet with all the latest technological resources and coaching opportunities at their fingertips (literally at the click of a button), as well as endless fields and facilities popping up from both your local council and privately funded organisations throughout the country, how have we got it so wrong with kids’ sport?

      Many of our kids are ill-equipped to even take part in weekly sporting fixtures, let alone at an elite level.²,³

      Injury rates are through the roof! In fact, in New South Wales between 2005 and 2013, there were 20,034 hospitalisations for sports-related injuries for children aged between 5 and 15.⁴ And over a 10-year period from 2005 to 2015 in Victoria alone, anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries increased by 148%, with 98% occurring between the ages of 10 and 14!⁵

      When you and I were growing up, a knee reconstruction would have been a big deal. Dang! In fact for that to happen there would have to have been some serious s&*t go down! Or one hell of a car crash!

      These days kids are missing season upon season for simply stepping ‘unexpectedly’ or having the inability to slow themselves down… but what about getting them to — wait for it, slow down and change direction at the same time?

      I know, right. It’s laughable at first, but it’s simple things like this that have been lost to our youth of today. It leads to excessive hospital bills and plenty more gaming time while ‘rehabilitating’ (if you want to call it that, because you, I and anyone involved with kids knows that the likelihood of them completing rehabilitative exercises is non-existent on their own, especially trying to expect them to do them daily!).

      Being a sporting parent, we can no longer refer to ‘this generation’ and all ‘their’ faults as a tokenistic opportunity to highlight their inadequacies while failing to acknowledge our responsibility for contributing to the problem. Not only have ‘we’ created them, but we have shaped the choices they make, the behaviours they display, and their need for the next latest and greatest ‘thing’ (whatever that may be) on the horizon.

      Armed with the knowledge and tools in this book, you should be able to help your child to participate successfully in their chosen sporting endeavours, whatever sport/s that might be. Ideally, there’ll be lots of them. But most importantly, you’ll be able to help them to enjoy the opportunities and lessons that sport itself provides throughout their journey.

      Lesson from the Field #1

      Casey Dellacqua

      Casey Dellacqua is a household name in Australia for tennis but she also has a diverse sporting background. Her successful professional tennis career spanned more than 16 years and saw her amass various titles in both singles and doubles. She also represented Australia at the 2008 Beijing Olympic games.

      Casey achieved a career-high singles world ranking of 26, and 3 in doubles. She retired in 2018. She has a family of her own with partner Amanda and remains actively involved in tennis throughout Australia on a variety of levels. Casey shares invaluable insights into her journey as a professional athlete and now sporting parent.

      Growing up in Australia, how did you first get involved in sport?

      I played just about every sport you could be offered as a kid growing up in Australia. Sport was inherent in me, growing up with my Dad having played AFL in the former WAFL competition and my Mum having played softball, tennis and netball.

      I loved kicking the footy with my Dad!

      As a kid, as far back as I can remember I was always being dragged around so my Mum could continue to play sport. Weekends were pretty much spent following my parents to watch my Dad play footy.

      My grandparents on my Mum’s side even played tennis down at the local tennis club.

      I really loved that aspect of being involved in a local sporting community.

      My own participation in sport originally stemmed from those that my parents played. I played tennis, netball, T-ball, swimming, basketball… pretty much anything I could. It wasn’t until I was about 13/14 years old that I stopped the majority of them and started to divert my attention towards tennis.

      As I began to enjoy and take tennis more seriously, it was more the State coaches in WA at the time who encouraged me to go further. At that age it was important for me to not only play regularly but to compete with other girls my age.

      Other girls were already travelling internationally, and I came to a crossroads. To progress further. I had to sacrifice other sports. With my coaches encouraging me, that’s exactly what I did.

      You’re a household name for tennis in Australia. Growing up in a different generation to the modern athlete, do you see a distinct difference?

      On the whole I feel like competitive sport has changed. Particularly with girls and their drop- out rates. There’s been a big shift.

      Speaking with a lot of my friends who have teenage girls, their interests are different. They prefer to go for walks or do certain types of physical activities that are different to competitive sport.

      They’re still leading an active lifestyle and making healthy choices, but it’s very different to how I grew up and what I engaged in — competitive sport.

      Growing up, all my friends regardless of their ability or sport played in competitions. They were active members of their local sporting club.

      It almost seems like there is a real distinct divide between performance and participation in sport these days.

      With tennis, a lot of players and parents feel like they need to specialise young. Because of that we fail to establish an effective pathway that encourages teenagers to remain engaged in sport for longer.

      They may drop off and go to their local gym and do group fitness classes instead of staying in a sport.

      Because it’s very realistic for girls to now follow their dreams and accomplish success in sport, they tend to only see it one way. That you can either make it and succeed in a sport or be left with a grey area in the middle. This grey area leaves individuals dropping out if they’re not competitive at a high level. They give up playing their sport.

      To me that’s a big loss because there’s so many opportunities that are by-products of just participating in sport, without competing at a professional level.

      I feel there’s even a difference from State to State with tennis now in Australia. If we can embrace young athletes of today participating and being a part of their local tennis club community, they may eventually take the professional path.

      Tennis centres in certain States are run very much like businesses. There is little sense of a collective community connection in them.

      If we shift towards that community environment, you tend to grow a passion and love for the sport. A lifelong passion that encourages you to participate, regardless of the level.

      So many of my friends I grew up with like Alicia Molik and others who have achieved great things in tennis still play today at their local club.

      It’s just different today though… You see so many parents just drop their kids off to play tennis and there’s no parental involvement, even from a volunteer perspective. I remember growing up with my grandparents working in the canteen. These things still happen today, but more so in the regional areas and less and less in metro areas/capital cities.

      The difference in team sports is they rely on volunteers for their sport to survive and prosper. But in a largely individual sport like tennis, parents aren’t heavily involved at that grassroot participation level. It’s coach driven instead with a business model to support it.

      What works best is establishing connections and communities that encourage young players to play and remain in the sport for the love of it!

      What do you see as the biggest challenges for the modern athlete?

      • Technology/social media

      There’s no doubt about its impact, having started my career where you had to take a phone card overseas to remain in contact with your parents to where we’re at now. Social media and other media put extra pressure on the athlete. It’s hard enough being an athlete dealing with the pressures you place on yourself, let alone extrinsic life pressures being accentuated through the use of technology.

      • A balanced lifestyle

      Being an athlete and dealing with all the other relationships you have outside of sport is particularly important in setting yourself up for life after sport. Athletes need to make sure they’re setting themselves up outside of sport.

      This requires balance and mixing in circles from all walks of life. I believe the better balance you can have not only in your work but also in your relationships will inevitably set you up for success down the track.

      You can have it all! From being a really top level player to being a good person simply by being kind and having a good work/life balance.

      But it can be hard for the modern athlete with all of life’s expectations.

      • Early specialisation

      These days I feel the expectation that ‘if you don’t specialise early you’re not going to make it’ is dangerous.

      There’s no doubt about it, there comes a time where you need to go all in… but it doesn’t mean you specialise at all costs from the beginning.

      I try to look at things with my own kids and what I would let them do. When I was 13 years old I won a trip to an academy in America through the Hopman Cup. My parents took me to the airport and put me on a plane. Would I be able to do that with my own kids — I don’t know. At 16, I went to the Australian Institute of Sport and lived my dream of wanting to be a tennis

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