Golf is one of the most individualized sports there are. It’s pretty much you against the course, sure you’re playing with other golfers, but their goal is to score better than you, essentially beat the course better than you.
It’s just hard to compare golf to any other youth sport. Other sports make it easy, you drop your child at practice or you may coach the youth team, but the main thing is, there are other kids to coach and other kids to interact with yours.
In Golf the normal scenario seen is, mom and/or dad and the junior are the team. As a parent myself I know how many roles I have with my kids, and trying to be their parent AND teammate is not easy.
Over the years I’ve seen it a lot, once the junior gets some freedom away from the parent/coach they find they aren’t so interested in playing golf as much, or feel burnt out and want to explore other activities. This could mean late high school years, or once they’re off to college.
Is there a happy medium? I think so.
Our goal from day one is to help the junior enjoy exercise, like anything, if you have a bad initial experience the likelihood of wanting to do it again is pretty slim. Having friends to workout with gives them one more reason to want to come to their workout class.
Here are our top reasons why it is important for juniors to workout together in groups.
Social Interactions- They get to spend time with peer groups that have the same interests, and make new friends.
Accountability- They know their new friends are counting on them to be at workouts, so they don’t want to miss.
Competition- We always try and have at least 1 competition per class, so the junior is motivated to try their best and compete, and make it a goal to get better. We also conduct our fitness testing every quarter to measure improvements and give the juniors something to work towards.
Form Benefits- It is better developmentally for juniors to watch others their age perform the correct exercise form and copy it. They listen to adults (coaches) all the time. Watching another peer perform the exercise correctly allows them to understand how it’s done.
Motivation- Everyone has different reasons to be motivated to do better, we found that by juniors competing and exercising together gets them to push harder, want to do better, and push themselves harder than they would alone. Essentially learning they are stronger, tougher, and can push themselves harder than they once thought.
We all know the importance of having a regular exercise routine, and the benefits it provides, the goal at Junior Golf Fit is to, #1 Make sure the kids enjoy it and have fun and stick with it, and #2 Do it safely in a manner that they will not get hurt and progress at the right pace. If those two goals are met then the results will show through seamlessly.
You never know what will motivate your junior to want to workout for their game and stick with it, but I’ll bet anything working out in a small group is as close to #1 as any other aspect!
This past year has been tough, and I believe a lot tougher on our kids than we know. They have been stuck at home on a computer doing schoolwork, lessons, some exercising, and not having much physical activity or interaction with peers.
As things begin to open up in the world, so are our in person junior golf fitness classes, and we couldn’t be happier to see those smiling faces in person!
For more information on our in person classes please visit:
https://www.hansenfitnessforgolf.com/juniorgolffitnessprogram
or
click on the photo below!
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