Should Children Train Psychological Skills?
Yes and no.
No, because specific psychological skill training is recommended to start around the age of 16, when a young person’s consciousness begins to mature slowly and they gradually become capable of self-awareness and understanding the specifics of psychological work.
Yes, because during childhood and adolescence, psychological skills often develop as a byproduct. Without delving into the specifics of the sport, a general understanding would say that regular training develops psychological resilience and discipline.
Regular work on technique helps to develop concentration and attention skills.
During childhood and adolescence, this happens more or less on its own.
As the athlete matures, the need for specialized psychological training increases.
The athlete is already mature (in the best case) and becomes much more aware of their strengths and weaknesses.
This means that at this point, targeted work on specific areas can begin.
It could be said that intense training is enough and that it is the only way to produce an excellent athlete.
Unfortunately, statistics and experience show that this is possible only in rare cases.
Often, the price of one outstanding athlete is the ruined health and attitude toward sports of ten others.
This means that from childhood, it is important to approach the training process with psychological understanding.
With an understanding that every young person needs genuine, authentic relationships and conversations that keep them grounded.
The development and clarification of individual traits, and the understanding that everyone must work independently on their character.
There are also many other things.
I wouldn’t claim that now is the time to completely redesign the entire training process, no.
The recommendation would be this – in each sport, the most important mental traits may differ.
This means that when planning training, the coach could ask themselves – what are the most important psychological traits in this sport?
If there are five or six, it means that over the course of a year, several cycles can definitely be planned, each of which focuses on training those traits, integrated into the existing training tasks.
For example, in tennis, these traits are concentration – maintaining and shifting attention, positive self-talk, relaxation, self-regulation.
Let’s say that in the third training cycle, the ability to maintain attention is chosen.
This would mean that, for example, for one month, during each training session, time is allocated when, within passing drills, athletes are given an additional task – during 20 passes, they focus their attention on a specific spot on the opponent’s court.
Or another variant – focusing attention on their dominant hand’s palm.
In this way, the entire training cycle wouldn’t need to be rethought, and the most important psychological skill training would be integrated into the existing plan, but with much greater precision and awareness of the goals to be achieved.