how to raise athletic kids

Summary

Jerred discusses how he and his wife have intentionally raised their three children to be athletic, emphasizing that it wasn’t due to genetics but rather a deliberate approach. He outlines three key strategies: normalizing fitness within the family, prioritizing effort over outcomes, and allowing the children to choose their sports and activities. Jerred shares personal anecdotes about his children’s athletic achievements and stresses the importance of fostering a lifelong love of fitness rather than focusing solely on competitive success.

Key takeaways:

• Jerred normalizes fitness by having a home gym and involving his children in playful and fun activities rather than structured training programs.
• He emphasizes praising effort over outcomes, teaching his children that hard work and dedication are more important than winning or achieving specific results.
• Allowing children to choose their sports helps prevent burnout and encourages them to find activities they genuinely enjoy, contributing to their overall development as athletes.
• Jerred’s ultimate goal is to instill a lifelong love of fitness in his children, rather than pushing them to compete at higher levels.
• He draws parallels between his approach and the self-determination theory, highlighting the importance of autonomy, competence, and relatedness in fostering motivation.

Transcript

why it’s not genetics, it’s intentional

So today I wanna talk about how to raise athletic kids because I have three insanely athletic kids. I’m very proud of them, but it was very intentional. It was not genetics. And so I’m gonna go over the three things I’ve done, my wife and I have done over the years to intentionally raise athletic kids.

So I do have three kids. I have a seven-year-old, 11-year-old, and 13-year-old. And in their respective sports, they are great athletes. My 13-year-old runs track and also does tackle football. Great speed, great hands, great dude all around. My 11-year-old is an insane athlete, route running, fast soccer, tackle football, everything.

principle 1: normalize fitness at home

And then my seven-year-old daughter is in competitive dance, and she does some of the most amazing things that I’ve ever seen, and she’s also incredibly strong. Now, I could just be a proud father who wanted to do a random episode about this, but I also think it goes in line with how you are going about tackling motivation in general.

And so there are three big things that I do with my kids. The first one is over the last 13 years that I’ve been a dad, I have just normalized fitness. Okay, normalized fitness. It is not something, I don’t go to a gym. I have a garage gym. I’ve had a home gym for longer than my children have been alive, and it is the most normal thing for them.

And I want it to be normal. I want them to go to a friend’s house, and if their friend’s dad does not have a garage gym, I want them to be confused about that. Where’s your gym? I want them to ask that question to their friends. Where’s the gym? Where’s your gym? And so we have just normalized that over the years.

I’ve changed workout times from working out at four or five a.m. in the morning to afternoons in the summer just so my kids can see it and be around it. And a big thing that we do with fitness and training is I’m not sitting there putting them through training programs. It’s not about volume. What I’m really doing with my kids is just letting them play and do it in the gym as they’ve grown up.

play-first approach (tag, obstacles, short sessions)

Now we’ve started more structured training with the oldest in my middle, but what we’ve done, we’ve started with Floor is Lava. We started with running. We started with tag. We started with all the fun things. We’ve just normalized fitness, spending time in the gym, because my ultimate goal for them when it comes to fitness is for them to have a love of fitness, whether they play sports at the next level or don’t.

I don’t really care. All I care about is they have a love of fitness for the rest of their lives because it is so important for a human being. So that’s the first thing I’ve done to raise athletic kids is I normalize fitness. It’s just a part of what we do as a family. It’s a part of the home. They see it, they can participate in it, and it’s a lot of fun.

The second thing we do is in sports itself is we always praise effort over the outcome, always on the effort, because my kids are pretty athletic and pretty talented. They might score a lot of goals. They might score a touchdown. They might have a lot of awesome things. They might win first place in national dance competition.

principle 2: praise effort, not outcomes

All these things that they’ve actually done, I never say congratulations on first place or way to score that goal, you’re so talented, or way to make that catch. I’m so thankful that you have the talent to be able to do that. I only talk about the effort they put in, and very rarely do I actually care that much about the touchdown or care that much about the trophy or anything like that.

If they score a touchdown, I’m like, hey, that was an awesome touchdown. You did a phenomenal job putting in the effort that game to be able to be in a place to get that touchdown, or you put in so much effort in practice. I really noticed that, and that’s really probably what led you to that touchdown.

These are the things that I’m going over with my kids. I am talking about effort every single day. Try harder is not just something I say in my content. Try harder is something that goes into everything that I do with my family, so we try hard in practice. We try hard in the game. Whether or not we score doesn’t really matter.

what to say after games/practice

Whether or not we have the big play doesn’t really matter, but the funny thing is those things start to happen when we focus on the effort that they need to put in, and it can be hard to not get caught up in the outcome, but I don’t want to pay for touchdowns. I don’t want to pay for any of these other things.

I want them to know their effort does not go unnoticed, and it’s the most important thing that they can do, and then the last thing is I let them choose. I see parents doing this left and right. I played baseball. My son’s going to play baseball. I played football. My son’s going to play football, and then it gets worse because maybe their son or daughter really likes the sport or activity, and now parents just start to pile it on.

principle 3: let them choose (avoid early specialization)

They’re like, okay, five practices a week, six practices a week, two practices a day, morning training sessions, agility speed session in the afternoon, and then another session in the evening because they want their kid to go to that next level that they never participated in for some arbitrary reason.

I don’t do that. I let them choose, but this comes with a lot of conversation in helping them understand what their choices are, so let them choose their activity. What do you want to do? What’s your favorite thing right now? And this jumping around can actually help them develop as athletes. A lot of people get too dialed in too early on, and I think that’s a huge problem.

Let your kid choose. Don’t lead them to burnout. I’ve actually been to that point accidentally with my middle child. When he was playing a lot of soccer on a club team, he ended up on two teams or really two different leagues, and we were having to train our go-to practices four or five times a week, and then we’d have two to four games every single weekend, and it started off as fun.

I’m there to support him, but ultimately he wasn’t having fun anymore by the end of the season. He was completely burned out. He didn’t want to drive to these games or go to these tournaments, and I could’ve been like, no, just force yourself. Just do it. This is what it takes to be great, but he was 10 years old at the time.

spotting & solving burnout

Like, why am I gonna do that? I let him choose. Like, hey, do we need to go down? Do we need to try a different sport? Do I need to talk to your coach? Because I’m noticing what he enjoys and doesn’t enjoy. Going back to that lifelong love of fitness, that’s my only goal. Playing at the next level, that’s not the goal for me even though they actually have that potential right now.

It’s not what matters to me. I can’t tell you how many times in the military I saw guys who were insanely fit when we were active duty together. I mean, they could run five minute miles. They were just, these human beings are insane, the things they could do. 100 pushups in a minute. It was just crazy stuff, but they were forced so much and so hard by drill sergeants, whatever else.

After they get out, they don’t ever want to run again. They don’t ever want to do fitness again. They don’t ever want to do anything that has to do with that realm of the world ever again. I’ve seen that happen over and over with guys getting off active duty military. I’ve seen it with kids who get to the D1 level and they no longer want to play the sport.

SDT link: autonomy • competence • relatedness

They’re just burnt out. They want to live life. They don’t longer want to do the thing that they thought that they want to do that entire time, and that’s not my goal. Again, my goal is lifelong love of fitness. Whether or not you play sports at the next level is irrelevant, but what’s funny is when you do all of these things, you start to build really athletic kids.

We were just in the gym last night as I built a new gym recently, and my kids were just sitting around playing. My oldest son wanted to hit up some bench press because we’re just chilling in the gym, hanging out, so he just goes over there. He does some bench press reps. No program. I’m not pushing him to go to muscle failure.

quick-start checklist & wrap

He’s just knocking it out. His brother saw him doing it. His brother joined. He starts doing some bench press, so I let them mess around for a little bit. I had set up some rings that day. My daughter starts doing all sorts of different crazy stuff on the rings just because I set them up and put them in place.

She’s just doing them. I’m just sitting in the background watching them enjoy. They are doing something that they’ve selected to do. They’re autonomous in that selection. They are getting better at something, so they have that confidence, and we’re all doing it together. It’s something that we do as a family, which goes perfectly in line with the self-determination theory, which I think is huge.

So if you want to raise athletic kids, it’s not all that difficult, but you are going to have to try harder.