The benefits of starting tennis are endless, and the best time to start, is when you’re young. Although it’s a great sport for any age group, the positive impact tennis can have on kids is extremely valuable and long lasting.
Tennis is a life long sport that has health, social and psychological benefits. In this challenging era of kids having too much screen time and not enough outdoor time, the skills they are missing out on are crucial for their overall development.
Here’s a few important values and life skills tennis can teach:
Improve social skills
Tennis is a sport that demands good social skills. To play tennis, your child will have to play well with others and learn to communicate well with their team mates and coaches.
Building self-confidence
Teaching our students that there are certain things in our control and other things outside of our control. Don’t focus on what you can’t control. One example of something in our control is effort and being able to adapt to whatever may come your way. Sending this positive message to your children will help them move on from losses faster and get back to doing things they can control, like how hard they choose to work.
Accountability
There’s so much more to tennis than just hitting a yellow ball over the net and showing up for tennis lessons. In order to keep progressing, it will require a commitment to go and practice in your spare time. To show up for your games, and to always try your best so you can get the most out of yourself.
Increasing problem solving skills
Learning sportsmanship
Learning sportsmanship is paramount to life and tennis. Your child is going to win and lose playing tennis, that’s just a fact. But either way, tennis teaches your child to treat their opponent with respect and the game with honor.
Improving emotional regulation by learning to let go
Like anything we do in life, sometimes we can be frustrated by the result’s we aren’t getting. In tennis, we only have a short period of time to move on and learn from our mistakes. If we stay stuck, we continue to make the same errors as we haven’t yet let go. A great tennis coach will help your child develop healthy coping strategies on how to let go, move on and be ready for the next shot.
Dedication and commitment
To keep improving in tennis, your child will need to practise. By doing extra practise whether it’s everyday or a few time’s a week, your child will learn how important commitment is to continue to grow and get better. This will serve any child very well in school and extracurricular activities.
Respect and honesty
In many tennis matches for juniors, there’s no umpires. Players have to call their own scores and line calls. This teaches children the importance of being honest and respectful when playing against other children. Apart from tennis matches, tennis coaching also plays an important role in respect and honesty. It teaches children to listen to their coach and communicate openly and respectfully with their coach and training partners.
As you can see, tennis is a great way for your children to learn valuable life skills that get them off the screen and out into nature! There are still so many valuable skills like creativity, self-awareness, leadership, time management and many more that tennis teaches but for today, we will focus on the above.
Are you interested in your children doing tennis with us?
We offer one free trial lesson for everyone who is new to our program so they can see what tennis is really about! We would love to work with you!
Click below to sign up for a free trial lesson!
