In a nutshell, whatever your boy likes doing, encourage that. Be as amazed as he is in his improving ability to bounce. Encourage him to swing from tree branch to tree branch. Pushups are awesome. In fact whatever stretching, balance, yoga, Pilates, etc. things you do would be great for him too.
I looked into this issue hard about ten years ago, i.e. children’s athletic training. This is the reason I contacted Tudor Bompa, the pioneer Romanian athletic trainer, and read most/all of his books. I learned a lot.
Your son having issues with coordination is exactly where he should be at age 7. More precisely, he should be having trouble with balance. His body should, right now, be learning how to shift and move according to the strain on each individual muscle. This is called development of proprioception. There are little tiny nerves in each of our muscles telling our lizard brains the position and tension of each of our muscles. They are especially concentrated in our back and hip muscles (google multifidus as an example). There is actually a feedback signal from our lizard brains back to the muscles telling them to tense or relax depending on the position. It is this development of the relationship between the muscles and the lizard brain that leads to better balance.
As a test of your proprioception, close your eyes and touch your nose. Simple. Okay then close your eyes and touch your left index finger to your right index finger. Still simple…. But it shouldn’t be. Your right arm is probably a bit longer than your left arm. How did your body know to position each arm such that your fingers touched? Proprioception, that’s how. Your lizard brain takes a command from your upper brain, tells the muscles to move, senses where the muscles are and tells them to adjust and, as if by magic, your two fingers touch. If you’re like me, your two fingers didn’t touch at first but somehow you figured out that they were past each other and you started waving them around until they did touch. Again, that’s proprioception.
Bouncing around is the best thing he can do. He will be able to bounce better and better each and every month and he will be able to do things six months from now that he cannot do today. It is a consistent effort and reward cycle. Keep doing this. Bounce, bounce, bounce!
Once he has a good relationship between his muscles and his brain then true coordination kicks in. They start to be able to do things like climb trees like monkeys, gymnastics, play baseball, karate and soccer. Gymnastics and dance are probably some of the best things a child athlete can do at this age. Age 8-11 is a wonderful time. They should be doing things that reward balance and coordination. They will like it and will get a lot athletic development out of it.
Age 12-13 is a waste. Growth spurts kick in and ruin basic coordination. Night muscle cramps happen as the muscles and tendons fail to keep up with growing bones. Child athletes get Osgood–Schlatter. Those football and soccer coaches you see yelling at their 12-13 players are wasting their time. The kids get discouraged because they can’t run as far as they could a few months ago, can’t cut as quick and are stumbling over themselves as their lizard brain is out of sync with those nerves we talked about a few paragraphs before. It’s a very discouraging time for them and too much of the wrong kind of pressure can have a deep lasting impact.
There is one profound thing that can happen to a 12yo girl or a 13yo boy that will give them a significantly better chance of an athletic career. It is to lose an older sibling who was also an athlete. Many top athletes will have lost an older sibling just before puberty is over. Some examples would be Mia Hamm, Clint Dempsey and Dan Gable. The reason is that they are about to enter a phase of athletic development that rewards intensity.
At age 13 girls’ bones stop growing and at age 14 boys’ bones stop growing. Boys become filled with testosterone. The heart and lungs are at full size and their training potential is near its peak. Now is the time to add weight training and distance running. It’s not that either of them would really be bad for the child at an earlier age but the gains they’ll make at 15, 16, 19 years old will dwarf what they could have achieved at age 9 AND by doing strength training at age 9 they missed the opportunity to develop their balance and coordination. Moreover there is a point where resistance training is detrimental if it puts too much tension on the ligaments or causes muscle tightness just as their bodies are ready to go into a series of growth spurts. Body weight exercises or high rep (>14) with plenty of rest between sets are fine.
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