the boys of summer

Managing the summer holidays as a sports parent

In this very first blog, I’m going to give a flavour of what’s to come at The Parent Huddle, by way of a round up of what my young athletes will be doing over the summer holidays. I’ll also introduce some of the topics and questions that I’ll be exploring in the first few months of The Parent Huddle.

This topic seemed a good place to start, as it seems to be something that many sports parents struggle with at this time of year:

How do we achieve a balanced summer routine for our young athletes?

For context, my sons have a total of 8 weeks vacation and they’re 13 and 15. One is a winter sports athlete, so summer can be a tricky training period! 

At this stage in their youth athlete development, I think it's important that they have a balanced summer routine. By balanced, I mean a good mix of rest and recovery after ten months of an intense school year, lots of fun with friends and some learning - interspersed with the right amount of training that will ensure they maintain fitness during the summer break. So here we go…

1. Sleep 

I know that rest and recovery for athletes of any age is fundamental, and never more so than when their bodies are still growing. So when they have the chance over the long summer break, I’ll be letting them enjoy a LOT of sleep. But this doesn’t mean staying in bed till midday! We still have a few races, weekly club training and a couple of training camps scattered throughout the holidays, all of which require early starts, so I consider a consistent sleep routine essential if we’re going to make the most of training days (and get right back into it when term starts again.)

In later blogs we’ll look in detail at sleep. 

• How much sleep do athletes of different ages actually need? 

• How do you establish good sleep routines? 

• What difference does sleep quality make to performance? 

• What to do if your young athlete is nervous about sleeping away from home for a competition or camp? 

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2. Healthy eating - self service if possible!

Nutrition is another topic which I’m going to look at in depth (with some expert advice) over the next few months - with focussed feeding tips for young athletes. However, here is my one key takeaway for this first blog. Summer is a perfect opportunity for young athletes to spend more time in the kitchen themselves. 

Summer holidays mean heavy grocery bills for all parents - particularly when you have two teenage athletes in the house. Maybe you already have one or more keen young chefs in the family. I’m not so lucky! So I’ve decided to take the opportunity that summer holidays afford to encourage them to do more planning, shopping and preparing healthy lunches or dinners, as well as nutritious snacks. 

I think that learning one failsafe and versatile recipe a week would be a great start, meaning that they have roughly a week’s worth of nutritious recipes by the time they go back to school. This will be an essential life skill that will surely prove a lifesaver if they end up in self-catering accommodation for training or competitions! I’ll let you know how this goes…but I’m hoping my future self will be grateful to me for this forward planning! 

3. Watching YouTube Videos

Not what you expected to see in a blog about healthy summer habits for young athletes? Bear with me! 

One issue which is of huge importance to me, and which I’ll be coming back to again and again, is young people’s use of smartphones and other devices. I’m a passionate supporter of the Smartphone Free Childhood movement and firmly believe that smartphone and social media use has a detrimental effect on the wellbeing of children and teenagers. More (much more) on that at a later stage…

However, I’ve realised recently that my initial hard line on YouTube as a source of educational content may possibly need to be revised. In fact, I’ve discovered that it can be a valuable learning resource - particularly for my downhill mountain bike racer. In the last few days alone we’ve discovered and watched such content as: 

• Previous track runs to help recce an unfamiliar race course, filmed first person on GoPro.

• A former racer’s post-race analysis of rider technique, team tactics, equipment and line selection for a downhill race that was run during very heavy rain conditions.  

• Invaluable guides on mechanical issues which have saved our bacon already this race season.

During term time we would NEVER usually have the time to watch this sort of content together, so whilst we have some extra time in the summer, I’m happy to learn something new alongside my young racer.

4. Cross training for developing athletes

(Or to speak plainly: Doing lots of different sports!) Over the coming year I’m going to be looking into lots of research on LTAD (Long Term Athlete Development), which I’ve so far only scratched the surface of. For now let’s just say that everything I’ve read leads me to believe firmly that athletes in their early and mid teens should still be taking part in as many different sports and physical activities as they can. The more the merrier! So far these holidays we’ve done tennis, hiking, surfing and running, on top of our core sports. There really is some fascinating (and surprising) research around specialization v. generalization for young athletes which I’ll share very soon. If you’re interested to hear more, sign up here to get newsletters straight to your inbox. 

Sleep-Eat-Learn-Play

I think my summer “programme” just about hits the right balance, but I’d be keen to hear what other sports parents are planning, or what the coach perspective is on this mix. Get in touch via the contact form - I’d love to hear from you!

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