As such any sport or physical activity help build physical literacy and better movement skills. However if you are allowed to choose one sport for your kid which can develop most skills and abilities, it should be none other than soccer. Here are top 7 reasons why you should encourage your child to play soccer.
Table of Contents
1. Fundamental Movement Skills
During the initial years of development, physical literacy includes an unending list of fundamental movement skills. Out of hundreds of these skills, the most essential ones include running, hopping, jumping, catching, throwing, kicking, galloping, dodging and skipping. These in turn are based on a group of physical capacities known as the ABCs of movement, Agility, Balance, Coordination and speed.
Now add into this mix some cognitive decision making and spatial orientation skills, and you get the most of what forms physical literacy. Soccer rates extraordinarily well on these points.
2. ABCs
The above-mentioned ABCs are intensely related to the development of CNS (Central Nervous System) in early years of childhood. A sort of stimulation is required by the bodies of preschool kids for preparing the CNS for adaptation of the ABCs. Soccer provides this stimulation to develop these capabilities in children.
3. Running
The enormous amount of running involved in soccer is the best especially for children who have yet to attain puberty because it is the exact sort of running they require, i.e. short distance sprinting with short intervals of recovery. Thus this is the perfect time you should buy a quality kids sports toys from Step2 Direct or kids soccer goal and encourage your child to engage into soccer.
4. Hopping, Jumping, Galloping, Dodging and Skipping
While your child is playing soccer, a number of other players on the field want to discourage her/his efforts. As a result, the game asks the child for a lot of jumping and dodging to beat opponents. It also asks for skipping, hopping and even galloping while changing speed and regulate their speed to evade players and change direction.
5. Catching and Throwing
When are hands used in soccer? Well, it’s when the ball passes out on the sidelines. Game restarts when a player throws the ball in and every player has to master the action. So also, goalkeepers should catch the ball with their hands and throw it to their teammates.
6. Tracking the Movement of a Flying Object
One of the less thought upon factors of physical literacy, yet important in catching and throwing, as well as hitting something with a racquet or bat, is the capability of tracking the motion of an object travelling in air. While playing soccer, the ability of child’s eyes to track these movements and asses speed and distance definitely improves.
7. Decision Making Ability
Another component of physical literacy that is often overlooked is the ability to sense the environment and take the right decision. Our distant ancestors used this skill to decide to climb the nearest tree quickly to evade a tiger or lion. When it’s about a sport like soccer, it is practised to decide which teammate to pass the ball or how to prevent the opponents from getting hold of the ball. The game of soccer constantly goes on creating new cognitive challenges that players should overcome by collecting information from the environment, analyse the information and then respond to it correctly.
8. Kicking
No need to say that soccer involves a huge level of kicking. And kicking techniques become increasingly complex as the player goes on learning the sport further. For example, Hungarian soccer players were able to kick the ball with eight different surfaces of the foot.
Get a kids soccer goal at Step2 Direct and see their range of toys that help develop various physical, mental and social skills in children.
