Why Not Push Athletics?

I’ll be perfectly honest- I’ve been disappointed with the boy’s efforts regarding his junior black belt. It’s not that I expect him to be Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan. It’s more about the level of effort which, in my opinion, is non-existent.

Thus far, I’ve more or less allowed him to find his own way. With the sole exception being that we’ve forced him to attend classes because they cost us money but also because he’s made a commitment and we want him to learn that he has to follow through. Outside of that, we haven’t really pushed him to practice outside of class or even to take as many extra classes as he wants.

The choice to not push him has been deliberate on my part and the Wife’s part. We’ve felt all along that it wasn’t really something we could push him to do because we didn’t want him to come to resent it. We’ve also felt that he would, well, figure it out on his own.

Thus far, that hasn’t happened.

Then, a couple days ago when he was struggling with some of this math, it occurred to me that the Wife and I haven’t hesitated to do just the opposite with regards to school work. Having trouble with spelling? Let’s drill your word list. Having trouble with math? Here are extra problems and I’ll sit and work with you on them. We forced him to read until we didn’t need to anymore and we’re doing the same with the lass.

So if we school work is important and we push them in that arena, and we’ve deemed that his martial arts is important, why not push him just as hard there as with school? So far, I haven’t been able to come up with anything better than “It’s different.”

School is their main job right now. Doing well in it requires learning to put in the proper effort to learn the material. Helping him to do that enforces the importance that the material has for his future.

Martial arts is an after school activity and, for now, it’s supposed to be fun. It’s hard for something to be fun once it starts to feel like work. Pushing him to practice more runs the risk that he starts to think it’s more like work. And then what? It’s not hard to see him wanting to stop after that point.

The flip side is, how does he learn what it takes to become excellent at something without the effort? Doesn’t the concept apply equally well to other aspects of life outside of his school work? If we wouldn’t hesitate to make him work more for school, why do we do so in athletics?

There are no easy answers sometimes.