We have received a question in our social media some time ago. A concerned parent was wondering:
When is the best age for kids to start rowing in a club? Can they even participate at a regatta?
Many parents do not consider rowing as the first choice sport for their children. They are not aware of the benefits that come hand in hand with rowing. And they do not know the impact of their training to their heatlth.
When should my Kid start rowing?
Typically cthe english speaking rowing world recommends, that children can begin to row from secondary school age. Some People propose typically a start around their 8th grade year of freshman year of high school. As a parent you can check your kids physical constitution compared to peers. Is your kids a lot smaller than their friends you might want to wait another year.
What are the benefits? Early rowing start
rowing children like competition
Physical fitness: Rowing is one of the sports that provides a kid with amazing cardiovascular exercise. Rowing gives children a complete body workout. It provides aerobic conditioning as well as strength training. Rowing is probably the one sport that put the largest number of muscles in exercise which is why it is essential in muscle strengthening. Rowing is very effective when it comes to keeping your child physically fit.
Learning of social values
Rowing is a team sport. Social values as team spirit, helping each others or taking responsability will be tought while participating in the club life. Your kid will learn respect and appreciation of expensive materials and in dealing with people.
System thinking
Your Kid is acting in an environment with changing conditions. The child must think systemically and understand the context. The boat must be adapted to the weather conditions. Depending on the time of day, increased shipping is might effect traffic on your waters. And the rowing itself. Only a few sports are so complex only a few have so many movements in a time unit.
Kids and competition:
Rowing is sport that greatly encourages and supports competition between teams and individuals. The rowing sport gives a good ground to compare skills, technique performance. Our sport an outdorrs sport. Very alluring to many teens since they’d rather spend their time outdoors in a club. All this gives provides a great environment to develop competition.
We like that: Coxed quad for safety
Go racing?
Racing in a rowing crew will strengthen performance thinking. That is good. But here, we would recommend some caution and some re-evaluation of your Kids physical constitution:
Puberty is crucial: Before puberty, the increase in muscle mass per year is about 5%. So check out your Kids and Competitors muscle mass. We are not saying that muscles is the only winning factor. But it is important at this phase of your kid. It will be difficult to win.
During the pubertal growth spurt, muscle mass increases up to 25%. Likewise the bone mass. Please check with the doctor at what biological age your child is. He will tell you if it’s regatta ready. Biological maturity and stage of puberty plays a major role. European Kids, non athletes, enter into puberty with the age of 12.6 years (avg.). Active young rowing athlethes reach puberty with an age of 13.7 (Children -artistics gymnastics- who participated at Olympic games started puberty with 15.2 years as avg.)
Dear parents, when you think your kid is into rowing, look for a club with an Kids program, see that there is a coach having experiance with kids. Be aware of your role as a parent. Try to attend the training once a while and motivate your kid when performance improvement is seen.
More infos: e.g.: Literature in our Rowperfect shop.
Get your weekly newsletter here
Rowperfect UK Limited uses theses informations to get in contact with you. To send you updates, information about items, stories and rowing information. Please click to sign up for the newsletter.
You can change your mind any time and unsubscribe by clicking unsubscribe or contacting us at info@rowperfect.co.uk. We will treat your information with respect. Please find more information about data on our website. When clicking on subscribe you agree that we will that we will process the information according the mentioned terms.
We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp’s privacy practices here.
