Have a Sporty Break & Learn

CEBU – So how has your Christmas break been so far? Let me guess. Food? Kaon? Hikay? Noche Buena? Christmas dinner or lunch? Parties galore? Reunions? All of the above? I wouldn’t be surprised if some of you answered it this way, while others will have a balance of food and other stuff like going out for shopping, sightseeing or suroy-suroy. That’s all good, expected and normal.

Did anyone talk about sports? Play? Sweat it out? Work out? Run or jog? That’s even better! But how many are able to actually follow or implement a Christmas break filled with sports activities? Let’s be honest now. When was your last work out, game or walking/jogging activity before the break? And during the break? For those who are regular at this, I’m sure this hasn’t been much of a problem. But for those of us who somehow equate break with almost zero physical activity, I’m pretty sure many of the usual sports activities that we did during regular days has taken a back seat, right?

Don’t worry. It isn’t too late to make up for it. We have a full week to recover and you can still do a lot of things in the next days leading up to New Year and the few days that follow.

For those who are on a vacation mode, one of the most effective ways to blend vacation, exercise and family bonding is by doing sporty things together with the family. It could be a simple walk with the wife (or husband) at the Cebu City Sports Center (Abellana), the nearby park or the comforts of the home turf, i.e. subdivision or village where one lives. Going out for a jog or a walk is one of the easiest things to do as this doesn’t require any special skill or training. The kids can also join in the fun and also sweat it out. Even the family dog can join in after all the eating that it has also done over the break.

If your son is into basketball, shooting hoops at the village court is also an excellent way of father-and-son bonding. You can even get to play “once-once” or pick-up three-on-three games with your neighbors and their kids. Getting a full court five-on-five game might be a bit difficult unless your village has over 200 households and a solid bunch of diehard basketball buffs. For schools teams who have optional practice sessions over the break, joining your sons at practice is another thing to do. If you want a real work-out, ask the coach if you can join your son’s drills so you’ll also get a feel of how difficult these practice sessions really are.

I’m sure that basketball isn’t the only option out there for families who are into sports as there is a huge array of alternatives from which one could choose. Those into badminton will find out that the city’s top badminton courts aren’t filled with activities these days. Ditto for those into tennis and other sports events involving today’s kids: football, volleyball and swimming.

One of the most memorable achievements that one gets to attain during these moments is how much more you’ll get to know your son and his sport, and vice-versa especially if you’re someone who has a full-time 8-to-6 workload on a regular day. You’ll be surprised to find out how much he has grown and improved in the sport that he has chosen to pursue. His ball-handling, something that made you squirm before, will be much better over time and you have to give him credit and encouragement for it. Your son will also get to find out that your ball-handling isn’t really at par with Chris Paul as you claim it is. And what was once a vertical leap of 30-plus inches is now down to three! And while you’re shooting bricks from mid-range, he’s making you hear swish after swish from nothing-but-bottom-of-the-net shots. In our days, we used to call it “ringless.” Terms and lingo have also changed over time and you have to go with the times. You’ll find out that “defense” is always a team’s battlecry, a total reverse of how we played the game before: all offense, no defense!

This is true not only for basketball but for all other sports where the kids of today are getting the learn how to play the game the correct way, and not like those days of old when it was a simple case of doing it through the school of hard knocks. The drills that you used to do before may no longer be done these days and have been replaced by newer and more relevant drills. Conditioning today is given equal value as skills training these days, a big paradigm shift that has hit the stage father dads of today’s athletes. Stretching drills today are probably twice or thrice as long as those that we did in the past when we stretched to wake up from a mid-afternoon nap. These are just a few items we get to learn from our kids who are learning to play the sport correctly, something that we need to patronize and encourage.

So who said that the Christmas break was all about food and eating? Believe it or not. We could be missing out on an excellent opportunity to bond, learn and sweat it out, all at the same time by having a sports Christmas break. Have a sporty one!

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Time-out: We are requesting all to pray for the soul of Amosa C. Pascual, wife Atty. Lito Pascual, our columnist-colleague and one of the stalwarts of the old Atlas Mines. You can reach me at bleachertalk@ yahoo.com. (THE FREEMAN)