Youth Fitness for Parents:
How Do We Build Physical Literacy in a Brand X® Program

In our last blog we discussed what physical literacy is. Understanding what it is, next we need to discuss how kids become physically literate.

Kids learn to be physically literate through exploration and experimentation. Often in the past, this occurred organically in a free play environment. Think of a child outside playing and deciding to climb a tree. Climbing the tree is a “Movement Problem” and each child provides a unique “Movement Solution” based on their individual “Movement Experience”. Some kids will have a large reservoir of Movement Experience and others will not. Everybody’s Movement Experience is unique. We like to think of it like a library. There is a vast library that makes up the totality of all human movement in every possible environment. Our job is to help kids gain access to as much of that library as possible so that when presented with a Movement Problem they can seamlessly reach for the Solution that most effectively and efficiently solves the problem.

The more capable a child becomes in solving the movement problems thrown at them, the more “Movement Fluency” they have. Since kids used to gain movement fluency through hours and hours of outside free play and for a variety of reasons our culture doesn’t allow for this to occur naturally, often and organically the way it used to- new solutions must be found to create more opportunities to build physical literacy. Now we see kids stepping onto the sports field, court or coming into our gym who seem to be missing whole chapters or sections of the aforementioned “library”. These missing chapters put them at risk of burnout or injury, mute their potential in sport and diminish their joy in activity.

It is the Brand X® Professional Youth Coaches job to assess which sections of the library are missing and help kids acquire the necessary experience to fill in those sections.

In our next installment we will talk about the elements that make up movement problems and how the Brand X® Coach can influence these fundamental components.

If you would like to learn more about Movement Fluency you
can start here with the blog written by Mikki Lee Martin.

#physicalliteracy #movementproblems #movementsolutions #movementfluency

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