PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT

It is at this time, with the rapid increase in muscle power, that future athletes, gymnasts, dancers and sportsmen and women become apparent. And, it is at this time, much more so than during adulthood, that you can sow the seeds of health and fitness, when you can drastically improve your body's shape, performance and potential.

Your development is activated by the endocrine glands, releasing various hormones that set in train a complex series of physical and emotional changes that affect the way you look, think and behave.

Your height and weight increase, your nervous system matures, your coordination improves, and the size of your lungs and heart increases, the heart nearly doubling in size.

Because of this improvement in physical capacity, there are also changes in your biological rhythms and patterns. For example your body begins to use less energy to sustain itself—your basal metabolic rate drops.

This physical development will obviously allow you to improve your sporting capabilities. However, whether you like to dance, skate, run, cycle, ski, or merely wish to lead a healthy active life, unless your body has strength, flexibility and stamina you will be severely hampered.

It is these three attributes and their even development that marks a foundation of health and fitness. Whatever activity you wish to excel in, it must work on your strength, flexibility and stamina or be combined with another activity or pastime that balances these capacities.

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Throughout history, from the ancient Greeks and Romans through the Renaissance, physical excellence and mental and emotional maturity have always gone hand in hand.

This may seem difficult to achieve during adolescence. The change from child to adult can often be confusing and isolating, and certainly creates periods of emotional strain.
Changes of mood, a desire for non-conformity and inconsistency in developing relationships is common and often bewilders adults, who rapidly seem to forget the trials and tribulations they went through during adolescence.

Normally every individual goes through three phases of sexual interest as they grow up. The first is known as the autosexual phase, when interest centres on your own body and sexual interests. Then comes the homosexual phase, when emotional attachments are formed with members of the same sex. And finally there is the heterosexual phase, in which interests and activities are shared with members of the opposite sex.

However, this awakening sexual awareness and the radical alterations in the shape and size of the body are often accompanied by periods of shyness and even clumsiness.

Furthermore, the early development of girls and later development of boys often separates friends from each other and exaggerates the feelings of awkwardness.

Exercise and physical activity can play a powerful role in helping people through this period of rapid development, and often provides an excellent opportunity to mix with other people, at a time when such socialising might otherwise seem difficult.

Worries about the nature and speed of development and immature emotional obsessions are forgotten about and, as the body strengthens, self-doubt gives way to self-confidence.

BALANCE YOUR DEVELOPMENT AND YOUR PERFORMANCE

This website will hopefully show you some of the immediate and long-term benefits of different sports, games and exercises, allowing you to choose the ones that you enjoy and that might help you to balance your body's development and performance. A regular programme of exercise will help you to relax your mind and give your body those three magic ingredients — strength, flexibility and stamina.

You will then stand a much better chance of being mentally and physically alert and adept, free from mental and physical exhaustion.

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