The importance of families in sport and fitness JUDY MURRAY, TENNIS COACH AND FOUNDER OF SET4SPORT
and to achieve more. My personal view is that this doesn’t necessarily mean becoming a Wimbledon Champion (though it doesn’t hurt), but finding a personal goal no matter how small and working towards it, and getting the satisfaction at the end of it. I’m a passionate believer that the family
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should be one of the places where collective achievements can be made through physical activity. Since London 2012 there’s been a great emphasis on getting kids more active, which is brilliant. There’s great work being done by schools, councils, leisure providers and brands to ensure that there are as many options as possible for kids to get active in the community. But there seems to me, in all of the debate, to be a missing component
port and fitness are at the core of the British psyche. Physical activity challenges us to do more, see more
which is rarely spoken about. For me, that component is the family unit and how it spends its time together, with a particular emphasis on the crucial “early years” period. I’ve been working with ukactive, which
is as keen as I am to get more people, more active, more often – to study the evidence behind the importance of the home and family in fostering a positive attitude towards physical activity. The research it has undertaken is really
emphasising the importance of the family unit. For example, the team at ukactive has highlighted the vital importance of an underpinning level of physical literacy, completely distinct from any sport specific skills, as being the most important place to start with young children. That’s why I launched Set4Sport in
partnership with RBS. The sole aim of Set4Sport is to support families who
Making roads cycle proof ADRIAN LORD, INFRASTRUCTURE EXPERT, STEER DAVIES GLEAVE AND BRITISH CYCLING
ticket at the London Olympics. British success continued in 2013, and we can look forward to hosting Le Tour in 2014. Interest in cycling has never been higher. In Ilkley, West Yorkshire, one in 14 of the population is a member of the local cycling club! More people are cycling to work and schools. It’s not all good news. Recent fatalities
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have highlighted the hazards of cycling on busy urban roads, particularly with lorries and buses which have extensive blind spots. Accidents are rare compared with the millions of cycle journeys made, life-changing serious injuries affect hundreds of people each year. Each of these is tragic, but so is the misery of hundreds of thousands of deaths and
Issue 4 2013 © cybertrek 2013
n 2012 we celebrated a British winner of the Tour de France and the velodrome was the ‘must have’
chronic illnesses in the UK each year associated with inactivity, which cycling could help to cure. Anybody who rides a bike in Britain
will have experienced aggression or carelessness by drivers. This makes the roads feel unsafe and fear prevents people from cycling. A cycle track which stops whenever it reaches a problematic road crossing doesn’t actually help at the places where accidents occur, and is uncomfortable and inconvenient to use. Chris Boardman coined the term
‘Cycle Proofing’ to try to encapsulate the measures needed to make roads more safe, convenient and attractive for cycling. In terms of design this means separating cyclists from traffic on main roads, reducing speeds to improve safety on minor roads and giving pedestrians and cyclists direct routes and sufficient
time to cross busy junctions safely. This approach to design needs to be
backed up by processes, training and changes to traffic law to enable the UK to adopt the best ideas from countries which have successfully delivered more cycling. Cycle proofing is also about getting strong technical and political leadership to ensure that cyclists and pedestrians are treated with the same consideration as motor traffic when planning roads and streets. As a sport, cycling success is achieved
through meticulous planning, analysis of what gets results, leadership and hard work by individuals. It is not unreasonable to assume that if we plan for everyday cycling with the same rigor, we will get more people cycling on a safer road network.
Read Sports Management online
sportsmanagement.co.uk/digital 7
want to get active together. It’s a free toolkit bursting with activities that you can play anywhere. Set4Sport has been supported by RBS since its launch in 2011 and showcases the games that I played with my sons long before they went on to win Grand Slams and Wimbledon Championships. I played ball games with Jamie and Andy almost as soon as they could walk. We didn’t know it then, but we were all taking part in the most basic of coaching sessions. It was great fun but it also helped them develop the co- ordination skills which would allow them to play any sport competently in later life and it’s clear that there is now a growing body of evidence to reinforce this type of approach. The fact is, families that play together, win together. To find out more about Set4Sport:
www.set4sport.com
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