5 Qualities Biathlon Teaches Children

Biathlon is an excellent sport for your child to take an interest in; it’s fast-paced, exciting and fun. Although it may be a more difficult hobby to pursue in the UK, it’s worthwhile, and there are plenty of places across Europe and the rest of the world where your child could try it out before investing in it.

If you’ve not heard of biathlon before, it’s a winter sport incorporating cross-country skiing and rifle marksmanship to hit a set of targets. If it’s something your child has mentioned, but you are unsure whether to pursue it, here are 5 qualities biathlon teaches and what they’re set to gain. 

Endurance

One of the key qualities of any biathlete is knowing the true meaning of endurance. Although there are many types of biathlon races, including the sprint, it’s not quick or easy, and to succeed, your child would need to maintain their strength and speed through their developed stamina to reach the finish point. 

Endurance is being able to keep going through something difficult to reach an endpoint. Biathlon teaches this well, and it is a quality they can apply to other aspects of their lives, such as school and other hobbies.

Perseverance

The ability to keep going and not give up is an excellent quality of life. Life requires perseverance when things get tough, even if the reward seems a long way off, and practising it through sports such as biathlon will help your child in real-life situations.

Biathlon is probably one of the most challenging sports to master because it requires a broad set of contrasting skills, for example, knowing the technique of cross-country skiing compared to the refined poise of rifle marksmanship. If your child sticks with it, they have a great sense of perseverance.

Competition

If your child progresses past the early stages of the sport and wants to enter competitions, they will begin to build on another essential life quality, competition. Working hard to reach the standard needed, knowing the emotions involved and properly displaying them will help them socially and academically throughout life, especially as competition, in some form, is something they’ll face almost daily.

Physical Skills

Gaining a firm set of refined physical skills will always help children. It doesn’t matter too much which sport they decide to pursue; they will gain transferable skills that will support them through adolescence and into adulthood.

For biathlon, your child would benefit from excellent all-around physical fitness and skills involved in cross-country skiing. They would also learn the fine art of shooting and how to hit a target.

Teamwork

As mentioned above, there are 6 types of biathlon races, and although some are individual events, many are relays or team events and would require your child to work with others to succeed. Communicating and working together will not only mean that they would be more likely to achieve during a biathlon race, but they will also have qualities to help them in their future careers.

Photo by Stéphane Fellay on Unsplash