Keeping it fresh.

  When you have a kid start racing when they are 6 or under,dealing with burnout is almost unavoidable. In the early years with Kenny i just wanted him to race as much as possible and work on the basic fundamentals over and over.Kenny,Jessica and myself spent countless hours driving the west coast together.We had a great time and i have some of the best memories of my life from these trips.But the down side is burnout like i said.Kids can only miss so many of their friends birthday parties and and other social non bmx stuff before they start to feel like they are missing out on alot.And if you are chasing something like district number one it consumes your time and money.I never really cared if he got it or not as its not the most important title, but it was a goal we would set and i would use it to get him racing as much as possible.
  So we did this for a few years.He gained a lot of bike skills racing on all kinds of different tracks and we had a blast,but i also noticed it taking the fun out of it for him,He was losing interest.So right before the redline finals we switched up the program completely.I let Kenny decide if he wants to race locals, but really we are just always training for the next big race.A lot of people wont admit that they train, but kenny does a lot and hes been doing it 5-6 times a week for the last 7 months.But this only works because we put in the time racing the locals to develop the bike skills he has now.
  So we mixed the training with the bike skills he had and he got noticeably faster and from the results he gained confidence. But always remember that its different for everyone with bmx.Some kids move up right away and start winning mains  in the expert classes.With Kenny it took a little longer we just never gave up.Now that hes getting ready to be a teenager next month a lot is going to change for him over the next few years and its going to be the do or die time for him as it was with many before him.So my advice to any bmx parents is to always make it fun, be encouraging,always strive for progress and keep it fresh.