"Singaporeans must study, no time for sports lah."

Hello everyone. I trust you have been enjoying the action from the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Here's a little something that I picked up on social media - many Singaporeans have been bitching about the fact that the vast majority of our medals have been won by 'foreign talents' such as the PRC-imported table tennis team. One comment that stood out was, "Singaporeans must study, no time for sports lah" as an explanation for why Singapore has to resort to importing sporting talent to win medals at the Commonwealth and Olympic Games. Well, whilst I recognize the existence of that kind of attitude in Singapore, I also disagree with it. Allow me to talk about this topic today.

Lim Heem Wei, Singapore's 2012 Olympian

My regular readers will know that I did represent Singapore as a gymnast back in the 1990s and was a former national champion. I spent 6 years on the national team in the period of 1992 to 1997 and despite training 6 or 7 days a week then, I still went on to be a triple scholar. Okay, I know that may sound a bit boastful raking up the past, but I feel it was necessary to get that out of the way to establish my authority on this subject.

Firstly, I recognize that many Singaporean parents are utterly paranoid about this issue - let me give you an example. I remember years ago when I was training in Singapore, there was a boy (let's call him Chang, not his real name) who showed some promise in gymnastics. At the age of 11, his parents decided that he would stop gymnastics to focus on his PSLE - "the PSLE is so important, Chang needs to do everything he can to get into a good secondary school as that is crucial for his future. We have to make some sacrifices in life and I'm afraid in this case, Chang will have to sacrifice his gymnastics to dedicate more time to studying." There was no arguing or reasoning with them - they had already made up their minds on the issue and were convinced this was absolutely necessary. Well allow me to offer my response to the case study of Chang and look at the wider issue of the why children should make time for sports.

1. Just how many hours of training a week are we talking about?

Let's not kid ourselves - very few children will actually go on to become champions in the sport of their choice, many will simply use it as a means to keep fit, get some exercise and relax with. Only those who are extremely serious about competing at the highest levels will start training in excess of 30 hours a week - that is when it becomes like a full time job. To put things in perspective, at the 2012 Olympics in London, Singapore sent a grand total of 23 competitors - that is out of a nation of  3.3 million citizens (yes I know the population of Singapore is 5.3 million but that includes 1.5 million foreigners and 0.5 million PRs).

Hence in the case of Chang, the chances of Chang actually making it to that level where he has a realistic shot at going to the Olympics is stastically, pretty darn slim. And the number of hours an athlete train is proportional to the level he competes at - recreational gymnasts train 1 to 2 hours a week, amateurs put in up to 10 hours a week whilst those who are semi-professional train up to 20 hours a week. When Chang quit gymnastics, he was doing about 6 hours a week. That's just six hours a week - it is hardly going to make any impact or difference on Chang's PSLE performance.

In any case, you need a combination of both talent and hard work in order to become a champion - it's pointless for someone without the requisite talent to work very hard as he will never get too far in the sport. But if you do have the right talent, then you would be a fool not to make the most of that talent - so few people are actually genuinely talented at something in life, I think of the number of people who are just average Joes and plain Janes who don't have any special skill or talent. If you're lucky enough to be born with a talent in anything, then make the most of it!

2. Study smart, don't just study hard!

Children cannot be worked non-stop like machines - even if you were to force a child to study, you could even tie him to the chair with ropes and threat to beat him should he try to escape, but at the end of the day, the child's mind will tire and he could stare at the page with his eyes wide open but his mind would not be engaged. Children need other activities like sports, games and social activities to give them a well-balanced lifestyle - if their lives revolves around studying and little else, you will be bringing up a miserable child who lacks basic social skills. Besides, employers are looking for candidates with a wide range of interesting experiences and skills beyond just studying and passing exams.

You cannot work children like machines.

You have to look at the bigger picture when it comes to the learning process: if a child is well-taught in school, then ideally, the child grasps the concepts and is able to apply the principles. In Singapore, unfortunately, a lot of studying boils down to rote-learning where students spend hours memorizing huge lists for subjects ranging from chemistry to Chinese to history to geography. That is not learning, that's merely memorizing and regurgitating.

In the case of Chang, I wonder what his parents did with those extra 6 hours a week? If they were going to indulge him in interesting science experiments to help him learn about the basic concepts of physics or chemistry, then fair enough. But if they are going to sit him down and memorize lists of facts, then that's just a waste of time as it is hardly going to make any impact on his overall academic performance in the long run because you can force yourself to memorize anything in the short term, but the litmus test is whether or not you retain that information in the long run. The dreaded Chinese 听写/墨写 is one such example: when I was a child, we would memorize long chunks of Chinese scripts just to regurgitate them for the 听写/墨写 test. However, once we got the 听写/墨写 test out of the way, we would go on to forget most of what we had memorized because the information wasn't processed in an intellectual way - it was only retained just long enough to serve its purpose. This is just short term memorization, it is not the same as real learning.

Are you working smart or just working hard?

3. It will make your CV shine so freaking bright.

Need I state the obvious? Times are hard, the job market is tight, competition is tough - if you want a job today, you need to have a CV that makes you stand out from the crowd. You do not achieve that by being ordinary, by being just like everyone else, you do that by doing extraordinary things like representing your country at the Commonwealth or Olympic Games. Chang's parents did not realize that they were taking away something valuable that made their son stand out from the rest of his peers. They were actually harming his long term prospects! As a gatekeeper I have seen so many bland CVs of people who are of decent calibre but are never granted the job because it always goes to the candidate who has that spark, that something special to beat the rest of the competition.

4. There is money in sports - this is an industry that employs many!

There is loads of money to be made in the sports industry! Now I am not just talking about tennis players who pick up a big prize winning Wimbledon or super highly paid football stars in the Premier League, I'm talking about people like William being able to get regular, paid work as a professional working within the sports industry. Besides coaching and personal training, there is a big demand for skilled staff to do jobs like run and manage sports facilities, maintain sports equipment as well as the sales and marketing of sports goods and apparel. There are also plenty of sports associations and government bodies that employ many individuals who are experts in their fields to help nurture future talents. You need to look at sports in the wider context of the health & fitness industry, rather than see it as just something that kids do for PE at school. Many adults do participate in sports on a recreational basis because they want to keep fit and they enjoy doing sports - they also support a huge multi-billion dollar industry as they do so.

Let's look at Nike as an example: we're talking about a sports shoes & apparel brand which has been valued at US$10.7 billion and has a global presence in what is a very competitive industry. They employ over 44,000 people worldwide and certainly, the jobs higher up the food chain in the Nike hierarchy are very well paid. Nike CEO Mark Parker is raking in millions a year. This is a high value, competitive and very lucrative industry where there is a lot of money to be made. There is that famous Chinese saying, 三百六十行，行行出状元. if you wish to pursue a career in the sports and fitness industry, there is nothing to stop you from becoming as rich and successful as Mark Parker.

 5. If you're smart, you're smart. If you're dumb, you're dumb. Sports won't change anything.

I hate to put it so bluntly, but you know me: if you're smart, then you're going to be able to have an active social life, spend time with your friends and family, take care of your younger siblings and your grandmother, participate in sports, learn a musical instrument and volunteer at the local charity and still get straight As at school because you are, quite simply, so darn clever. And if you're dumb, then you can sacrifice all of the above and just study 24/7 and guess what? You'll probably still struggle to pass because studying hard cannot cure stupidity - there is no cure for it, duh.

Stupid is as stupid does.

So if you are smart, then you may as well go ahead and do sports as well as it will not affect your studies. 25 year old Singaporean gymnast Hoe Wah Toon who finished 7th in the men's floor exercise event finals at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games is a dentist (he read dentistry at NUS). He also won the bronze medal in the vault finals. Our only Olympian gymnast Lim Heem Wei (who won a silver medal at the last Commonwealth Games and is also competing in Glasgow) is currently a business student at NUS. Both Wah Toon and Heem Wei have no problems juggling the demands of an NUS academic programme and competing with the very best in the world because they are smart.

And let me introduce you to a friend of mine here in London, William (not his real name). William is brilliant at gymnastics but he is - how should I put this delicately, not exactly the brightest kid in the class. He is, for want of a better word, kinda dumb. He's not academically inclined. He managed to get himself into a British university at the wrong end of the league table - "they have a great gymnastics team and decent gymnastics facilities on campus", I remember him telling me. He struggled through his first year and flunked out in his second year, he hated his course so much and decided enough was enough. William then got his gymnastics coaching qualifications and works as a gymnastics coach today. I have observed him in action and he is actually a really good coach. He now makes a living doing what he enjoys most and the kids in the gym look up to him as someone who had achieved a lot in the sport.

Would giving up gymnastics have made William a scholar who could go to Oxford or Cambridge? Hell no, nothing short of a brain transplant could make that happen. Even if he did fumble his way through his degree from that university at the bottom of the league table, one only wonders what kind of job that degree would get him? Instead, he did the obvious thing: he knew what he was good at (gymnastics) and he knew what he was crap at (studying) thus he focused on what he was good at and now has created a very respectable career for himself as a gymnastics coach. Today he is not only gainfully employed but he also enjoys his job a lot - what more could one ask for?

So if you're smart like Heem Wei and Wah Toon, then by all means keep on training, it's not going to affect your studies - smart people will find a way to manage their time and work things out. But if you're dumb like William (sorry mate), then you definitely should keep training if you're good at the sport because you may as well stick to what you're good at. Hence in the case of Chang, whether he was smart or dumb, in both cases, it would have made sense for him to have continued training gymnastics since he did show some promise in the sport. The only scenario where I would tell anyone not to bother training is if they showed little or not talent in the sport, then they would just be wasting their time and money barking up the wrong tree. (In this case, try something like music or art instead.)

So that's it from me on this topic - do let me know what you think about it, leave a comment below. Thanks for reading.