Sport and personal development

Personal development is a trendy topic these years. I put my two cents with this post. There are multiple authors, lots of wisdom and many things to choose from.
I learned during the years that being part of a sports team in your youth brings a lot of advantages that I could not find summarized elsewhere.
Health
First of all (no news, just old wisdom), you are a healthier person. Usually, having the training before 16 years gives more power, better muscles, better stamina that supports you during the complete lifetime. I expect that blood pressure, fat suppose to be in lower levels, not to mention the daily food habits.
The health I consider to be just the surface. On top of this you learn a lot of soft skills that can make you stand out of the crowd.
Self discipline
Sports without discipline is nothing. All coaches will push to have the discipline implemented in their teams. Performance is most of the times built on discipline. Even when speaking about average Joe, that could not made the step to great performance, he was trained to respect a certain schedule, to work hard and push his limits.
Team work
My article is basically triggered by the sports where you play with the ball. I cannot imagine a great team where you are allowed to play by yourself. Messi is a greater star in the team working environment imagined by Barcelona. Individuals are melted in the teamwork vessel, without melting their personality. Having this soft skill trained in your youth, you are better able to integrate in bigger teams, support others and defeat the hipercompetitivity deamon.
Decision making
Coming back to ball playing, you need to make decisions in quarters of seconds. Of course, you are not all the time in this position, there are certain tactics to be played, but the decisions are made on the field. Even tactics are chosen on the field, depending on your opponent's play. In training, you learn a lot about how to behave on the field (schemes, tricks). This is a resemblance to long term strategy. You have prepared several scenarios and you play by them, doing less preparation during the game.

The sportsmen have a limited time to make their career. Usually, they end up their career by the age of 35. This is the age when most of the managers starts their star period, when the senior engineers become seniors and so on. Of course, a good career planning for sportsmen starts at the age of 15 or earlier, when others don't care too much about what they suppose to do. Being exposed early enough to this small game, makes people think a little bit in advance about the career choices they have to do. It's not much, it might be even not noticed, but it develops a certain internal paradigm and people act according to behaviors that cannot be explained.
I encourage everyone to do some sports in the youth. It might be of greater value for personal life than you might imagine.