Preparing Youth Athletes – Long-Term Athletic Development

Continuing with the youth training theme, today’s guest blog was written by Flagstaff based strength coach Carson Boddicker.

This article is full of great information on age appropriate training and I hope everyone (parents and coaches especially) can take something away from it.

Patrick
patrick@optimumsportsperformance.com

—

The science of athletic development is further along today than at any point in our history, but one area that is still poorly understood is the concept of long term development.  While many parents and coaches push for early specialization in athletics, the fact of the matter is we could be doing a great disservice to our young, future athletes by not offering them a multi-lateral development pathway. 

Why?

Our brain is an incredibly powerful organ that controls everything we do.  Each time we move, our brain is creating or reinforcing a motor engram.   The more frequently we take part in an activity, the better we get at performing that activity. 

Don’t believe me? 

Try this: next time you get into your car to drive, I want you to sit down and close your eyes before you put your key into the ignition to start the car.  I bet you put the key right into the ignition without visual feedback.  How’d you to it?  Well, you’ve made that exact motion hundreds or thousands of times.  You’ve built the motor pattern in your nervous system and wrapped your neurons with an insulation called myelin that makes these patterns more effective and accurate.

It is here where many parents and coaches make a critical error.  If doing something regularly makes you skilled at that activity, then it makes absolute sense to have a child specialize in a sport very early on and play throughout his life, right? 

Not so fast!

There are certain times in the developmental process that athletes are best suited to undertake certain stressors.  For example, children experience the most rapid maturation and growth of the brain and nervous system in the first six years of their lives, and by providing a proprioceptively-rich, multi-movement, multi-skill activity menu, you are able to facilitate the growth of more brain cells and support elements, which ultimately give way to enhanced motor skill acquisition, coordination, self-esteem, and social skills down the line.  During this early development stage, the activities should be safe, yet unstructured and involve many different movement skills.

As a young person progresses into the age range of 6-9 years old for the boy and 6-8 for girls, another critical window of development opens, and should this not be identified and taken advantage of, the acquisition of extremely critical biomotor ability can be hindered in the long term.  This particular biomotor ability is speed.  It is during this time that athletes should be encouraged to sprint, jump, swing, and throw with the intent of creating speed of movement.  Accuracy, while somewhat important, can take a backseat to speed during this time.  It is critical to note, however, that an athlete needs to still be exposed to many sports and movement skills to facilitate the acquisition and sharpening of movement skills across all planes of motion and environments.

Once athletes progress beyond the age of about 9 years old until they reach about 12 years old, it is important to begin to refine sports skills in a more controlled, practice environment.  It is in this phase that the athlete must learn how to practice before he can compete well later in life.  While an athlete should compete, the bulk of their activity should be geared toward deep practice of skills.

If you look at the remarkable skills of Brazilian soccer players late in life, many attribute it to playing loads of soccer early on, however, it is likely the deep practice they’ve undertaken in their formidable years playing the game Futsal, a game which requires precise ball handling and passing, smaller playing space, and many more contacts per game than traditional soccer.  While fundamentally similar to soccer, the increased demand for motor precision, a smaller margin for error, and more frequent and numerous repetition, the athletes are gaining a decided advantage.  As coaches we need to facilitate as many opportunities that create deep practice at this age.

As our athletes hit puberty, we need to begin to focus more on the true conditioning and strengthening activities that we are most adept at using.  Resistance training, interval training, and continued development of sport skills should be take the bulk of training time.  It is often recommended to avoid heavy weight lifting and to focus on bodyweight and lower load resistance training be used during this time, and with good reason.  As this period also coincides with a rapid growth, often muscles can be more powerful than the passive restraints like ligaments and tendons.  Furthermore, the athlete’s changing proportions lead to less effective motor control and reduced coordination, which can play a role in injury.  By forcing an athlete to move his or her own bodyweight, you are effectively teaching new motor control strategies to deal with their new levers, and by using repetition ranges in the 8-15 range, you are facilitating the adaptation of connective tissues that will ultimately build the strong foundation for the phases to follow:  competition.

Once an athlete reaches 15-16 years of age, he is now ready to train to compete.  During this time, an athlete may choose to specialize in a sport, and his training should become “sport specific,” meaning that it should be geared toward success at a specific position, sport, or event.  There should still be some focus on multi-lateral methods to assist in balance, and it is at this time a support program should be initiated or continued.  Speed, power, strength, and recovery methods should be used outside of the context of sport to continue to facilitate powerful sport performance and development.  Here is one of the best times to take part in an organized performance enhancement program as an adjunct to sport training and competition.

Long term development is still a science that is in need of a great deal of further research, however, with the science that we already have, we can create an effective long term development model for our athletes that will enhance health and performance down the line.  While I’ve spoken much about motor programming, it is important to realize that there are also psycho-social and musculoskeletal inputs at work throughout the development process.  We must, without a doubt, see the big picture when we are trusted with our athletes.

Carson Boddicker is a performance specialist and owner of Boddicker Performance, based in Flagstaff, Arizona.  Go to www.BoddickerPerformance.com to learn more.

References

Balyi, I. and Way, R. “Long-Term Planning of Athlete Development. The Training to Train Phase”. B.C. Coach, 1995. pp. 2 – 10.

Balyi, I. Sport system building and long-term athlete development in Canada. The situation and solutions, in Coaches Report. The Official Publication of the Canadian Professional Coaches Association. Summer 2001. Vol.8, No.1, pp.25-28.

Balyi, I., “Long-term Planning of Athlete Development, Multiple Periodisation, Modeling and Normative Data” in FHS, The UK’s Quarterly Coaching Magazine, Issue Four, pp. 7 – 9. May, 1999.

Balyi, I., “Long-term Planning of Athlete Development, The Training to Train Phase” in FHS, The UK’s Quarterly Coaching Magazine, Issue One, pp. 8 – 11. September, 1998.

Balyi, I., “Long-term Planning of Athlete Development, The Training to Compete Phase” in FHS, The UK’s Quarterly Coaching Magazine, Issue Two, pp. 8 – 11, December, 1998.
 
Coyle, Daniel. The Talent Code. Vol. 1. 2009. Print.
Dick, Frank W., Sports Training Principles, London, Lepus Books, 1985

Docherty, D. Trainability and Performance of the Young Athlete. Victoria: University of Victoria, 1985.
 
Haywood, K.M. Life Span Motor Development. Champaign, Il. Human Kinetics, 1993.