Fitness: Dos and Don’ts for Training Your Budding Athlete
Kids are different these days.
I remember walking into a private youth basketball league game a few years ago and seeing these kids who were in fourth and fifth grades just launching three-pointers. That in itself was not different, but what was different was the consistency with which some of these kids were making them.
When I was that old, I could barely reach the basket from that distance let alone display any semblance of proficiency. These kids had skills. This league was pretty competitive, but it wasn’t an isolated phenomenon. The soccer teams my kids play on were the same thing. I think it is the same for kids across the youth sporting world.
Up to about the same time I walked into that gym a few years ago, the athletes I trained were almost exclusively high school and college athletes. I didn’t work with younger athletes too much. A lot of parents didn’t and still don’t want their young athletes lifting weights because of some outdated ideas about strength training and youth. I disagree, and that is not what the research says, but that’s a topic for another article.
I was training athletes for strength/power/agility in my facility, but due to its small size I didn’t have the space to get an athlete up to maximum sprint velocity. As a result, I was referring out for speed training. After observing the speed programs my athletes were participating in, I found myself underwhelmed. I decided to go to the borough and put together my own speed program down at the fields at 80th Street.
This was when I started to get some younger athletes. This was also when I started to notice something interesting. A lot of the kids, including the same kids with the individual skills, had trouble performing basic movement patterns like skipping or carioca (aka grapevine, crossing one leg over the other in front and then behind while moving sideways). It seemed their skills training was outpacing their physical development. They didn’t know how to run. Is the lack of proficiency in these patterns going to catch up with them at the higher levels of their sport? Can we get them up to speed?
Fundamental movement skills (FMSs) require a child to master object control and locomotion skills like hopping, jumping, leaping, bounding, skipping, and sprinting. Many scientists claim the existence of “windows of opportunity” within a child’s development when acquisition of these skills is most efficient. They posit there are two distinct windows: a prepubescent window incorporating age-related neuromuscular coordination developments and a postpubertal window linked to maturity-associated increases in muscle mass, strength, and power.
Young children have high levels of neuroplasticity. The central nervous system is rapidly developing up to about 7 years at which time children achieve their adult gait. A 2002 report in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport stated that children should display a mature sprinting technique by the third grade, but contemporary evidence suggests that this is not the case. In that 2002 study, approximately 60% of third- and fourth-grade Australian boys and girls rated poor when sprinting was assessed as a movement skill. Of 9-and-10-year-olds in the United Kingdom, only approximately 25% of boys and 20% of girls were proficient in sprinting. A study in the same publication in 2010 reported that only 5% of 5-to-8-year-old New Zealand children could demonstrate mature form across a selection of locomotor skills.
A failure to master FMSs, including sprinting, may produce a proficiency barrier preventing children from developing more complex skills and prevent participation in physical activities that require those skills.
During preadolescence, training adaptations will continue to be predominantly neural in basis, and the introduction of physical conditioning should aim to improve factors that will assist in the rapid production of force against the ground, such as plyometrics. Plyometrics are exercises classified by a ground contact time of less than a quarter-second such as hopping and jumping. Recent research has suggested the existence of periods of naturally occurring accelerated adaptation between the ages of 10 and 13, suggesting potential “windows of opportunity” for plyometric development.
In a 2016 study, young elite soccer players aged 12–13 trained twice per week for eight weeks, either with an initial four weeks of balance training followed by four weeks of plyometric training or four weeks of plyometric training followed by four weeks of balance training. Balance training prior to plyometric training initiated greater training improvements in reactive strength, leg stiffness, triple hop test, and the Y balance test.
Furthermore, 12–15-year-old boys were trained over an 8-week period with either plyometric exercises only or with a combination of balance and plyometric training. There were no differences in eight of the 11 balance and power measures. However, with only half the volume of plyometric training, the combined training enhanced leg stiffness, 10-meter sprints, and shuttle runs to a greater degree.
Thus, balance exercises should play a significant prior and concurrent role in the strength and power training of child and adolescent athletes. When children reach their growth spurt, the brain goes through a process called synaptic pruning in which unused gray matter dies off. Use it or lose it.
Why can’t these kids skip and hop? Maybe it has to do with the general decline in physical activity due to increased screen time (cellphone usage, video games, YouTube). Maybe these kids only get exercise by practicing their one sport and aren’t exposed to various movement patterns. Specializing too early is problematic in itself. Playing one sport year-round increases injury risk due to overuse issues. Performing the same patterns not only increase injury risk but also hold back the athlete from becoming more well rounded. Regardless of the reason, if you want your child to be a well-rounded athlete and to help prevent overuse injuries, I believe you should encourage your child to participate in multiple activities with varied movement requirements. It doesn’t even have to be structured. Just get them outside to play. Get them hopping, skipping, and jumping.
The research is mixed, but there may be “windows” that your child is missing. Every athlete matures at a different rate. An experienced coach should be able to guide your athlete through a specific progressive training model. A child must develop mechanically efficient functional movement skills before attempting more complex plyometric drills. An efficient training model should have the athlete progress from one stage to another only once mastery is consistently displayed at the earlier stage.
The Stone Harbor and Avalon recreation departments have many summer camps and leagues to choose from. Get your kids involved. Keep up with the skills training, too. Then your kid can become an athletic weapon while draining those threes.
