The Long, Slow Death of Youth Sports

I encourage you to read this entire blog post…

It’s going to change the way you think about youth sports and training young athletes

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“I know the United States Olympic Coach. He told me that was true”.

That’s how my conversation with a local youth sports coach about speed training for young athletes ended last week.

Because speed training for Olympic athletes looks exactly the same as speed training for 10-year-old kids.

Before I go on with this blog post, I feel compelled to say this:

I have a lot of good, quality friends and colleagues in the world of sports performance.

And many of them are frequent readers of my blog and articles.

They all tend to tell me the same thing:

“Brian, your articles and blog posts are great. Very informative and educational – but you always seem to be wanting to ‘fix’ the world of youth sports and youth sports training. It’s like you carry the weight of the problems on your shoulders”.

Fair point and guilty as charged.

I do care a great deal.

And more than that, I admit to being a bit of a snob when it comes to the whole science of training young athletes.

I don’t mean ‘snob’ in that I laugh at or ridicule people for their opinions.

It’s just that after 13 years of dedicated work and research, I feel I know and understand this industry fairly well.

Not that I don’t have things to learn, because I do.

But when I see Coaches, Trainers and Parents doing unsafe or developmentally unsound training programs with their young athletes, I get concerned.

But more than that…

I wonder why they don’t want to learn more.

When I was growing up, my Dad was always fond of saying this:

Dumb people know what they know.

Smart people know what they don’t know.

And that’s the point of today’s blog.

What DON’T you know about training young athletes?

The local youth sports coach I referenced at the beginning of this blog was arguing with me that the 10-year-old kids I was training weren’t performing the speed exercise correctly.

“Some of them are swinging their arms well and some of them aren’t. You need to fix that” she told me.

“But these are kids” I started to explain. “And they are just learning right now. I teach the exercise, break it down into its parts, allow them to try it and learn how it feels. Over time, I will begin to offer positive cues for how they can perform the drill more correctly”.

That, by the way, is my concept of ‘Guided Discover’. I have written about it many times – it’s the process of teaching a young athlete a skill, allowing them to understand it for themselves and then working with them to make it better.

“But the kids need to be performing this well from the start or they will never get better at it” she countered.

“Well that’s not altogether true. It’s important to understand that kids don’t ‘do’ things right from the start. You need to be patient and let them explore while you provide boundaries for them to work within” I tried to explain.

“But if you don’t do a speed drill correctly from the start, you will NEVER get it right” she shot back.

“That’s just not true” I was getting frustrated now.

“I know the United States Olympic Coach. He told me that was true”.

So, although I will get emails from my colleagues about this blog for trying to ‘fix’ the world of sports training, I still want to explain some things to you.

Most Coaches, Trainers and Parents I know are good people.

They genuinely want what’s best for their young athletes.

But what needs to be understood is that TRAINING YOUNG ATHLETES IS NOT THE SAME AS TRAINING ELITE ATHLETES.

You can’t just give kids speed drills and expect them to be faster on day 1.

You can’t just send teenagers into a weight room without any sort of technical instruction and expect them to get stronger.

You have to appreciate that kids are kids and they have unique physical needs that are DIFFERENT THAN OLDER, MORE ELITE ATHLETES.

Society wide, you see all kinds of signs that people just don’t understand these points.

Colleges are signing 14-year-olds to scholarships.

And without even beginning to scratch the surface of what this may do psychologically to a young athlete, the physical concerns of this kind of practice are absolutely huge.

Consider this:

A 14-year-old gets signed to a college scholarship.

His parents, coaches and trainers begin to naturally view him as a single sport ‘specialist’.

So he is taught to train like a ‘football’ player.

He only ever plays ‘football’.

His weight room activities revolve around preparing for ‘football.

He never, EVER plays other sports because he is, naturally, a ‘football’ player.

Now, you may be reading this and be thinking ‘so what’s the problem’?

And if you are, I need you to understand the following message…

This 14-year-old kid isn’t done growing yet.

His body has just entered puberty and his nervous system is still in the process of acquiring skill.

To become the best and most injury resistant athlete possible, he ABSOLUTELY MUST experience multiple sports and training styles.

To become one dimensional now means that his potential athletic ability will be muffled.

He will simply never become as good a football player as possible without a diverse and varied sporting and training background.

But an ‘elite’ coach saw something special in him.

The ‘elite’ coach decided that this kid has some ‘elite’ qualities and therefore should be treated like an ‘elite’ athlete.

And there, right there is where my Dad’s favorite saying comes back into play:

Dumb people know what they know.

Smart people know what they don’t know.

Kids aren’t elite athletes.

And this is not some kind of bleeding heart liberal declaration either.

Sure I care about kids and don’t want to see them become pieces of meat or commodity’s to ‘elite’ coaches who want to treat them like adults.

But I’m talking about making kids the best athletes they can be.

And to do that, you have to understand the unique and specific methods of training them.

So, and I ask this with all respect:

Are you SMART?

Or are you DUMB?

Do you understand what you don’t know about training young athletes?

Or do you think what the ‘elite coach’ told you actually applies to a 10-year-old?

You know, Complete Athlete Development was designed for Coaches, Trainers and Parents who work with young athletes.

And I created it because I know that most people ‘don’t know’.

Speed development, strength training, flexibility enhancement… These are all things that require special understanding when it comes to training young athletes.

Click here to see why it’s something you would be best served to get your hands on:

Complete Athlete Development

The ‘Long, Slow Death of Youth Sports’ is based on the fact that youth sports, and kids in the process, have lost their innocence when it comes to being active.

Do you remember what it’s like being a 10-year-old soccer, football or basketball player?

I do.

I imagined myself to be the hero.

I wanted the ball.

4th quarter, no time on the clock and I was open.

I drove to the goal line hard.

Tacklers were coming at me, but nothing was going to prevent me from scoring.

I made a move.

Put my shoulder down.

And exploded across the end zone marker.

I was exhilarated and jubilant.

It was fun and I was on top of the world.

But more than that, I got to experiment and imagine.

We ‘played’ that final down at least a dozen times, and each time, I did a different ‘move’.

Each time, the tacklers would take a different angle at me.

We experimented, our bodies learned and we had a blast.

Kids can’t do that anymore.

Now, they get yelled at for making a mistake.

I watch hockey coaches teaching 8-year-olds defensive zone breakout plays for 60 minutes.

Basketball coaches making young kids do weave drills for what seems like an eternity.

And yes, the ‘bleeding heart’ in me wants more people to understand how little fun this is.

Kids just don’t have fun anymore.

They aren’t given the time to pretend to be Michael Jordan, Cal Ripken or Brett Favre.

But more than that -

They aren’t given the chance to become great athletes.

Giving a kid a ball and letting them experiment with skills is the essence of what will make a young athlete eventually great.

But we want to over-coach.

We don’t have the patience to let them experiment with fun skills, because winning the ‘plastic trophy’ at this weekends tournament requires some serious work on our defensive zone coverage.

We need to get kids into the weight room early so they can pound out some quality sets and reps.

The injury concern of that notwithstanding, we don’t want to recognize that the fundamental cornerstone of becoming strong and fast is founded on basic things like running, jumping, throwing and climbing.

The kind of things kids naturally do when left alone and allowed to play.

We need to reclaim this innocence for the kids.

And not just because we want to put the fun back in youth sports.

But because we want our young athletes to grow up and be fast, strong and injury-free.

It’s such a simple, simple equation too.

I emplore you to check out Complete Athlete Development.

It shows you how to train young athletes of any age and in any sport by reclaiming what is natural about human growth and development.

It’s not the ‘latest and greatest’ speed training or strength training infomercial.

It’s the kind of stuff that works, every time.

It’s not sexy - it’s the basics.

But look around…

How badly do people need to reconnect with the basics?

Click here:

Complete Athlete Development