This was actually a Facebook post that did pretty well in the “likes” department so I thought I’d build on it a bit for a blog.
Thoughts on long-term athletic development…
1. In a sporting environment, athletes perform based on learned prediction models associated with experience.
2. Research supports the understanding that motor [movement] variability facilitates motor learning and prediction capabilities that determine the ultimate level of performance.
3. Greater movement variability [movement experience] is associated with a faster rate of learning and better prediction modeling (a rare case of more is better).
4. The nervous system regulates motor variability and responses to perceptions of threat to the human system.
5. Exposure to an unpredictable environment like most sports demands a broad spectrum of movement variability to limit threat and increase the level of sport performance.
6. Early sports specialization intentionally restricts motor variability and movement exploration, and therefore, limits motor learning and prediction modeling.
7. Limited motor learning and prediction modeling results in novel experiences in a sporting environment being perceived as threatening and the nervous system will limit human system variability to perceived demands of the sporting activity as a means of protection.
8. Limitations in human system variability [including movement] limit ultimate sports performance.
9. Early sports specialization is in conflict with optimal long-term athletic development of young athletes.
It seems to me that those coaches concerned with the physical preparation side of the training process (AKA the strength and conditioning community) either understand the importance of long-term athletic development (LTAD) process or are coming around nicely to such an understanding. I can’t remember the last time that a strength coach expressed that what our kids need is more specificity, more focus on one sport, more games played per season/year, and less focus on general development before the age of specificity. Thank the internet and our ability to communicate information and ideas that originated in other countries for that.
We have organizations like the IYCA that are assisting in the development of a growing number of excellent coaches at the early developmental levels of sports preparation trying to remedy the problems associated with early sports specialization, overuse injuries, and young athlete burnout. We have educational resources
So where are we failing our young athletes?
Perhaps I’m biased, but I don’t think it’s the strength and conditioning community that is failing the athletes.
We’re failing the parents and the sports coaches.
I truly believe that Moms and Dads want what’s best for their kids. They want them to be happy. They want them to be healthy. They want them to be successful.
The problem is that there is no playbook for them.
Parents don’t understand how early focus on a single sport actually limits their child’s ability to reach their true athletic potential in any sport. Most of the athletes that make it to the big leagues played a variety of sports throughout their athletic careers.
Parents don’t understand how central and peripheral fatigue accumulates from a high frequency of practice, repetitive activities, and a seemingly endless, year-round season of the same sport. There’s no better way to steal the fun out of playing sports and end a sports career early than to be tired all the time and make it feel like a job to such a degree that you cap an athlete’s performance in their teens. And parents don’t understand that their child may never express the fact that they’re exhausted and don’t want to play tonight because they don’t want to let Mom and Dad or their team down.
Parents don’t understand how these same activities stress their children’s muscles, joints, bones, and connective tissues. If they did, perhaps we wouldn’t see adult-type injuries in preteens and teenagers associated with overuse. Playing a variety of sports, strength training, running, jumping, tumbling, and throwing are all safe and appropriate activities that make kids better athletes. It is when these activities are taken to excess by young athletes that they become detrimental.
Parents don’t understand that it’s okay to say no to protect their child. Playing one different sport per season or taking a full season off to just play and be a kid is a great way to improve movement competency and athleticism.
I think the sport coaches mean well too, but I’m concerned that there are too few that understand the power of LTAD and the failures of the early specialization model that prevails in the USA.
Sport coaches are great strategists but most lack a fundamental understanding of the energetic demands of their chosen sport. I would never expect a sport coach to have the same level of understanding of exercise physiology as a strength and conditioning coach, however, the lack of understanding leads sport coaches to “condition” their athletes inappropriately either intentionally or unintentionally contributing to excessive fatigue and overuse injuries.
Sport coaches are great technical skill coaches but many lack sufficient understanding of the physiology that underlies skilled sports movement. Coaches without a remedial understanding blame performance deficits on a lack of skill rather than the physiology that underlies skilled movement. This leads to a more is better approach to activities that merely reinforces compensatory movement, leads to injuries, or establishes a performance plateau.
Sport coaches are great motivators but it is unfair, unnecessary, inappropriate, and ultimately detrimental to demand that your athletes participate in your single sport program year round. Young athletes are not the same physiologically or psychologically as adult athletes and have their own general and specific needs to reach their full potential. Pressuring athletes to participate in “voluntary” practice year round or suffer the consequences of not earning a starting position or even playing is beyond reproach.
I am all for winning. I’ve devoted a large part of my life to assuring that our young athletes have the best shot at success. Adopting the foundational principles of long-term athletic development provides your kids the best opportunity to reach their ultimate potential.
Moms, Dads, and Coaches… are you listening?
