The Long Game
It’s been a frustrating week. I just got off the phone with a friend of mine who is a coaching director for a sport, as well as a consultant to many university programs. The sport and person shall remain nameless, because this is not the point.
Last summer my colleague advised an athlete and her coaching staff, NOT to return to sport too soon after an ACL surgery. I bet you can guess what happened. The athlete decided to listen to the false promises of others, returned at 10 months post-op and promptly re-tore her same knee.
I suppose none of this is my business. I suppose watching young athletes between the ages of 14 and 19 getting over-dosed with sport practices and under-dosed with good quality physical development is none of my beeswax, but it’s tough. It’s real tough.
“I’ve been working as a strength & conditioning coach for close to 30 years now and something has to change”
The common story goes something like this:
Kids today are not getting proper physical education at school - (There are no Physical Education specialists in both elementary and middle schools, so P.E. has become games and endurance work like jogging laps).
The result: Most/ many kids no longer have a baseline of physical development which includes the fundamental motor skills and body control / strength.
Many parents are not sure what to do to help their kids in this area.
So, they outsource “P.E.” using organized sport with volunteer coaches (again, not P.E. teachers) as means to keep their kids active and fit.
Kids are busy going to practices and games.
However, in organized sport, kids are not getting any technical physical literacy training (learning to run, hop, skip, throw, land, tumble, catch etc). They are taught the skills that relate to the sport, like shooting or passing. They train in one context, when we know a broad level of motor skills help all contexts.
Kids as young as 9 or 10 are identified and called “Elite” so the parents continue to put them in more of the same technical development - more basketball, more soccer and it becomes a year round endeavor. By 13 or 14, they have only played the one sport and have not taken much time off.
Most sport coaches, even at the club level, do not have any training in physical development and are focused on team strategy; practices get longer and longer and more frequent as the quest becomes centered on the win-loss record.
Physical development continues to take a back seat.
Then the child develops a chronic injury or tears their ACL.
And I get a call. “My son / daughter is suffering from X,Y,Z injuries - the sports med doc says they need to strengthen their body” “Can you write them a plan”
The system is a mess folks. I see far too many kids that are injured or likely to become injured because of the simple neglect of physical literacy. I have 15 year old boys and girls that cannot keep a straight back, cannot do 2 push-ups, cannot hop and land on the same spot without loss of balance and who have very low reactive strength (the ability to land or decelerate and re-accelerate quickly and under control).
I get asked to fix the problem in one appointment when I am dealing with years of poor motor patterns and bad sport posture, plus chronic fatigue. I am asked to put load on an over-tired youth. It’s unethical. 12+ hours per week of high intensity running that includes decelerations? Yeah. NO. It’s too much.
My pros do 4 hours - figure that one out.
I am more than happy to assist, but I need parents to help too.
This is why I invite every parent who’s child I work with to attend my sessions and learn. I think this is the answer. No more ‘drop your kid off’ - instead ask to stay and learn. Ask what you can do to reinforce a routine done away from sport to build their bodies. Tell coaches you are going to load monitor your kid if they won’t (or can’t)
Parents, I will teach you, but I cannot do this in one, 90 minute appointment. And people who do what I do (work as an S&C) should not be giving your kids a training plan. Kids need to be taught HOW TO LIFT, how to hold tension, how to stack their body, how to load into their feet and so on. But first, remove some of the sport training hours or at least decrease the load.
It’s OK to say no, be less busy, and focus on the health of your child or teen.
If this resonates with you, then give me a shout. You can book a 20-minute free consultation HERE.
