What is the best training for my young athlete?
General or specific? Which do you prefer? In the case of middle school and high school athletes we prefer the former. With so many athletes specializing in this country at younger and younger ages, we are losing our athleticism and increasing our injury rates at an alarming rate.
Our youth no longer possess basic fundamental movement skills like the ability to do a somersault, cartwheel or even a perform a proper pushup. We get so caught up in short term success that we forget the bigger picture of overall health & long-term success. Renown strength coach Mike Boyle, former strength coach for Boston University, the Boston Red Sox, Boston Bruins & currently working with athletes from age ranges & even US olympians, refers to this as the microwave vs. crockpot debate.
If we look at a child’s development from the time they are born, we see that they must go through each developmental process in order to be ready for the next step. First they learn to pick their head up, then roll over, then they start to crawl and finally walk. This doesn’t just happen overnight though. It takes months and years for them to piece this together.
We wouldn’t expect our children to go from rolling over to running so why do we do that with sports and movement? The answer in most cases is that we just don’t like to wait for things anymore.
We live in a society where we want (and often get) everything now. That instant satisfaction of “same-day delivery” is great for getting that new tablet or those headphones from Amazon, but when we apply this thought process to athletes, it often leads to injury and burnout. According to Istvan Balyi, author of Long Term Athletic Development, roughly 75% of kids quit sports by the age of 13 due to these two factors.
The severity of these injuries is alarming as well. There has been an approximately 50% increase in UCL reconstruction in high school baseball players in the last 20 years and 60% of the recipients of Tommy John surgery annually are collegiate and high school athletes. This was a surgery that was only performed on a few major league pitchers 30 years ago and is now very common in athletes even as young as 12 or 13!
Stress fractures and PARS fractures are more and more common in high school and middle school athletes as well. Those that play rotational or high impact sports such as volleyball, baseball, softball, and soccer, typically in warmer climates that permit year round play, have higher risks of these type of injuries due to the repetitive, high velocity rotation in a single direction.
There are plenty of injuries that are a result of contact during practice or games that are very hard to prevent, however, non-contact injuries like the ones mentioned above, as well as ACL tears and soft tissue strains/pulls, are on the rise at an alarming rate and the worst part is, they are very preventable! This is one of the main reasons we prefer to take the general training route as opposed to the “sport specific” route that so many coaches and parents seek these days.
Now I know what you’re thinking. “So you’re saying you train a football and a softball player exactly the same?!” The answer is actually, mostly yes. The movements that athletes need for both of those sports are pretty similar. They both need to be explosive, powerful, fast, agile and strong. Now don’t get me wrong, we absolutely take into account the demands and skills of each sport.
A push for overhead sports such as volleyball, baseball, softball and tennis will typically be a pushup or landmine press as opposed to a bench press for football, but the organization and movement pattern of each exercise will be the same. Mike Boyle says that the program for every athlete they train will be roughly 90% the same, from his olympic athletes to high school athletes. The difference lies within the 10% that makes each sport unique. Some need more conditioning while some need more strength, power, mobility or stability.
This is why we focus mostly on general training for our athletes. As strength and conditioning coaches, our job is to provide a foundation of movement competency through strength, speed, agility and conditioning. We expose them to a variety of different movements to get them comfortable in those positions so that when they experience them during competition, in a much faster and more intense environment, it doesn’t phase them. If the first time they experience a movement or position is in a game, it not only hinders their play, but also increases their chance of injury.
When looking at a building, the bigger the foundation, the higher the structure. The bigger the foundation of strength & athleticism we give our athletes, the easier it is for a sport coach to mold them into a basketball player, soccer player, etc. Each sport will build off movement patterns of the other(s) and build a more well-rounded athlete.
When they already possess a wide variety of movement capabilities and coordination, they just need to learn the skill of the sport. They typically pick up on the skills quicker, too, because they have already learned a variety of movements that are required for the skill. They just have to learn how to organize them first and then execute.
With the increase of athletes specializing in a single sport, we are effectively skipping pouring the foundation and just trying to build on whatever type of ground is already there. Sure it will work in the short term, but what happens when the ground starts to move & shift later? The house will surely come crumbling down.
There is a growing movement among strength and conditioning specialists to promote a more well-rounded person and athlete by exposing them to as many movement patterns as possible and working to build a massive foundation for their strength, coordination and overall athleticism. The earlier and more often we can expose kids to different types of movement and training, the more coordinated and athletic they will be later in life.
The more we teach kids the proper way to move and prepare them for the demands of the sport or sports in which they will be playing, the better and more injury-free experience they are likely to have. Forcing them to specialize or not giving them the proper tools to compete at a young age could affect them later in life and possibly lead them to become part of the 75% of kids who quit before they ever really have a chance to get started.
