Eras come and go, things evolve over time and every generation has those older individuals who will who through out the comments like " back in my day ....... " or " today's youth have it really easy compared to us." The ironic thing is that the people making those comments, when they were "back in their day" probably had people making very similar comments to them and the points of comparison are often distorted with the benefit of hindsight. Today, I am one of those older individuals, surely passing judgement about how today's youth doesn't get it, or how things are so much easier, or better. My generation sees the current generation as living in the era of instant gratification. My give it a name and characteristics as a way to validate why younger individuals don't see things or act like we would expect them. We probably do it in order to try and explain those things that we can't relate to or understand. Does this mean that our analysis for the current situation is flawed in some manner ? Does it mean that our expectations or conclusions don't hold water? Are we perhaps idealizing some of the things that we didn't particularly like when we younger? I would say the answer to those questions can be both yes and no. I am a big believer in the two notions that 1. Reality is in the perception of the observer 2. In every situation there are 3 realities, mine, the other person's and the reality somewhere in between So what is the point of all this? Well I want to set the table for my perception of the realities of youth sport today. My observations are comparing what is happening today to what I might have gone through as a youth in sport, then as a young coach starting out, to someone with almost 3 decades of experience in coaching the the benefit of experience against which to compare. So let's start taking a look at it. Is today's young athlete well prepared and supported to today's demands in athletic performance and training ? The lack of lower overall general fitness levels and early age athletic “preparation” as well as the common occurrence of youth athletic “sports specialization” is presently an all too common theme in today's your sport. Pick a sport, any sport, and you can find organizations who have made it a year round commitment. The notion of seasonal sports is a rarity and the dream of a competing at the highest possible levels and achieving success appears to often be the incentive for such early sport specialization. However, too early a sport specialization does have its consequences. OK, here comes my old guy moment..... The athletes of today live in a much different society than the athletes of decades past. The days of walking or riding a bicycle to one’s destination is often replaced with a car ride from parents, an arranged “carpool”, or perhaps a helping hand from a friend or neighbor. The advances in technology have provided us with the Internet, a venue for obtaining information effortlessly and provides an ease of multiple tasks as it is no longer necessary for one to leave their home as often to make a sales purchase, communicate with friends, travel to the public library, etc… and essentially producing instant gratification at one’s fingertips. The days of playground pick-up games have been frequently replaced with various video games played at home in a sedentary position. However, there are certainly millions of children, teenagers, and young adults that participate in athletic activities. Some of these young athletes partake with the aforementioned dream of their participation evolving as a gateway to a making a travel team, some elite level club or even the dram of the university scholarship. With the involvement is some type of physical activity aimed more specifically towards the goal of athletic enhancement the question arises are these athletes prepared for the stresses of vigorous Athletic Performance Training as well as the enduring repetitive stresses that will occur over a long competitive season? Unlike the athletes of decades past, many of today’s adolescent and teenage athletes are often sedentary when off the field of play, and many are of the mindset of “sport specialization”, meaning a significant percentage of these individual athletes participate in one specific sport and only that sport activity throughout the year. It can lead to overuse injuries that occur from repetitive movements involved with specific sport. When I started out my coaching certification, the notions of cross-training and down time were very prevalent, however today, they seem to have been replaced by the idea that more is better for one specific sport. Specializing in one sport is not a bad thing, and at a certain point is a necessity. That point used towards the end high school or the teenage years when as the gap between recreational and competitive levels would widen begin in college. In my high school days, there were plenty of two- and three-sport athletes. This is much less common now. In today’s competitive reality, high school programs, athletes play a sport in one season and continue to prepare for that same sport in the off season. In general, the sport they play is picked exclusively years earlier. The youth-sports leagues outside the school programs for the majority of sports will schedule tournaments and practices over each other so that a player is forced to choose only one sport due to scheduling conflicts. Youth players are tagged as having potential or not and much younger ages and those deemed to have limited potential are pushed aside. The problem is that perceived athletic at the younger ages is not consequence of skills but often related to physical development. Someone can be deemed to talented but too small for a particular sport and therefore excluded while inversely someone coordinated in manner exceeding associated with his or her age group might be seem as being " talented" but years on as they physical development of peers reaches comparable levels, the skills might not be up to par. Decisions are made early and those pushed aside then have limited changes to make higher level teams. The so called development pyramid of youth sports becomes more of a narrow cylinder. This leads to two negative consequences today's youth. First, parents and our societal sports infrastructure are forcing early specialization in a single sport (or in areas other than sports, such as piano, violin, chess), which narrows the development of children. Second, the intensity and need for an edge to get "the prize" has led to a cottage industry of specialized coaching that extends the dynamic of “haves and have-nots” into sports, un-leveling the playing field. In addition, the dedication and time required is far beyond what participants in youth sport experienced in previous decades. Kids are not just picking one sport at the expense of other sports. They’re picking one sport at the expense of any other kind of life. And that’s if the kid is “succeeding”. What it takes to succeed is participation in today's growth industry of specialized sports camps, one on one training sessions, travel teams, showcase tournaments, etc. Now it isn't just about having the potential skills but about being able to afford the cost of being an athlete. Not every family can afford the expensive leg up in sports, in the same way that not every family can afford private schools. The financial hurdle creates a imbalance, even in sports. The imbalance doesn’t affect high talented , very athletic kids, they’ll make the team. The difference is with the kids on the bubble, the ones that could improve given a the chance to get quality coaching and exposure to a higher level of competition. The one from a family with the financial means for extra coaching will likely make the team. The one from a family without those means will likely get cut and need to find something else to do after school. As athletes focus on sport at increased levels of participation, increased number of athletes require some form physical therapy related performance training and athletic participation injuries. I venture to say that in some part, this is a result of the fact that team athletic therapists are more available to younger athletes than back in my day so while it might appear there are more injuries, it is more an issue of them being identified earlier and better. However, it could also be an issue that performance training as well as the organized athletic participation of these athletes is initiated at too young an age and then coupled with a general lower level of overall fitness levels, injuries occur. From experience coaching athletes between the ages of 14 and adulthood, and in my opinion, there is a lack of physical preparation that occurs all too often. Often times it is the athlete’s skills that render them successful, but it is their lack of physical preparation and at times, their lack of athleticism that may put them at risk for potential injury. At the time of the initiation of an athletic performance training program, many young athletes, and at times their coaches, are more concerned about how quickly physical improvement can be achieved than about the proper way to prepare to train. Younger athletes get into lifting for example and it is often about seeing how much they can lift and how quickly they can increase their max, but not about really showing them the right techniques. If the present day young athlete is less physically active during the early developmental stages of life, and disregards the opportunity for their body to adapt and develop from the experiences of the various environmental stresses that occur in a child’s life, are they less prepared at the time of the initiation of performance training and/or their selected sport of participation? If the physical stresses such as walking, running, bicycle riding, tree climbing, participation in various sports and physical activities, etc… occur less frequently or are even eliminated, in addition to elementary schools and physical education classes eliminating “dangerous” activities such as a schoolyard game of “tag”, or climbing ropes in the gym class, is the young athlete of today as physically well prepared as the young athlete of the past? Are today’s young athletes prepared to adapt to the high stresses that are applied to their body over a prolonged period of time without breaking down? Are college and professional athletes, whom are so specialized and demonstrate high skill levels for their particular sport of participation, also prepared for the high stresses of their off-season training program? Many successful one-sport specialized athletes are very “skilled” at their particular sport of participation. Does this mean that they are overall very athletic ? Is their conditioning and work capacity at optimal levels? Are they prepared for the training that hopefully will not only enhance their level of play, but also allow them to resist the stresses associated with athletic participation over a long season and avoid injury while maintaining their ability to perform at an optimal level of performance time and time again? There are also many athletes that display high levels of ‘athleticism”, but are not necessarily “skillful”. Take my sport of soccer as an example. Someone might have a great level of cardio and great speed, but they could control a ball if their life depended on it. There is certainly a difference between “skill’ and “athleticism” and it would be a crucial mistake for a coach to not recognize the differences between these two physical entities. One would argue that it is important to be athletic and that skills could be taught and learned but the opposite then should also be true. Every generation can attest to the impact of the over-involved parent. Every sport, every team, everybody has come across one ( just one if you are lucky) of these. The parent who lives through the athletic success of their kid. The problem is the perceived validation that some parents feel via athletic achievements of their kids is a lure for the wrong-headed parenting that specializes kids who are too young to decide for themselves. The issue today is that in the age of social media and youtube videos, parents are capturing the exploits of the kids and sharing them online hoping that somehow it will lead to recognition and selection to the "next level" A parent's bragging about their child's exploits is no longer about talking with other parents along the sidelines but can reach a much wider audience with the click of a few buttons. Sports play a wide ranging role in society, from simple physical activity to stardom and riches associated with professional sport and various levels in between. Some will play for fun, some will participate for achievement. Some would argue that there have always been barriers for participants in youth sports to move from recreational to highly competitive levels, but back in my time ....................
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AuthorAfter many years of coaching at various levels and with different teams, I thought I would share some of my experiences and thoughts about coaching. Archives
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