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Today, competitive youth sports are being played…pre-Covid…year round. Girls and boys sports have allowed families to come together to enjoy all the emotional experiences that arrive during athletic competition. Moreover, these programs also tend to emphasise a fitness progression component within them. Unfortunately, the fitness returns will in time become limiting for the sport(s) all young athletes love to play.

Why?

The programming that goes into these repetitive weekly practices lack the makings of how Physiology can directly assist raising the playing value of a young developing athlete.

What is Sports Physiology?

Sports Physiology is how the strategy of exercises can alter the function and structure of the body, taking into account the sporting demands and characteristics required to be successful at the highest level of competition.

How does this translate during practice?

Quality over quantity. If they have been playing their same sport consistently, then they are ready to move into how their skills can transfer over to new strategies and challenges. That is unless they have also picked up repetitive stress injuries a long the way, which is another reason why Physiology must be introduced sooner than later to avoid non-necessary injuries.

What should I be looking for?

Your child’s practices, over time, should become less focused on their specific sport and more on improving skills required within sports. For example, the varying extent of the energy systems that get used during competition, the directional changes when manoeuvring, without overtaxing the joint or their ligaments, the reactive processes of fast twitch muscle fibres when accelerating, and the force coupling demand when decelerating.

Can my child get this outside of practice?

The short answer is Yes! Your encouragement outside of practice to perform different activities that don’t directly relate to their sport can be a win-win opportunity. Going on a bike ride, hiking, indoor rock climbing, or at the very least, those simple chores around or outside the house can be a tremendous opportunity to practice movement and strategy. You can also search for local Athletic Clinics that can focus on **“filling the gaps” of your athlete.

What if my child is injured?

First and foremost, always seek out the insight of your Primary Physician, so at the very least you may become better aware of what you are dealing with going forward. Once all said and done, you can research for a Strength and Conditioning Coach that has experience with programming young athletes.

Should my athlete just rest at home?

Rest is always good for the short term. However, the expectations to come back to the field at the exact same level (or even better) should not be expected. Each little injury will only add up and in time, become the limiting factor over their ability to play the sports they love.

Have any further questions or would like your athlete assessed? djsanidad@gmail.com, subject: My Athlete (Name)

**filling the gaps: a term used in Strength & Conditioning programming to address the physical (sometimes mental) limiting factors of an athlete, thus lessening their chance of injury while also heightening their capability for bettering lifelong performance.

This is an area where there can be A LOT of misinformation regarding what is best to help a young competitive athlete better recover from playing their favorite sport. First, understand that when the word “competitive” gets added to any formula, then the optimal strategy must also shift.

Sleep: For a growing child, male or female, 8-10 hours of sleep is what is recommended. For the athlete expending higher outputs of energy, the importance is not in the quantity, rather, the quality of the required sleep. This can be done by removing impulsive distractions (ie. virtual games, phones, etc.) approximately 30-60 minutes prior to bed to allow for the nervous system to naturally down regulate before drifting off to sleep.

Sidenote: Short naps can also be beneficial. Keep them approximately 30-60 mins, and upon awakening take time to rehydrate your athlete accordingly.

Nutrition: For optimal development of a young athlete, nutrient dense foods spread evenly out through the day is essential. For the competitive athlete, the timing of these nutrients can also be important. Place easily digestible foods proximal to before and after the times they perform and/or have slightly more volume of calories on days where more or higher challenging (ie. more time on the field) games are played.

Exercise: The misconception of more is better is where everything goes haywire. The truth is, kids already know how to do more if/when they find something they love to do. For the competitive athlete, improving and increasing their capability through exercise is where more of their committed practice time should be better spent.

In summary, sports today are being played both at a higher caliber and a higher rate than they were just decades ago. The specific sport may run all year and your child may be participating in more than one discipline. If this is the case, then use these tips to help maximize their ability to improve their recovery and performance, so to continue to fully enjoy what they love doing for a lifetime!

Programming successive strength, with regards to advancing the athlete, means considering 3 key areas of athletic development.

• Special
• Specific
• Skill

What is Special Strength? Special strength will be the technique for tactical carryover, utilizing any and all maneuvering that mimics the activity or sport.

What is Specific Strength? Specific Strength is exactly that, specific. It is their time spent “on the field” or “under the bar”, as it is this stimulus that will directly impact an athlete’s best performance.

What is Skill Strength? Skill Strength is the stimulus for an athlete to “better” themselves just beyond current potential (ability). This is a strength where an advanced athlete may find it a harder challenge to improve on their skill sets, which is why the other two areas of strength are crucial to allowing long term, performance development.

Phrased metaphorically: Visualize the potential of an empty cup. Special Strength would be the input, filling the cup. Specific Strength would be the input appropriate to the weak points or limiting factors to holding the cup together. Finally, Skill Strength, the fluidity (ability and capability) is to be without any cup keeping everything held together.

Information is robust, in return creating a demand for how to decipher information. For an athlete wanting steady progress, specifically a competitive athlete, this falls on the shoulders of coaches. Now the only question remaining, “How can I qualify a quality coach?”

1. Simplicity
2. Subjectively aware
3. Empowering

Simplicity? You can easily spot a beginner or intermediate coach by their high count of fallacy verbiage. If an athlete’s objective can not be examined, explained consistently and progressively simpler as both the conversation and program continues, then it is a strong possibility there is a lack of knowledge (wisdom and insight), and by default you have a coach that is accessing a lower tier of data that can very easily be found, repeated, and passed on by one click of an internet search.

Tip: A truly tenured coach knows how to provide the information specific to the needs of the athlete or team wanting their best, specific, and highest return, period.

Subjectively aware? True progression of an athlete’s performance requires data that lies beyond one single perspective. A successful program must take into account the individual’s underlying subjective behavior (strengths and weaknesses) to ensure multiple scenarios have been taken into account, and the risk to benefit ratio still remains opportune for the outcome.

Tip: An empirical approach within a training system will allow for a higher value of return on your investment (time, energy, and finance) and will always be well beyond the median of the average level athlete.

Empowering? To many people confuse a motivating coach over an inspirational one. The motivator may have a reputation of getting the job done, however, an empowering coach can start better and finish stronger. An empowering coach doesn’t just provide their own answers, rather, helps an athlete discover how to ask better questions.

Tip: A dogmatic approach to strategy will only provide an outcome that delivers everything an athlete already knows how to perform, specifically with all games before present.

“We do not rise to our expectations, we fall to the lowest level of our training.” Archilochus

Leverage x Technique + Force = A Better Strategy

Leverage? In athletic terms, leverage is an ability to readily position one’s mechanics (bio-motor skills) both systematically and somatically.

Technique? One’s technique is statistically and cumulatively subjective to all the makings of an athletes true potential (ie. genetics, mind set, age, fitness, etc.) to potentially out perform a present opposition.

Where most coaches establish an athletes objective game strategy upon is with their final component, force. Which, in real time, will lean toward accumulating volume (reps & sets) of all that “stuff” that happens at the gym and outside of their sport. Measured by training load, volume, time, recovery time, and so on. This gets redundantly repeated as it can be easily manipulated and controlled to measure for progress.

Underlying dilemma: An athlete that is not allowed to fully develop their leverage or technique will (by default) only be capable of practicing and refining a relative strength that is deliberate to the collectively controlled and compartmentalized portion of the whole athletic equation, and will be forced to adapt to the increasing demand associated with lasting athletic success without any tactical ability or advantage.

In order, the mind and body must establish a significant connection to create a significant change. That said, with the instant amount and speed of information readily available, our challenge is not what to think, rather, how it comes together.

Linear Periodization – Excellent for the beginner/novice individual

A programming style that gradually increases intensity while decreasing volume over time. This method is especially great for beginners, as it allows both simplicity and effectiveness.

Non-linear Periodization – Excellent for advancing athletic readiness

A programming style that integrates variables into your training. This method is excellent for intermediate athletes as it offers a variety of sets, reps, and tempo schemes, allowing their training a clearer focus ie. mental alertness and movement strategy.

In a perfect world, a steady inclining rate of (linear) progress can be easily controlled, pre-meditated and measured. However, even with all the options and available selections at our reach, no perfect world is present, and for that matter, must develop together to fully evolve.

Big Picture Recovery, Part 2

To allow for best recovery, first grasp how we organize movement.

From Static —-> To Dynamic

With time, and bettering repetitions, personal movement becomes a pattern for how we perform in life and sport. This presents a practice to improving our own movement patterns at the relative (reactive) phase, ie. specific, applied force, speed, and direction.

Phase 1. Stand: anchored and with stability

How to utilize the given pull of gravity into the ground, and effectively transfer for desired movement.

Phase 2. Groove: to withstand and endure

The bio-mechanics of the body, positioning and repositioning (coordination, flexibility and agility) to safely recruit the proper leverages and leveling required to repeat safe movement.

Phase 3. Displacement: better movement, strength and power

Higher bio-motor skills (strength, speed, power, and coordination) of an advanced fitness program should be continuously practiced to ward injury and directly promote both function and longevity for the activities you cherish.

Better movement = Phase 1 + 2, and progressively apply multiple challenges to further develop Phase 3.

We have access to the mass of information on recovery for optimal health. The problem is it is not given in a way to allow any one individual to see their own “big picture”. Optimal health for the individual will be the daily acts that build upon one another to, over time, aid our wired biological ability to fulfill a current need. Recovery will be those daily habits.

To start, ask yourself a version of three questions:

For example, “Am I chewing?”. Most of us eat way to quickly and are usually distracted to recognize how much we have eaten.

Second, “Am I moving? Movement was our first medicinal act to uncovering personal health. Before there were any pills available, there existed the space for us to move freely. Now we live in a modern world prescribing a comfortable force, and we are getting sicker because of it.

Finally, who is in my living space? We live in a fast paced world. Conversationalists are a dying breed. We rarely have the opportunity of nurturing life long, authentic relationships.

Your optimal health will exist in the environment that has the highest impact on your daily behavior. If you are reading this, then it’s likely you have the opportunity to place action steps to fulfill your own required health needs. Real health care starts with self care. The hardest part will be letting go. The easiest will be to repeat it.

Specialization in sports creates an issue of making holes in athletic skills and longevity.  Due to the fact that development is not only personal, moreover within itself, an individual approach of improving athleticism (skill acquisition)

A physical limiting factor with specialization play is that everyone can not achieve their own personal best performance.  Yielding a need for parents of young athletes help fill their child’s athletic “gaps”, and thus, ensure their young athletes have a better chance of remaining healthy, playing strong and competitively for years to come.  

Some of the more common performance gaps found in young athletes lie in the lack of transferring ability of fundamental movement.  Movements that help to specifically transfer both speed and power.   This weighs heavily for longevity as their ability to efficiently repeat a pattern or position used on the field will only continue to diminish as they get older.

Fundamental Movement Examples:

• running
• sprinting
• multi-direction transitioning/transferring (agility)

To help fill the gaps, here are a few activities that mimic the neuromuscular demand: range of motion and mechanical position, needed for improving fielding skill play.

Single leg-posterior reach:  grounding and stability via core range of motion

Leg cranks – muscle chain used for running (speed) and sprinting (power)

Cutting/Skating – fall with gravity for swift explosive movement/agility

If you would like your current fitness measured or have any questions email: djsanidad@gmail.com