S B Coaches College - Fitness Fundamentals for Emerging Athletes




		Fitness Fundamentals for Emerging Athletes *Robb Rogers, M.Ed., CSCS*

Age of Sensitivity

The age of sensitivity is critical to increasing the bio-motor qualities of coordination, rhythm, balance, strength, speed, power and work capacity in children. As they mature, each of these qualities is trainable at different rates as well as varying times as the child ages. There is gender as well as individual differences in children’s ability to acquire these traits in relation to age. Girls tend to mature quicker and therefore tend to be sensitive to acquiring these traits at a slightly earlier age. The absolute ceiling of each of these abilities can be raised if they are properly addressed at the opportune time the body is sensitive to enhancing these properties. One of the goals of physical training is to provide a conceptual framework for addressing each of these skills in an appropriate method as well as an age specific manner.

Loss of Clientele

Many children leave sport because of discomfort levels caused by injury due to poor compensation patterns, inability to master basic skills needed to compete or other interests supersede the time requirement of sports. If the proper foundation of basic bio-motor skill development is in place, poor compensation patterns may be the cause of discomfort, pain or injury as well as performance restrictions. Many of the athletes that fall by the wayside due to discomfort caused by poor compensation and/or inability to handle the stressors of practice repetitions can be retained in the program if they can recover adequately and physically feel better at the beginning and end of the practice bout. This quality can be enhanced by assessing the compensation weaknesses and prescribing corrective exercises, drills, and games that will allow for proper patterns of accepting and producing force. The final factor that goes into creating the workout template is the fun factor. Always include and plan for fun. The more fun the drill, the exercise, the circuit and the practice the greater the athlete retention is in the program. It is always more fun to play than to work, so always consider the role of playing for fun in the exercise prescription/practice plan.

The Building Blocks of the Program

Work Capacity – the ability to execute a work bout and recover sufficiently in the time allotted to return to practice and/or competition and repeat the work bout with quality – the ability to withstand the amount of work demanded by the day’s activities.

- Vern Gambetta

For some this is “fitness” or “endurance” or “cardiovascular ability” but in today’s world this is more accurately termed work capacity. In most sports it is not about the ability to run distance or ride for hours but rather the ability to work at high levels for relatively short periods of time and possess the ability to recover and repeat those quality technical skills. Observe young children at play. They play hard for several minutes and then sit down to rest and recover. Humans are anaerobic creatures, built for relatively short bouts of exercise interspersed with longer bouts of recovery. In order to prevent the neuromuscular system from being re-configured for long, slow bouts of exercise, the training prescription should be dynamic short bouts of exercises in circuit/game form in order to enhance the neuromuscular and energy systems inherent to gymnastics. Long slow bouts of exercise can depress the explosive neuromuscular system and its’ ability to absorb and produce the forces needed for many of the higher level skills of the power sports.

Circuit training tends to be the best way to increase work capacity in a form that is conducive to mimicking the demands of various sports or positions. The younger the child the more the circuits should be game based in order to increase interest, compliance and competition. The older and more elite level competitors will crave more structured skill development focused on the competitive skills needed to excel at the local, regional and national levels.

Strength, Speed and Power is of utmost importance to be able to handle the loads of most team sports. At the younger ages of 8 – 12 children will not exhibit muscular size gains, but rather increased ability to coordinate the recruitment of muscle bundles by the neural part of neuromuscular coordination exhibited in the gross coordination of sequencing and summation of forces. In fact, in many sports, added mass is generally detrimental. Therefore, bodyweight exercise is a key component to strength fitness for younger athletes. The general rules of thumb are bodyweight through the full range of motion before adding external load. Stress can be increased by adding repetitions, speed and/or time under tension. It is always better to do more sets and fewer reps than fewer sets with more reps in order to add strength without mass. Emerging athletes want a very high strength to mass ratio. In order to add speed to the exercise the lowering/contracting portion of the repetition should be done with control and the extending portion should be done with quick to explosive tempo. The concept of time under tension is excellent to create a higher quality contraction and prepare the tendon for load absorption. To increase the time under tension the movement is paused or held at a certain joint angle for up to 10 seconds. Theoretically this his will cause the short term fast twitch muscle fibers to become exhausted and the intermediate and slow twitch fibers to become more involved in the contraction of the muscle. A good mixture of controlled-explosive and time under tension repetitions will greatly enhance the athletes’ ability to absorb and generate force. The younger the athlete the greater importance force absorption, also known as stopping strength plays in preparation. Watch young children at play at the soccer fields or in the living room. They do not jump up to play; they climb up on bleachers and couches and jump off to land in partial to full squat positions. The human body innately knows it must do lots of landing, force absorption repetitions in order to prepare it for the force production needed later in life. This teaches the tendon to handle and store the energy absorbed in the loading phase and will create an elastic component that can snap back like a rubber band for great force development. Faster, higher, quicker and farther are much easier to attain through elastic training of the tendon and nervous system than through the contractile training of the nervous system and the muscle fibers themselves.

Flexibility is the ability to move the body through a range of motion. Mobility is the ability to move the body through a functional range of motion. Just because a child can lift one leg up in front of or to the side of the body does not mean the child possess’ the ability to do either type of splits. Just because an adult can lay on their back and pull their knees up to their shoulders at the same time as they reach up over head does not mean that person can doe a full squat with an over head reach. Those two examples are the difference between mobility and flexibility. Many young children possess great mobility and average flexibility while adults many times have just the opposite. The many types of stretching can be employed at various times in order to enhance flexibility.

Static stretching, passive stretching, PNF stretching, dynamic stretching can all be employed at various times. This will increase flexibility and may enhance recovery if done post- workout, but this may or may not enhance the ability of the child to be mobile if they exhibit decreased mobility for a particular movement. Lack of mobility can be due to various “software” reasons from poor neuromuscular recruitment patterns, asymmetries, imbalances and unfamiliarity with the skill. On the other side of the coin “hardware” reasons for poor mobility are usually due to actual inhibitions due to joint restrictions caused by scar tissue from previous injuries or poor lever length coordination at times of rapid growth spurts. Corrective exercise and activation can increase the ability to exhibit mobility in the case of software and scar tissue restrictions, but other hardware problems tend to be non-correctable.

Nutrition is a huge component of recovery as well as preparation for the work bout. The most important meal or snack is the one the child eats in the 2 – 3 hours prior to training or competition. The second most important meal is the snack the child eats in the 15 – 30 minutes post workout. Quality proteins combined with some form of carbohydrate are key components of these meals. Hydration is also a factor in the athletes’ ability to exhibit skills, withstand work bouts as well as recover post training. Each athlete should have between 4 – 6 servings of a combination of fruits and vegetables each day. Each athlete should try to limit processed forms of carbohydrate or simple sugars in the forms of white flour or high fructose corn syrup. Blood sugar spiking has been implicated in a myriad of health problems and can be controlled my ingesting low glycemic content carbohydrates or starches that have very little processing. Breakfast is the key meal as it stokes the body’s engine for the day ahead and jump starts the body’s metabolism.

Train hard, eat right, rest and recover in an atmosphere of science based fun instruction in the traditions of various sports can lay the foundation of fitness that will pay dividends for years to come.

For more information:

“Children and Sports Training” Jozef Drabik

“Science and Practice of Sports Training” Thomas Kurz