Following the YPD Model with FMS/AMSC and Multiple Stimuli

In my last Blog post, I defined the Youth Physical Development Model (YPD) as a step-by-step process whereby FMS (Foundational Motor Skills) and AMSC (Athletic Motor Skill Competencies) combine to develop the foundation for childhood movement education providing both neural and physical development that best equips them to pursue competitive athletics during their Adolescent years.

Growth Rate and Maturation Rate were defined in terms of both physical and neural development characteristics that occur at specific stages of childhood and early adolescence. These combine to form the Biological Age, which is a better determinant than Chronological Age for the introduction of various forms of motor skill and physical development activities.

Rough guidelines for the above rates are as follows; Growth Rate: rapid growth occurs from ages 2 to 4 years for both boys and girls. Steady growth takes place between the ages of 5-11 for boys and 5-9 years in girls. Adolescent Growth Spurt frequently occurs between the ages of 12-17 for boys and 11-15 or 16 years for girls. There is a decline in Growth Rate for boys between 18-22 years while this is more likely to occur in girls from 17 to 20 years.

Training Adaptation describes the developmental changes that occur at the Neural, Physical OR both systems levels that enhance the speed of developing both neural patterns for skill acquisition and physical skills (speed, strength, etc.). 

Basically, adaptations to new skills is mainly neural in boys from the ages of 2-11 and girls 2-9 years of age. From the ages of 10-11  to 21 years for boys and 9-10 to  20 years for girls, adaptations (physical ) are the result of BOTH neural and hormonal factors.

Training Age refers to the number of years that the young athlete has been participating in formalized training programs that are correctly designed to meet the specific needs of the individual.  These types of programs SHOULD be designed according to the present motor skill level of each child with progression to more demanding skills based on mastery of the skills being trained.

All training should begin with FMS activities for 2-8 year old boys and 2-7 year old girls with the primary building block skills for sport specific movement patterns. The three areas of skills are: 1) LOCOMOTIVE; such as running, skipping, jumping, landing, climbing, crawling, rolling, etc., 2) MANIPULATIVE;such as grasping, catching, throwing, slinging and rolling objects, 3) STABILIZING; such single leg stands, hand stands, plank poses, etc.

Children in early to mid-childhood should receive strength training by focusing on development of both strength and the above motor skills (FMS) mastery through fun activities that would include some of the following: monkey bar swings, jump-rope activities/games, tumbling activities (forward &backwards rolls, round-offs), obstacle course runs, tree climbing, martial arts (mixed if possible) classes, indoor rock climbing, dance & yoga basic classes, BMX and Mt. Bike riding, swimming, paddling (paddleboards, rubber rafts), surfing, Stand Up Paddle Boarding, roller skating, roller blading, skate boards, et.

AMSC (Athletic Motor Skill Competencies) can begin somewhere between ages 8-9 years DEPENDING on biological age and mastery of FMS skills prior to starting AMSC training.  AMSC focus on independent movement patterns that can be linked with other movements to form more advanced training movements used in higher-level sport skills. A list of the AMSC skills is presented below.

AMSC SKILLS >1)  Lower Body unilateral movements (concentric and eccentric), 2)  Lower Body bi-lateral (concentric and eccentric) 3)  Upper Body Pushing (vertical and horizontal), 4)  Upper Body Pulling (vertical and horizontal),   5) Anti-Rotation & Core Bracing 6)  Jumping, landing, rebounding mechanics), 7) Acceleration, Deceleration and Re-Acceleration,  8)  Throwing, catching and grasping.

WHETHER IMPLEMENTING FMS or AMSC PROGRAMS, IT IS IMPORTANT TO PROVIDE A VARIETY OF TRAINING ENVIROMENTS THAT ARE FULL OF VARIED STIMULI TO PROVIDE CONSTANT & MULTIPLE ADAPTATIVE RESPONSES.

Children who have progressed through the FMS skills and involved in AMSC skills will be ready to start training PHYSICAL QUALITIES such as Mobility, Agility, Speed, Power and Strength. HOWEVER, these must be introduced according to the Biological Age of the young athlete. A rough guide for introduction to training these Physical Qualities is as follows:  boys from ages 5-11 and girls from ages 5-9 should start Mobility training activities. Strength Training actually starts from ages 2-15 for both boys and girls. Strength is trained using the ABOVE FMS and AMSC skills. AGILITY, SPEED AND POWER training can begin for both boys and girls between the ages of 5 to 15 years. IT MUST BE NOTED that Biological Age and Training Age are better predictors for readiness to start lower level training of these Physical Qualities.

SPECIFIC SPORT SKILLS (SSS) are those skills that made up of specific movement patterns that are included in performance of a specific sport (like batting for baseball, shooting for basketball, etc.). Development of SSS skills should follow the prior mastery of FMS and AMSC skills. WHEN INTRODUCING SSS skills it is best to provide athletes (regardless of interest, motive or parental direction) with the WIDEST VARIETY of sports involvement. For optimum development of the total athlete, a variety of sports should be experimented with from ages 12 to 15 for boys and 10 to 15 years for girls.

TRAINING ENVIRONMENTS BEST SUITED FOR CHILDHOOD to ADOLESCENT athletic development, mental/emotional development and the health and well-being required for optimum educational and social growth and maturation  include >

Unstructured……….ages 2 to 4 for both boys and girls         

Low Structure………ages 5-10 for boys, 5-9 for girls

Moderate Structure…ages 11-13 for boys, 10-13 for girls

High Structure……....ages 14-17 for both boys and girls

Very High Structure…ages 18-21+ for both boys and girls

The next Blog will center on types of Training best suited for various ages. Please read the article below that gives more perspective on FMS, AMSC vs. Specific Sport Specialization for young athletes.

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The Myth of Early Specialization

Originally published in Los Angeles Sports & Fitness.  

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching,

This summer, Chula Vista Little League won the Little League World Series, and the biography for winning pitcher Kiko Garcia said that he also played club soccer and basketball.

In the semi-finals of the United States’ bracket, Chula Vista defeated Warner Robins Little League from Georgia; ESPN showed the Warner Robins players preparing for their game by practicing their football plays, as football season had started in Georgia.

Throughout the tournament, ESPN’s baseball analysts praised the players’ fundamentals – especially the slick fielding of the San Antonio team and the professional hitting approach of Chula Vista – yet these players play multiple sports.

Many parents, however, rush their child into one sport. In youth basketball, many parents and coaches believe that players must specialize early just to make a high school team. However, most research contradicts these beliefs, and most sports scientists and doctors disagree with early specialization, which is playing one sport year-round to the exclusion of others at an early age, typically before the onset of puberty.

The arguments in favor of early specialization are:

• To give less naturally talented players an advantage to catch up to their peers.
• To develop better sport-specific skills.
• To concentrate solely on one activity in an effort to excel.
• To create a competitive advantage against those who do not play year-round.

Typically, those favoring early specialization are the competitive coaches or year-round programs that profit from children playing year-round competitive soccer or joining a year-round competitive swim team or taking year-round tennis lessons in a junior program. They convince parents that the only way to reach an elite level is through specializing and dedicating more time and energy (and consequently money).

Recently, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers brought the idea of the 10,000-hour rule or the 10-year rule into the public forum. Based on the research of K. Anders Ericsson, the 10,000-hour, 10-year rule states that it takes 10,000 hours or 10 years to become an expert in any discipline, whether playing tennis, playing chess or writing novels. Some have used this research to justify or support early specialization.

A subsequent book, Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code, supports the idea of practice, not natural talent, as the recipe for expert performance. However, Coyle adds another element of Ericsson’s research: Ericsson writes that people should choose something that they love, as that is the only way that they will invest enough time and energy to become an expert.

Rather than push children to specialize early, Coyle writes that children need to engage in activities and choose their own pursuit. He calls this the ignition and suggests that this is as important as the deliberate practice which follows.

Jean Cote and Jessica Fraser-Thomas call the ignition period deliberate play. In Developing Sport Expertise, Cote and Fraser-Thomas introduce a three-phase development plan: sampling, specializing and investment. During the sampling years (ages 6-12), children should play many sports rather than training to excel in any one sport (some sports, like competitive gymnastics, differ because they require an early peak, as most elite gymnasts are in their middle to late teens due to the body issues associated with elite gymnastics).

They argue that “athletes who had been involved in diversified sporting activities during childhood required less sport-specific training during adolescence and young adulthood to achieve elite status in their sport,” (Farrow, et al).

Essentially, Cote and Fraser-Thomas believe that the hours of play in different sports count toward the 10,000 hours. Therefore, one does not need to spend 10,000 hours playing only basketball, soccer or tennis, but the athlete can spread his initial hours amongst numerous sports to develop different motor and cognitive skills which, ultimately, make for a better overall athlete when the athlete chooses to specialize in his or her teens.

If researchers conclude that late specialization leads to better future performance, why do coaches argue in favor of early specialization?

Most people see the technical or sport-specific skills of a sport. For instance, basketball coaches see shooting skills and soccer coaches see dribbling or passing skills and volleyball coaches see setting skills. Coaches spend hours teaching these technical skills so players master the specifics of the proper shooting or setting form. Coaches who have a natural bias toward their sport and to the importance of performing these skills correctly believe that proper skill execution separates the expert performers from the non-expert performers.

In many sports, however, technical skill execution is not the deciding factor for expert performance. In basketball, few players fail to make the next level because of sub-par shooting; in fact, rarely does the best college shooter get drafted. More often, the players who fail to move from Division I basketball to the NBA lack an athletic skill like quickness or a cognitive-perception skill like making the right decision when leading a fast break. Because coaches typically see the technical skills, they fail to see the transfer of these athletic and cognitive-perception skills between sports.

Eddie Jones, an Australian rugby coach, says, “I can clearly pick out those players who have played a variety of sports growing up relative to those who have predominantly specialized in rugby. A key difference is that those who have played lots of sports are usually more tactically astute,” (Farrow, et al).

I watched several former clients play in club basketball tournaments this summer. Their teams hardly practiced, so they played mostly unstructured basketball and relied on individual players’ game understanding and reading of teammates.

As I watched one girl, I felt her soccer experience helped her on the basketball court versus her teammates who were basketball specialists. When she retreated in transition defense in 3v2 or 2v1 situations, the opponent rarely scored. She did not do anything noticeably different, but when she was back, the opponent committed silly turnovers or took bad angles to the basket – it was easy to write off as bad offense, except it consistently occurred when one player was on defense, not with the others. When her teammates were back on defense, the other team made lay-ups and often scored three-point plays.

Later in the summer, I watched a college soccer practice and I saw virtually the same technique that my client used in basketball on display in transition defense in soccer. She did not even realize that she used her soccer lessons to enhance her basketball performance, but the concepts transferred and informed her play, which led to better decisions and better performance than players with more basketball experience.

n Developing Sport Expertise, Greg McFadden, the Australian Women’s Water Polo Head Coach, describes the two traditional paths to water polo: some players are competitive swimmers who transition to water polo late in their teens, while others play a team sport like rugby throughout the winter and play some water polo during the summer. “Generally, the players that played other team sports were more successful than those from a swimming background because they had an understanding of how to create space and where to pass, etc.” (Farrow, et al).

In McFadden’s perspective, playing rugby transfers to water polo success better than swimming experience. However, if you asked the average person about which sports are more similar – rugby and water polo or swimming and water polo – most people would pick water polo and swimming because they take place in the water and involve swimming.

In reality, swimming is primarily a motor skill sport while rugby and water polo are motor and cognitive skill sports. A motor skill sport is one where the quality of movement produced by the performer is the primary determinant of success, while a cognitive sport is one where the quality of the performer’s decisions regarding what to do determines success (Schmidt and Wrisberg). Swimming and water polo involve the same motor skill (swimming), while water polo and rugby involve similar cognitive skills in terms of spacing, passing, defense and other decisions.

In water polo, what factor separates the expert performer from the average player? Is it swimming skill or other skills like cognitive-perception skills, tactical understanding and more? If swimming skill separated the expert performers, wouldn’t Michael Phelps, Aaron Piersol and Ryan Lochte be the best water polo players in the world?

Swimming – the motor skill – is obviously an important skill in water polo just as running is important to soccer. However, running ability rarely distinguishes an expert soccer player from a non-expert, just as swimming skill is not the limiting factor for water polo players. Instead, it is often the “feel for the game” or the ability to make the right decisions which separate expert players.

An expert water polo player skillfully separates from his defender for a split-second to create space to receive a pass, turn and shoot; an expert soccer player anticipates the location of a driven ball and beats the defender to the spot to head the ball into goal.

While there appears to be zero similarity between a water polo player elevating above the water to catch, rotate his body and throw the ball into goal and a soccer player running to a ball kicked by a teammate and using his head to punch the ball into goal, the cognitive skills in terms of reading the defender, finding open space, reading a teammate’s intentions, understanding the positioning of the goalie, and more are virtually identical.

McFadden, Jones, Cote and others do not believe it is a coincidence when my client illustrates a deeper understanding of game awareness and decision-making skills based on her soccer experience more so than her basketball experience. To them, it is the same skill, just a different sport. Therefore, the arguments for early specialization which focus on enhanced skill development and better preparation fall short.

In fact, early specialization may inhibit optimal development rather than enhance development. For an aspiring basketball player, playing a similar invasion game like soccer, lacrosse or water polo has a positive effect on one’s ultimate basketball development because of the transfer of cognitive-perception skills.