VALUE OF THE MULTI-SPORT APPROACH AND TRAINING CONSIDERATIONS FOR HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETES

It should be no surprise in these times of Traveling Teams, Sport Clubs and year round play that young athletes enter high school with quite a few years of specialized sport participation in either one or two sports. The problems facing high school coaches who inherit these athletes are many. AS mentioned numerous times in previous blog posts, specialization focusing on one or two sports on a year round basis should be delayed until adolescence to ensure the child athlete is exposed to a breadth of training environments that develop fundamental motor skills BEFORE training focuses on specific sport skills. (Lloyd & Oliver; Developing Young Athletes/ High Performance Training for Sports 2014; Joyce & Lewindon Editors)

Overuse injuries, if not already a problem, might be the largest of the problems. Lloyd & Oliver, see above reference) point out that nonfunctional overreaching or overtraining occurred in about 30% of the young athlete population across a breadth of sports. 

Focusing on specific sport skills/ movements, without prior mastering of the fundamental motor skills and athletic motor skill competencies, results in repetitive movements that lack postural excellence, movement pattern efficiency, proper range of motion and inter and intra muscular coordination. Without the FMS and AMSC foundation, young athletes focusing on movements specific to a particular sport do not have the neuromuscular control, CNS efficiency and Connective Tissue network balance.  Most coaching of sport skills for young athletes revolves around the segmentation of certain movements primary to the sport without regard to the overall balance of the total systems involved in efficient movement performance.

Young athletes who have not developed a full movement vocabulary of all the foundational skills, postural integrity or strength and overall systems balance that result from this development process, are prone to create “work around motor programs” that end up more metabolically, neurologically and mechanically taxing to the connective tissues and joints of the athletes.  Overuse injuries are the end result.

This past year I returned to working with high school athletes after over 18 years of working at the collegiate level. In trying to develop a Strength and Conditioning Program for all athletes I found an overwhelming lack of basic motor skills, foundational movement patterns such as “hip hinge” and lunge, postural integrity, mobility, flexibility and basic agility skills. Again, these were athletes who had been involved in competitive athletics with many focusing year round on only one sport.

There was a history of loading many of these athletes with inefficient movement patterns, lack of postural integrity, lack of range of motion or proper coordination of movements with weights, and this resulted in a variety of overuse injuries to connective tissue and joints.

Primary among these were patellar tendonitis, patellar tracking problems, lumbar spine problems and muscular imbalance injuries. One athlete was recovering from “Tommy John” surgery to his elbow and another was recovering from shoulder surgery. Both played baseball as their primary or only sport and participated year round in baseball/ throwing activities. 

Most of the patellar tendonitis cases were results of developing “quad dominance” due to lack of Fundamental Movement Skill Training. The majority of athletes I encountered displayed this “quad dominance” because of the “work around motor programs” developed in the absence of formal movement education during their childhood. This resulted in recruiting the quads to jump and accelerate via leaning forward and bending at the knee instead of initiating jumping and acceleration movements with the hips via firing the gluteal muscles /hamstrings (initiating the jump or acceleration with pelvic extension prior to the quad extension and plantar flexion that should follow in the proper movement chain for these patterns).

Instead of further illuminating all the problems that result from early specialization, I would rather emphasize the positive aspects of Multi-sport participation by high school athletes as an alternative WITH the addition of FMS and AMSC development activities being implemented as part of each sport’s seasonal training program. As noted before by Lloyd and Oliver, “The AMSC skills comprise key independent movement patterns that will feature in most advanced training movement commonly used by elite-level athletes.”   It is highly recommended that motor skill development continue to form a key part of any athletic development program for athletes at any age. As athletes become more athletically competent, the emphasis will shift from motor skill development to maintenance of skills which will take much less of the training time allowed.

The inter-relation of movement patterns, known as the concept of “movement specificity”, means that attainment of a high level of proficiency in one movement pattern is easily transferred to similar movement patterns. For example, tennis players more readily transfer their serving movement in hitting the ball to the “spike” movement in volleyball or the pitching movements in baseball.

Because of this, there is positive transfer between certain sports that can be of value to coaches when recruiting athletes for their high school sports. The best sports to recruit athletes from are Volleyball, Track and Field and Basketball. All of these sports require a wide range of AMSC skills AND provide athletes with explosive and/or elastic strength qualities necessary for success in events or sports requiring throwing, jumping and sprinting activities.  

There are various COGNITVE skills that transfer more readily between certain sports such as Lacrosse, Soccer and Water Polo, where skills requiring recognition and reaction to teammate’s whereabouts, spacing, defensive or offensive patterns are important. 

It is important to point out that most high school sport coaches are very adept in their knowledge of the technical and tactical components of their sport and do great jobs in teaching the skills and the tactical knowledge needed for improving competitive performance. HOWEVER, the non-teaching coaches can lack fundamental teaching principles important to the learning process. IN ADDTION, and more important to the injury and overtraining problems we see at this level, is the fact that a LARGE PERCENTAGE of these high school coaches have NO BACKGROUND IN SPORT TRAINING PHYSIOLOGY AND PLANNING METHODS. 

This lack of a Physiology based training background many times results in sport coaches adopting training programs used by Professional Teams, Collegiate Teams or worse, the latest fitness fads like Cross Fit. The proper training of “growing adolescents” HAS to be planned and monitored for individuals in terms of loads, intensity, volume, and adequate rest and recovery methods. THERE IS NO “ONE SIZE FITS ALL” training that is appropriate for young athletes at many different growth and maturation levels that occurs between the ages of 14 and 18.  Adopting programs aimed at older, elite athletes can disrupt the delicate balance of the all the systems of a young athlete’s body that NEED TO BE BALANCED at this critical growth period in their lives.

The period between 14 and 18 years of age it is the most anabolic stage of an athlete’s career and factors like training volume and loads, amount of “quality sleep”, quality nutritional practices and adequate time for academic loads all play a major role in making sure EACH ATHLETE attains their growth and maturation potentials for all the body systems…CNS, neuromuscular, musculo-tendonous, endorcrine/ hormonal, connective tissue/fascia and immune systems. 

The next post will explore the basic questions that all high schools need to address in the training of their athletes in all sports.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND READING THE ARTICLE BELOW BY KELVIN GILES. IT OUTLINES THE CHANGES IN Athletic Development Plan that he is helping to re-organize/synthesize for the National Governing Body of Athletics in Scotland. It has great relevance to what sport coaches at all levels HERE IN THE USA should address. This plan would center round a progressive program of skill development, starting with FMS and AMSC and include developing of the physical qualities as well. This plan would form the skill and physical quality foundation BEFORE starting the technical and tactical elements of certain, specific sports.

I highlighted and enlarged the print on the MOST IMPORTANT points for consideration in the article below.

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Latest Projects

Posted on July 14, 2014 by Kelvin Giles

The last few months have been quite busy from a different perspective – fewer courses and presentations and more meetings and creativity.

There are two major projects underway at present and I am hopeful that each will reach a satisfactory outcome. There are many obstacles in the way for both but so far the commitment and passion required for a ‘long-haul’ appear to be in place (along with the fortitude to overcome the many aspects of opposition and ‘detours’ along the way).

For both the test is one of ‘will’ rather than structure and bureaucracy. For success to come for either of these projects they will have to be brave and cast off what was previously in place. Both have certainly ‘questioned their assumptions’. Then they have looked to assemble the early, critical manpower to forge the strategy. The next steps, and all unfolding steps, will meet inertia in a physical, human or financial form. It is at these later stages that their ‘will’ will be tested.

Athletics

A while ago, after a series of presentations I made to coaches (well supported by my colleague Phil Moreland), Scottish Athletics made the decision to ‘bite the bullet’ and create a progressive athletic development pathway to be woven into the fabric of the current technical pathway. They finally agreed that the journey to high performance contained 3 major pillars – Technical, Physical and Mental progression. They recognized that the severe limitations seen in movement efficiency, consistency and resilience by the majority of athletes along the development continuum was due to the biased content of Coach Education.

With technical and tactical elements predominating course content it is no wonder that coaches display a limited knowledge base. With this narrow vista of knowledge the actual training sessions are comprised primarily of technical work. This becomes the foundation of what is learned by the athletes – the sports-specific actions and postures – and they often enter into their later development stages with limitations to future performance improvement.

“Give them the physical competence to do the technical stuff and the technical competence to do the tactical stuff – in that order”

Stephen Maguire, Mark Munro and Darren Ritchie have committed, for the first time, to the arduous task of creating the ‘movement’ journey that underpins the technical journey. As Daniel Coyle says, “What are the keystone movements upon which all the others depend? Deliver each session around the ‘keystone’ movements”.

In recent weeks this curriculum has developed to the point where the coach will be able to:

1. Assess the current movement efficiency of their athlete
2. Prescribe appropriate movement development
3. Link these to the established technical journey

The key change is that sessions will take on a very new rhythm from warm-up through to warm-down. In the early years there will be movement breaks within the technical journey whereby the young athlete will solve a range of general movement puzzles consistently throughout the year while enjoying the introduction to running, jumping and throwing activities.

As the training age unfolds so the incidence of event group specific work will be experienced whereby the emphasis slowly shifts from general to event specific exercise prescription. As the movements focus more on the movement patterns pertinent to the event group so the movement assessment changes towards the movement patterns that predominate the event group.

Finally, after layer upon layer of movement vocabulary development, the athlete has earned the physical right to explore more fully the event specific movement development.

As I said a while ago – ‘if you intend to change your development journey then ensure that you change coach education content at the same time.’ It is of no use announcing some new initiative that only appears in a glossy manual or on a website (often accompanied by some fanfare and expensive launch from the NGB). The key issue is that all quality ideas must be delivered and not just talked about. While we have been creating the content and multi-media resources for this new journey we have also had to create the workshop component for the coaches and other models for changes in the current structure and content of coach education courses. It seems to me that as time has gone by in the last 20 years of the information highway so coach education has bolted on more and more modules of information – some of which is not needed by the coach taking their first faltering steps into the calling. The intention is to sieve through all the information currently offered to the prospective coach and ditch what is unnecessary.

In the first few years of an athlete’s development (8-12 years of age) the coach needs to have a simple list of ‘must-do’s –

1. Do no harm
2. Keep them engaged all the time (no laps, no lists, no queues)
3. Build an effective all-round movement vocabulary that leads to….
4. ….a simple, yet flexible / adaptable technique.
5. Get them to compete well against themselves before formalizing competition

This then is the essence of this project. The key component will be the workshops where time will be spent engaging the coaches in delivery and not just theory. They will get all the background, rationale and arguments to why things must change but will spend most of their time understanding and coaching movement – movement that is general and movement that is specific and all stations in between. Actual sessions will be created as templates that the coaches can take and deliver the next day rather than see them attend a workshop and then go home to puzzle things out.

I take my hat off the Athletics family of Scotland. The coaches heard the message and asked for the appropriate information. The sport committed to this with human, physical and financial resources. Mark, Darren and Stephen then took the brave step forward to turn the idea into a service. I do not underestimate the scope of work that Mark and Darren have to undertake. They are spending their professional and personal time on this project and, after several months of very exacting work, they continue to be up-beat and committed. The latest draft that we worked on is a step closer to the model that will be a valuable tool for the coach at the sharp end.