We live in a funny world, don’t we? Most athletes, parents, clients and a lot of people around are judging your work as a strength coach by how tired you can make them during training sessions. Following a Crossfit, P90X or other non-sense training system, people always seem satisfied with the results because they work hard. After all, isn’t it what it’s all about?
These quotes make plenty of sense, don’t they…..
As a strength coach or a personal trainer it’s very easy to exploit these training systems or use other training methods to make yourself look good to the uneducated crowd out there, who always believed that working hard is the only thing it’s about.
Since that stuff sells and attract a lot of athletes and weekend warriors, it’s not easy to drift away from those training methods and still make your athletes and clients feel like they’re accomplishing something, even though they don’t crawl out the door with not an ounce of energy left.
Let’s face it, what’s easier?:
- Beating your athletes to the ground every training session, and leaving them with the feeling they’ve worked hard? Or;
- Letting your athletes leave the weight room with some energy left, and sometimes even feeling refreshed, and having to sell to them why it is better than beating them to the ground when they’ve been led to believe otherwise all their life?
It’s an art to periodize your athletes’ training, and even more of an art to stick to it. When you’ve planned to back off the weights at the beginning of the off-season to give your athletes some time to recover and take care of the imbalances they’ve created during their season, do you really stick with the plan? Or do you get overwhelmed by the feeling that you should work them to the ground?
Managing training loads and volumes is critical, especially with high level athletes. If you think that training hard and crushing your athletes is the way to go, you’re going to have a serious problem working (and being successful) with College and pro athletes. I think I remember Sean Skahan, strength coach of the Anaheim Ducks in the NHL, saying that he feels more like a “recovery coach” than a strength coach at times. I couldn’t agree more with him.
There are times during a training year where it’s all about maximizing recovery and handling training loads so the athletes can still perform at the highest level and avoid getting hurt. Overtraining will drastically affect your performance level and make your risk of injury skyrocket. The in-season and early off-season phases are perfect examples; athletes have a lot of stress put on their body with a lot of games, practices every day, travel, school (in the case of college athletes), etc. That’s why they need a lot of recovery, injury prevention and corrective strategies during those times. A certain level of strength can be maintained, but the volume must remain pretty low.
Make sure you don’t take the easy way out. Do what’s right for your athletes, plan accordingly and resist the urge of just crushing them for the sake of it. They’ll become better, stronger and more injury resistant athletes in the long run.
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Everybody makes mistakes. And if you think you’re any different and you don’t make any, you’re really kidding yourself and it’s probably time for a reality check.
We all make mistakes, whether we like to admit it or not; this is human nature. It’s part of the learning process. Strength and conditioning coaches are not different. I’m no different.
This is the time of year where everybody makes resolution for the new year or highlights what they learned or changed in the last year. I’ll give my 2011 review a different flavor by giving you my top 5 mistakes I made in the last year (or the ones that have lasted up to this past year).
1. Recommending minimalist footwear for everyone. I wrote a whole blog post on the subject not too long ago (if you missed it you can check it out HERE). The idea is that for too long we have restrained our feet in footwear with a lot of cushioning, big heel lifts and support all around. That made the feet become lazy, and they stopped doing their job because they didn’t have to anymore. But the thing is that the problem can originate somewhere else; in other words, the feet are not always the source of the problem, but rather the result from a problem originating somewhere else. In our lifestyle in 2012, there is more than just our footwear that’s wrong. Sedentary lifestyles, prolonged sitting, poor posture, long commute in cars, and early development in young athletes who do too much too young are all factors that can wreak havoc on our bodies. Any of these factors (or a combination of) can lead to permanent structural changes on our bodies. Femoroacetabular impingement (FAI), femoral anteversion and retroversion and other hip problems can lead to different feet position and structural variations.
Probably wouldn’t be a good idea to have this guy run in Vibrams…
Before I digress too much, it simply means that not everyone can get away with wearing Vibram Five Fingers or New Balance Minimus all day. I used to blindly recommend those type of shoes without assessing the person. Let’s just say that I’m a lot more careful about it now. As a side note, overweight and poor running mechanics are 2 other factors that would lead me to not recommend a minimalist type of shoes for physical activity.
2. Minimizing the importance of breathing. If you’ve followed my blog for some time, you should know by now the importance I pay to breathing patterns. I’ve blogged about that many times during the last year, and I must say that the more I learn about it, the more I realize how crucial it is with any movement pattern and for proper alignment (as a side note, I can improve your range of motion just by teaching you how to breathe; that’s how powerful it is). The diaphragm muscles (yes, there are 2 of them) have fascial connections with the thoraco-lumbar fascia which in turn connects with the psoas (that attaches on the spine) and the hips.
Because of that, proper diaphragm function and proficient breathing patterns are essential for optimal posture and positioning through various movement patterns. Ineffective use of the diaphragm muscles could lead to hyperextension of the thoraco-lumbar region, faulty positioning of the hips and plenty of other problems all the way up and down the chain. This is something I coach a lot now, and it has made a huge difference on our athletes at Endeavor. If you’re not familiar with proper breathing patterns and diaphragm function, I suggest you take a look at the PRI stuff (Postural Restoration Institute).
3. Mismanaging training volumes and intensities. Whether it is in my own training or the ones of my athletes, I think I have not always been good at managing fatigue and recovery. On paper, training volumes always look well managed, but the reality is that it goes far bey0nd that. For one, if you always go balls to the walls when you train and push yourself the the very limit every training session lifting maximal weights and pushing lactic conditioning ’til you puke, chances are you won’t recover properly even if the planned training volume for the week is moderate. The other thing is that there are a lot of other factors that factors in the equation (quantity and quality of sleep, nutrition, other sports and activities outside of the gym, the party factor, etc). Whether you like it or not, there aren’t that many athletes that won’t take some time to enjoy life during their off-season, which usually means spending a day at the beach not eating too well (or enough) or have a late night and a couple of beers once in a while. In their off-season, athletes not only need a physical break from their sport, but a mental one as well. Nothing wrong with that, as long as they keep it in check and don’t overdo it. It struck me this past summer when we had one of our pro hockey player return to Endeavor after a very long season in which his team ended up winning the Stanley Cup. First of all he came back from his team mid to late June, almost 2 months later than all the other guys, but he was also way more beat up physically and mentally. It was apparent that even after almost 10 days completely off, he just didn’t have the wheels he had the previous off-season (which started in April the year before- that’s a big difference). He took more days off from training than the previous off-season and the number of days he showed up hungry to get after it were definitely not as frequent. The off-season is not only about getting ready for the upcoming season, but also recovering from the previous one, especially if it was a very long and excruciating one. This is where HRV measurement tools are gonna come in handy; it allows you to measure physical and nervous system fatigue and you can manage fatigue and recovery so much better. And that technology is becoming available to us. I blogged about this before.
4. Aerobic training is not the evil I thought it was. I always stood up against aerobic training for team sports because it’s simply not the way most sports are played. After trying to prove my point for years, and I am starting to realize certain things. I still don’t think I was wrong about the fact that long slow pace aerobic training is not specific to sports, but I’m starting to realize that the pendulum may just have swung too far.
The aerobic system plays a huge role in recovery for the lactic and alactic systems and a decent amount of the energy produced in a team sports setting will come from the aerobic system. It still doesn’t mean that you should go for hour long jogs 4-5 times a week to get ready for your hockey season, but there just might be a place for steady state aerobics in a yearly training plan after all.
5. Not enough external rotation based rotator cuff exercises for my baseball players. With the importance of scapular stability, t-spine mobility, breathing patterns and working the rotator cuff in a stability role, I will admit that I neglected external rotation based exercises a little bit last off-season with my baseball players.
Shoulder injury prevention is about much more than just external rotation exercises, but it might have been another pendulum that swung too far for me because I haven’t done much of it with my baseball pitchers last off-season. The reality is that the external rotators of the shoulder still need to decelerate the crazy velocity of internal rotation that occurs at the shoulder in a pitching motion (over 7,000°/sec), so it’s still specific to do direct external rotation work with baseball pitchers, so these muscles become better at decelerating the internal rotation.
Those are the mistakes I’ve made this past year. What are the mistakes you’ve made during the last year?
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With most of the pro leagues and fall ball seasons almost over for every player at this time of year, it’s time to start making a plan of attack for the off-season in the next couple of months, before spring training comes around in late February-early March. There are obviously many options that present for baseball players of all ages for the off-season.
Unfortunately, season is over for most.
For the younger crowd (12 and under) it should simply be playing a different sport and changing the stimuli from baseball. That will allow the kids to develop a variety of skills other than just throwing a baseball a swinging a bat. This will also give a rest to the throwing shoulder, especially pitchers.
For players a little older, strength training should be a priority to maximize strength, power and decrease the risk of shoulder injuries. Unfortunately, too many baseball players (in part because of the culture of the sport) are not going to be part taking in any strength and conditioning program. The option of not training at all seems to be more appealing to many players, apparently. I’m even talking about professional players. Whether they don’t recognize the huge benefits from it or they’re just being too lazy is a totally different discussion.
Some players who actually do something and engage into a baseball strength and conditioning off season program, don’t always take the best route. Running distances and doing some band exercises for the shoulder might sound a good program to engage in for baseball pitchers to spare their shoulder. But what those players fail to realize is that there is a lot of factors that you need to address in the off-season, and you probably shouldn’t waste your time doing distance running. Mobility and range of motion deficits, dysfunctional movement patterns, muscle weaknesses and joint instabilities are just a couple of examples of problems baseball players present with that need to be addressed in the off-season.
A decent strength and conditioning program in the off-season should cover the following;
These are just a couple of examples that should be included in your baseball off-season training. If your program doesn’t include at least all of the above, you should start looking for a different strength coach or trainer (or get one if you’re trying to train on your own!).
My colleague Eric Cressey put a more exhaustive list together a couple of weeks ago of what a baseball off-season training should comprise of. If you haven’t read it, I strongly suggest you do so.
Also, by entering your information below you’ll get access to my FREE report on shoulder injury prevention strategies. That will definitely help you build you baseball off-season training program!
I wrote a blog post 2 weeks ago on corrective exercises being just one tool among others in your toolbox if you’re a strength coach. If you missed it, check it out HERE. Writing that post got me thinking about the other tools a strength coach should have in his toolbox, and quite frankly there are many! There are many different systems, training methods, pieces of equipment, injury prevention methods and much more that can be used in your programs, and in the end this is what constitutes your own unique system. Every coach’s system is different because we all learn from different people, have different backgrounds, have different mentors, different clienteles and educate ourselves through different resources. And it’s fine. Not every strength coach in the world needs to have the exact same system and have all the exact same tools in their toolbox.
How big is YOUR toolbox?
The more different tools you have in your toolbox, the better you will be as a coach. Or at least, you’ll have a greater potential to be. That’s why it’s important to not completely buy into only one system; you limit yourself. Using only one system means confining your athletes to one training method, and ignoring everything else. Because most training methods and systems that have been around in the business only focus on one thing.
For example, the Westside system is a great one. Powerlifters around the world have made tremendous gains using this system and a lot of the strongest men on the planet are following the Westside template. But there’s also a lot of strength coaches who use this method, and it’s great to get athletes stronger, but if you don’t have other tools in your toolbox to incorporate to your Westside template, your ignoring many important qualities that athletes absolutely need (speed, rotational power, injury prevention, etc). I am not shitting on the Westside method at all (because I use a variation of it myself); I’m just saying that it can’t be the only tool in your toolbox. The Westside method was created for powerlifters, so it’s important to keep that in mind. Just like every method or system is usually created for one specific population.
Same goes for the Crossfit. Personally I’m not a huge fan because the injury potential is way too high for high level athletes when you’re doing complex exercises under extreme fatigue. There are some merits to the method for their use of compound movements and lifting circuits to as a form of metabolic conditioning. And if you use some sort of Crossfit circuit to condition your athletes, it can be a good tool in your toolbox. But if you’re labeled as a Crossfit guy and do nothing else with your athletes, you’re definitely missing out on the specificity of the sport and the injury prevention component of your training program.
The take home message here is not to think that systems like Westside Barbells and Crossfit and bad, but that you probably shouldn’t use exclusively those methods, just like you shouldn’t use only a TRX, or only Olympic lifts to train your athletes. Every tool has its place (just like corrective exercises if you read my post), you just need to know how and when to incorporate each one of them in your programs. You’ll be a much better coach, and more than anything else, you’ll have your own unique system that will make you stand out from the rest.
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Mid-August just rolled around, which means that here at Endeavor, and for most hockey players training for the next season it’s the last stretch of the off-season. Different phases of an off-season plan focus on different goals. Early off-season usually focuses on recovery and regeneration and trying to undo most of the damage done during the season. The mid off-season, which is usually the phase most of players enjoy the most is the time to get big, fast and strong.
The late off-season phase focuses more on moving quicker (agility and transitional speed), work capacity and conditioning. The goal is to get guys in “game shape” as much as possible before they head back to camp. (On a side note, it’s interesting to see how the culture in hockey has changed in the last couple of decades, where players used to use the pre-season/training camp to “get in shape”. and now it’s the exact opposite; if you don’t show up to camp in the best shape of your life you don’t have many chances of making the team!)
What this means concretely from a program design standpoint is that:
- Your speed work is going to be comprised mostly of transitional sprints and drills
- Your conditioning volume is going to be much higher and as specific as possible to the game of hockey (energy system wise)
- The lifting part of your training is going to focus on work capacity, i.e. done mostly in circuit fashion.
So the lifting part of a lower body day (for a 4x/week program) might look something like this:
A1- KB swings 3 x 15
A2- Bunkie Side Plank (top leg only) 3 x 15sec/side
A3- 2-Way Skater 3 x (2 x 6)/side
A4- Split Squat Iso-Hold 3 x 30sec/side
A5- Stability Ball Knee Tucks 3 x 10
A6- 3-Way Split Stance Stability Ball Hold w/ Perturbation 3 x (3 x 10sec)/side
This is actually a circuit that comes from one of our late off-season program at Endeavor. The goal is really just to give an example of a lifting circuit might look like. The circuit concept would also apply for upper body days, just with different exercises.
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Functional training is a concept that’s becoming more and more popular these days. Everyone has his own interpretation of what functional training is and how it is applied. For some, it is to reproduce sport-specific movements, for others it’s to stand on unstable surfaces to do everything from core training to biceps curls, and for others it’s to develop physical qualities that are specific to the practice of their sport.
Functional? I have my doubts on this one…
No matter how you interpret functional training, there is an important line that people are crossing too often when applying exercise variations or specific tools in the gym.
Let’s face it: we all love variety. We love to try new exercise variations, new tools (TRX, slideboards, stability balls, ropes, etc), and for a good reason; when you’ve been training for a long time (read: one year is not a long time) you might get bored doing the same stuff all the time. But too often variety becomes what dictates your training program. And too often at the expenses of proper form. I think it is crucial to perfectly master the basic movement patterns before any attempt at progression and/or variety.
I’ve said in the past that form is everything when you lift. When you lose perfect form, I truly think that whatever you do, isn’t functional anymore. Period. Whatever your definition of ‘functional’ is, it has to has be based around proper movement patterns. Whatever exercises you use, whatever tools you use, there is only one optimal way your body moves and it is the same whatever you do. It doesn’t matter if you do your push ups on the floor, with your hands on a bench or on a TRX; the movement at your shoulders and the stability you present with the rest of your body should be the same for all three of these variations.
Sorry. Not for everyone.
If you can’t master a reverse lunges with dumbbell in your hands, why would you do a reverse lunge with a bar on your shoulders or with whatever crazy unstable surface you want to use? If you can’t do a front plak with perfect form for more than 30 seconds, why would you do it with your elbows on a stability ball?
Variety sells. Especially when you’re a personal trainer; it’s a good way to attract new clients. But no matter how boring the basic stuff is, it needs to be done. And it needs to be done for as long as you’re not doing it perfectly.
Variety shouldn’t exist until you master optimal movement patterns.
You’re welcome.
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I came across a study yesterday (thanks to my colleague Kevin Neeld) on ice hockey and the relationship of physiological components with actual on-ice performance. Before discussing the results of the study, what I found especially interesting with this specific study is that they were interested in the actual on-ice performance during games. Most studies measuring physiological attributes (such as strength, speed, VO2 max, body fat, etc) usually relate these aspects to on-ice performance, but not very often to actual in-game performance; results will most of the time be compared to on-ice skating speed, endurance and the like.
In this study by Peyer et Al., the physiological measures were compared to in-game performance in the form of plus/minus scores. The characteristics measured were:
Age
Height
Weight
Body mass
Body fat %
VO2 Max
Repeated off-ice speed test (in the form of 12 x 110 meters sprints)
Strength tests (in the form of push ups, chin ups, leg press and bench press)
On-ice speed tests (dot-to-dot, short lightning, and lap sprint)
Plus/minus on the ice during games
A significant correlation was found between the repeated off-ice sprint test, 3 strength tests (chin ups, leg press and bench press) and the plus/minus scores. The players who performed the best on the repeated sprint test and the 3 strength tests had a better plus/minus score. What is equally interesting to me is that body fat percentage and Vo2 max, which are two highly rated and utilized tests in the hockey community, had no relevance whatsoever with actual in-game performance.
Good Predictor of Hockey Performance?
If you’ve been using a no-nonsense approach to training hockey players (prioritizing strength, using an interval-based system for conditioning, etc) you’re probably not very surprised by the results of this study. It’s interesting to me that the research world is actually coming up with concrete results that support and back some of the stuff we’ve been trying to spread in the strength and conditioning world.
It is obvious that there is a need for more research to be done on physiological components and their relation to in-game performance, as this study (like any study out there) has its flaws. The first one is the fact that the study has been done on only one college hockey team (NCAA D-1), so only 24 players were part of the study. In an ideal world we would want a bigger sample of players to contribute to the results. Also, the in-game measure that was used was the plus/minus score of each player. Although the plus/minus score gives a good idea about a player’s offensive and defensive abilities and reflects on-ice performance decently, there are other factors that affect this score. For example, the goalie’s performance can positively or negatively affect the outcome of one player’s plus/minus; if the goalie is really good and allows very few goals during games, even when he faces a lot of shots, it can positively affect a player’s plus/minus score. And the opposite is also true if the goalie is terrible and allows many goals, the plus/minus score will be affected negatively.
In conclusion, this study gives us a good lead on what might be more appropriate tests that actually co-relate to in-game performance and what physiological attributes might be more relevant for hockey players to focus on.
References
Peyer KL, Pivarnik JM, Eisenmann JC, Vorkapich M. (2011). Physiological characteristics of national collegiate athletic association division I ice hockey players and their relation to game performance. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 25(5):1183-92.
Today I bring to you a guest blog post from my colleague Xavier Roy from Quebec. Xavier is a very smart guy, he has a no-nonsense approach to strength and conditioning, and he has the experience to back it up. This is a great post he originally wrote for his own blog, but since Xavier’s blog is in French I asked him if he wanted to translate his post and send it my way so I could feature it here for those of you who are not fluent in French, and he gladly accepted! So without further ado, enter Xavier:
This saying is used constantly by sport coaches and strength coaches in order to encourage athletes under their supervision to follow a training program and become more successful in playing the game (which is not necessarily a measure of success in sport by the way!). But does an athlete who is bigger, stronger and faster will have a marked advantage over his opponents and even teammates?
The answer is neither white nor black. It is certain that an athlete who spent the entire off-season lifting weights and running is more likely to see his performance improve compared with the previous year. However, it is possible that, despite all the effort he’s put in, he finds himself injured because of this training. Agreed, he’s bigger, stronger and faster, but was that done at the expense of his health? Does the athlete in question has self-limiting abilities that can negatively impact the long-term practice of his sport and that the training prescribed did not take these limits into consideration?
For my part, I often refer to a quote from Mike Boyle, who questioned whether it was better to have a Kevin Garnett with a vertical leap of 40 inches on his team (focus on performance) who is always injured or a Kevin Garnett with a vertical leap of 33 inches, but who is dressed for every game and contributing to his team’s success (focus on health). As a strength and conditioning professional and football coach, I’m in a good position to answer this question. My goal as a strength and conditioning professional is to enable athletes to optimize their preparation, which includes improving their movement health first to reduce the chances of injuries and then improve their performance. Often, the mere fact of restoring muscle balance and improving one’s performance in one or various motor patterns will be sufficient to improve performance. As a coach, I want to give the players under my tutelage a chance to learn and understand the game of football. If an athlete is sidelined due to a non-traumatic injury, I did not get to do my job.
In this regard. I think it would be more accurate to change the original adage Bigger, Stronger, Faster for Healthier, Stronger, Faster. Let’s define each component in detail.
* Note that in some cases, muscle mass can be useful and even essential. Take for example a football or rugby player looking a little frail. To successfully compete and go through a season during which he receives his fair share of hits, this athlete will increase his muscle mass to protect himself. A gain in muscle mass is also required for the aging population. Sarcopenia is a loss of muscle mass in favor of increased body fat that is present in aging people. These gains in muscle mass will therefore slow this process.
Healthier to characterize an athlete whose movements are fluid, an athlete who has no physical limitation which may result in compensation to other joints and body parts. The prescribed exercises are chosen based on the ability and level of skill of the athlete.
Stronger because I think it is a necessary step in the development of athletes and the general population. A stronger person will be able to produce more force in activities like weight training, she will be able to propel his body with greater ease when running and be able to perform her daily tasks without excessive fatigue (household chores, carrying bags, etc). Force development is also the prerequisite for the development of muscle power.
Faster in successfully completing movements like Olympic weightlifting. At even strength, the athlete who will move the load faster is going to express more power. Faster in a running a sprint, faster in his ability to accelerate his body while in a static position. An athlete being able to efficiently and rapidly transition from an eccentric to concentric action (i.e. ability to use the stretch-shortening cycle) will have a distinct advantage over the expression of muscle power. In technical and tactical sports like team sports, the ability to rapidly analyze the situation developing in front of you and react with an appropriate response to this situation will give the participant a clear advantage over his opponent.
So, Bigger, Stronger, Faster or Healthier, Stronger, Faster? My choice is clear. What about yours!
Xavier Roy (B.Sc, CSCS, HSSCS) is a strength and conditioning coach at Centre Performe+ Joel Bouchard and the owner of XR Performance. As a kinesiologist and strength and conditioning coach, he specializes in the athletic development of a vast array of athletes, ranging from teens to college players, who are engage in sports like football, basketball and lacrosse. Since 2009, Xavier has been the strength and conditioning coach, as well as defensive coordinator, for the Triades de Lanaudiere, a men’s CEGEP football team near Montreal. Starting in September of 2011, Xavier will also take charge of McGill University Men’s and Women’s basketball teams as strength and conditioning coach.
If your French is good enough make sure to check Xavier’s blog HERE!
We hear it all the time that athletes should train in a “sport-specific” way. They should perform exercises that are similar to the movements they perform in the practice of their sport, and training programs for different sports should be totally different. I flat out disagree.
We always see athletes performing these fancy exercises in the gym that reproduce the same movement patterns that they perform in playing situations.
Do you SERIOUSLY think this is gonna improve your slap shot just because it looks like it?
This kind of practice is FAR from optimal for a couple of different reasons: first, when you load a movement pattern, you affect the efficiency of it (for example, if you perform an exercise similar to a slap shot with a load, you’ll actually affect your original slap shot pattern, and you’ll be less efficient at performing it on the ice). Second, the more you stress the same structures the exact same way over and over, it will lead to overuse injuries a lot faster. But I digress.
Let’s take a step back for a minute, and consider what every athlete needs. I think it’s fair to say that what any athlete is looking for is speed, power, strength, endurance (relative to their sport, obviously) and a better level of conditioning (again, relative to their sport).
The hang clean will develop power for ANY sport!
Basically, all athletes are looking for the same thing. So why would their training be that different? You’re going to tell me that conditioning demands are different for a football player than they are for a hockey player. And you’re right. Conditioning demands are different, and the energy systems used are different. And the same thing goes for injury prevention; the overuse and non-contact injuries that happen in different sports are different, so therefore require special injury prevention strategies adapted to the demands of their specific sport. There are also variations that are gonna take place if you play a rotational sport (think hockey, baseball, tennis) in the way you train power. But the biggest differences pretty much stop there.
Rotational sports require more rotation-based power exercises like med ball throws
Strength training will never be “specific” to a sport. Like I mentioned above, performing exercises similar to sport movements in the weight room is far from optimal, and even detrimental to athlete’s performance. Speed, power, strength, endurance and conditioning are all developed through the same modalities (or pretty much) no matter what sport you play, because what you are developing when you’re training is not your sport-related skills, but rather your athletic qualities (muscular and cardiovascular), and those are not specific to one single sport, but common to most sports.
Like I’ve mentioned earlier, there are going to be some minor tweaks in the way you write performance programs for different sports, especially when it comes to conditioning and injury prevention, but the big lines and the structure of the programs might be a lot more similar than you think.
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I’ve written in the past about specializing too early in a sport and how bad it affects your body. Similarly, playing the same sport year round is a sure way to get injured in the long run because of the repeated stress on the body. Parents and coaches seem to strongly encourage that practice to get their kids better though; they think that doing more is going to be better and they’re scared that not participating in summer leagues and specialization camps will leave their kids trailing behind. Here’s a top 3 reasons why practicing the same sport year-round is not a wise option.
1. Playing a sport, no matter which one, will impose a certain type of stress on your body with the same repetitive motions you’re going to go through. Taking hockey for an example, the way you skate (hip external rotation and hip extension) is going to increase the wear and tear on your hips muscles, tendons, ligaments and cartilage. It is the same thing for every sports, and to a certain degree it is expected. Playing the same sport year-round will accelerate that wear and tear, and when you do so at a very young age when your body is still developing it just makes things worse. Instead of varying the stimuli imposed on your body by playing different sports with distinct off-seasons and getting good training time in to help reverse the damage, you’re stressing the same structures in the exact same way over, and over, and over again. The result is that we end up with 17 years old hockey players who need hip surgery. That is a major problem! Until we get that, we will still have 14-18 years old athletes who suffer from overuse injuries and career-ending surgeries.
2. You get nothing out of summer leagues and showcases. Coaches will try to convince parents and kids that they absolutely need that for their development, otherwise they won’t develop as fast as the other kids and they won’t get all the exposure summer leagues provide. Brian Burke, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ general manager himself, blames that type of practice; he mentioned in a presentation that they analyzed the playing time of players in summer leagues. A random 3rd line right winger gets an average of less than 5 seconds of puck contact throughout a full game! 5 seconds! This is what you call development?! And on top of that, the exposure you get from summer leagues and showcases is almost non-existent. If your kid is good enough, he’ll get noticed. Period. No need to over-expose him/her with the fear that his/her talent will go unnoticed.
If you’re kid is that good he’ll get drafted. Don’t worry.
3. Fun. Kids don’t have fun anymore. How would you feel if you were a 12 year old kid who’s being pressured by his coaches and his parents to go to every specialization camp possible and play in summer leagues every year? There is a time for specialization, but at 12 years old it’s not the time, nor is it at 13, or 14 for that matter. Kids need a break, they need to have fun playing other sports. There’s going to be plenty of time ahead to specialize in one sport and put all your time and energy getting better in one particular sport. For now, let’s have the kids do their thing and develop naturally while becoming better athletes in general by playing multiple sports and having fun.
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These quotes make plenty of sense, don’t they…..
