These days, many young athletes follow rigorous sports training schedules that include personal trainers, position coaches, and endless camps and clinics, all designed to improve sport performance. In fact, it is not uncommon for a kid today to go to a school team practice, then a personal trainer, and then a specialist coach — all in the same day. This approach to sport training is becoming more common, but is it effective, safe, and healthy for kids? In other words, are kids really getting better at their sport because of all the specialized attention? Or are they being mislead by “expert” knowledge, and getting burned out by always being trained rather than simply playing?
Modern training vs. tried and true approaches
Look around, you might be surprised to see all the specialized sport training offered to kids these days. Indoor training facilities and field houses are popping up everywhere, new technology is coming out all the time, and expert coaches are available for just about any sport your child plays. Along with all of this comes a lot of “bells and whistles” in terms of data, spread sheets, video analysis, and professional feedback — but are kids getting better from all of this new stuff, or becoming bored and overwhelmed instead?
One unintended tradeoff from kids being overly-booked with specialized training is that fewer kids today simply go out and play — specifically pickup games. While sport instruction is important, getting sport reps to build muscle-memory may be even more important, and herein lies the problem. For many kids, the lessons they receive take the place of natural reps, and their skill acquisition and development suffers as a result. The same is true for many parents who want to fast-forward their kid’s athletic success by seeking out expensive expert coaches, when often their kid would actually get better, faster, by simply playing his or her sport every day.
Take for an example the simple fact that most sports involve a ball of some kind — kids can throw, play catch, and shoot daily to improve accuracy and velocity, but how many kids actually do this? Ask any great athlete about how much practice — including the mundane stuff — needs to happen daily in order to get really good, and you will soon learn that it’s every day! Kids need to be encouraged to take into account how much they can do by themselves on a daily basis, including watching video, journaling, practicing in front of a mirror, and playing pickup games! And the best part? It’s all FREE!
It’s easy to see why increasingly more families chase the shiny objects by means of fancy training and legendary sport experts, but the greatest gains your child will ever make will be by his or her daily decisions. How bad do you really want it? There are ball fields and courts all around, friends to get to play pickup games, and countless exercises that can be done for free (i.e. pushups, sit ups, running, etc), and kids who take advantage of these offerings often pass up kids who only develop their game when working with a coach or going to a camp. Yes, playing the game on a daily basis will provide kids the best chance to learn the game, develop muscle-memory, and build confidence, precisely the things that allow kids to reach their full potential.
Final thoughts
Sports training has certainly advanced in recent years, but there is still no substitute for kids working on their own, playing pick-up games, and getting in the reps. An expert coach can offer great information, but if the kid does not go out and practice over and over, the odds of the kid mastering the skill he or she just learned is pretty small. Sport skill acquisition comes from doing something repeatedly to the point where it becomes automatic, and this only happens by putting in the work — regardless of how many specialized camps and clinics your child attends. There are no shortcuts, but kids who embrace the work will undoubtedly play to their highest levels.
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