3 Keys for Youth Athlete Development - Overtime Athletes Blog

Youth sports has only grown more and more the past few decades. More competitive, more travel and club teams. Some of these youth athletes are already doing YEAR-ROUND sports (which is completely insane). If they aren’t playing multiple sports all year long, they are specializing in one sport too early.

Parents want their kids to get better and have an edge by playing more and getting more reps. The problem is that they are neglecting their kids actual physical and athletic development. Playing sport isn’t going to make an athlete stronger, faster, and more explosive.

This is from the book Long Term Athletic Development by Istvan Balyi:

Although focusing on one sport develops the skills, coordination, and sport-specific fitness necessary for doing well in that sport in the short term, it limits or prevents the development of other transferable sport skills. Transferable skills allow athletes to participate in a variety of sporting and social situations, which increases the likelihood that they will have a positive and fun experience in sport.

As a football player growing up, I think we all know that kid who was ahead of everyone and tearing it up in peewee football. A kid that just seemed a couple years ahead of everyone else. What happens though is as everyone starts to grow and other kids begin training and developing their bodies, they surpass and leave that kid behind before they even get to high school.

I remember multiple kids who were beasts in youth football, but by the time they reached high school, they’d made no further strides in their development and even quit playing sports altogether. Sadly, as a coach I’ve already seen kids experiencing that now.

Parents (specifically dads) push their 9 or 10-year-old son to play more and more, treating them like they are already a college level athlete. Newsflash: they’re not. I even worked with a kid whose dad pushed him so much that the kid was already experiencing knee injuries that will likely end his career before he even gets a chance to play high school ball. Sad.

Parents: Your Kid NEEDS to Train

Like I said, just playing sport isn’t going to continue developing a youth athlete. It will to an extent, but at a certain point they need more physical training to continue fully developing as an athlete. They need to build stronger and more durable bodies to handle the higher demands of sport as they get older.

Now when I say training, I do not mean bodybuilders or pro athletes throwing crazy weight around. That doesn’t apply to kids, although I think that’s the picture parents get in their heads when it comes to youth training. Neither am I referring to the insane level of speed and plyometric drills you can find all over social media of athletes doing.

So many times, I’ve had a dad send me a video of Christian McCaffery or some other elite athlete doing a workout and saying, “This is what I want my son doing.” It’s ridiculous and parents are forgetting their kids are STILL JUST KIDS. They have neither the strength nor physical prowess and experience, or even ability, to perform what elite athletes are doing. But they can start building up now to one day do that.

Here are my 3 keys to good youth athlete training:

Prioritize Strength

Strength is the foundation for all other physical traits. Without strength, an athlete won’t be stable and be able to produce force. The more strength an athlete can build, the more potential they have to produce more force, and the more likely they can transfer force into developing more speed and explosiveness.

Every year a parent will bring their kid in wanting to work on specific speed mechanics or something like that, yet their kid is unable to even perform a stable bodyweight lunge or do a push up. I’m sorry, but the fact is this: there is NO number of perfect mechanics or technique that will make up for a simple lack of strength.

I always have the conversation with parents when they want “speed specific training” or something like that for their kid that the first thing we have to do is get them stronger. If the kid stays too weak, then they’ll never be able to produce enough force to get faster or build any kind of speed.

Integrate Competition/Fun

No secret that young kids will get bored easily. Most of them want to be entertained constantly or try new things. Competition is a great away to make them work hard without realizing.

Young athletes enjoy competing against each other and it’s a great way to elevate their intensity. Drills like reactive mirror drills, tag drills, races, power throws for distance, etc. It’s just an easy way to make them work which for them doesn’t feel completely like work.

Also, this doesn’t just apply for youth. Even with our college and professional athletes we’ll program little competitions to get them to challenge each other, and they always love it.

Keep it Simple, but Keep Challenging

This follows up with the previous point about boredom. As a coach, I know the number one thing an athlete needs is consistency. Especially for young athletes, they consistently need to be working on fundamentals. They don’t need extremely fancy or nonsensical drills that may look impressive for the internet, but in the long term don’t do anything positive for their development.

Simple jumps, hops, sprint drills, and basic strength movements are all you need them to consistently be doing week after week. To challenge them, you can still be sure to progress the movements little by little. Add bands for resistance. Start doing weighted jumps. Resisted sprints to push them even more.

Again, kids don’t want to get bored with just the same things over and over again, but you don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Youth athletes still need consistency. Elite athletes still work on the same fundamentals, so of course your young athlete doesn’t need something fancier than that. But whatever movements the coach has them working on, they have to be progress-able with slight changes in intensity and variation.