Youth Athletic Development – How early is to early to get in the gym?

Youth athletes are often competing across multiple sports at different ability levels as they develop their athletic abilities. We do not want to discourage this, in fact a multi-sport approach is encouraged through youth development before choosing to specialise in one sport later in life. However excessive competitions and sport training can result in a lack of basic physical training which can limit their future sporting ability due to reduced athletic abilities.

So, to combat this we encourage youth athletes into basic physical athletic training and for this there is realistically no age too young. If the athlete is old enough to play competitive sport, they are old enough for athletic development training.

This does not mean putting 10yr olds under a heavy squat bar! But it does mean teaching good key movement patterns, correct jumping and landing technique and prepare the athlete for the demands of sport.

There are obviously from this many things that must come into consideration when working through this process, these are:

• Growth & Maturation
• Athletes age and training age
• What sports they compete in
• Sex/Gender of the athlete

When all of these are considered and factored into an appropriately planned training intervention there is no bottom end to when an athlete can start Strength & Conditioning (S&C) training. I will maintain this should be appropriately planned by a qualified coach to keep the athlete’s safety and best interests in mind. After all progressing an athlete too quickly through to exercising under external load can be detrimental to the athlete and possibly increase a change of injury. However, if all of the above is considered and execution of correct exercise technique is valued over anything else (especially before external load) then all athletes of any age should be completing regular S&C or athletic development training.

How often should a youth athlete train?

This is always a tricky question as every athlete is different and can be heavily dictated to by the athlete’s performance and lifestyle timetables. After all they are not fully paid professional athletes where their sport is there job. You have to consider many aspects such as school and social life factors, the sport/sports training timetable and also travel to and from the training centre as well as the availability of the taxi services (or should I say parents?).

In an ideal situation you would have the athlete training 2-3 times a week in a coached and controlled situation. Even with this in mind 1 session will do a lot for the athlete if that is all that is possible. Again, I can’t stress this enough, if session and overall load is monitored and correct movement patterning is placed above everything else. Then 1 session a week or a training session a day will see considerable improvements in athletic potential and reduce risk of injury in later sporting/training life!

How should youth athletes train?

Youth athletes should do everything that professional athletes do, just scale it to the needs and demands of youth sport. So youth athletes should:

How this all looks on a weekly basis of sets and reps, will again, depend on the athlete, their training age, the demands of their sport and everything else we have discussed in this article. Don’t shy away from loading these movement patterns as long as technique is correctly executed and the load is appropriately managed, don’t rush strength and power development. The youth athlete is always growing and growing and physically changing, out role in this situation is to assist the athlete through this and provide an appropriate stimulus for best athletic development.