 Countless times, I have been asked if it is safe for youth athletes to start strength training. “Aren’t there risks to their growth plates?” and “Won’t it stunt their growth?” are common concerns. It is the purpose of this article to face these questions head on and go to the research.
Growth Plate Damage Causing Stunted Growth? The epiphyseal plate, also known as the growth plate, is a critical part of a child’s development. A properly growing epiphyseal plate ensures that the child will grow taller! So what does the evidence say about strength training and growth plate damage causing stunted growth? The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) concludes in a review that “...there is no evidence to suggest that resistance training has a negative impact on a youth’s growth potential.” Further studies by Dr. Avery Faigenbaum have even shown that there are possible positive effects to the growth plates from a strength training program. Overall Safety? Strength training injuries are typically found in youth athletes to be strains and sprains, with occasionally a fracture. While these are unfortunate, the statistics are clear: the rate of injury with sports such as soccer, basketball, and football are much higher than the rate of injuries with strength training or weightlifting. I would strongly argue that the actual benefits of strength training for youth athletes far outweigh the risks. So What Are The Benefits? Injury prevention! A 2019 review of eight studies concluded that strength programs that were properly executed and supervised actually decreased injuries for youth athletes. Not only were these programs safe for athletes, but they experienced fewer injuries after the strength and conditioning programs were completed. Performance improvements: A 2016 review of 43 studies concluded that significant performance increases can be achieved through strength and conditioning for youth athletes. Increased muscle strength, vertical jump performance, linear sprint performance, agility, and sport specific performance in team sport athletes, endurance athletes, and individual athletes were all seen in youth athletes aged from 6-18. The strength and conditioning programs varied greatly according to the ages, sex, and development of the athletes, each tailored to the development capacity of the youth athlete. Conclusion: With the right coaching, a strength and conditioning program is safe, effective at decreasing injuries, and effective at increasing performance. The fears of stunted growth need to be put to rest! If you have more thoughts about youth athletes performing appropriate strength and conditioning, check out the citations below! If you’d like to discuss this further, feel free to reach out! Marcus Rein, PT DPT
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Youth sport participation is growing around the globe, and the increasing trend is to have youth athletes specialize in one just one sport. With the goal obviously being to maximize a kid’s potential to play in college/pros/olympics, parents are having their kids spend 20+ hours working on very specific skill sets, going to countless camps, and squeezing out every last opportunity by playing on multiple teams in a single season. On the surface, it's easy to see why parents would think this… ”to get better at basketball, play more basketball." However, let's take a deeper look as to why this may not be not be the best (nor safest) route to making your kid the next Michael Jordan. Playing multiple sports makes you more competitive Weather your goals are set on college or the pros, top recruiters are looking for the most competitive athletes they can find...regardless of sport. Want to play baseball? Check in to what Scott Upp, the leader of a baseball program that has been ranked as high as number one in the country and has more than 35 IHSAA sectional baseball championships, has to say. “If there are coaches out there that are telling kids to play one sport, I think they’re crazy,” Upp said. “Because while you’re working on drills and everything else like that, he’s out competing...running from 6’2”, 280-pound linemen. He’s trying to get away and make plays. So he’s competing, and you can’t really substitute that. And basketball, with time winding down, he’s got the ball in his hands, he’s learning how to compete. And all those things that happen in other sports just make him that much better in baseball.” What about soccer? Abby Wambach, a member of the 2015 US Women’s World Cup team, is known is the best header in sport history, and guess what she attributes her success to...basketball. “Playing basketball had a significant impact on the way I play the game of soccer," Wambach said. "I am a taller player in soccer, in basketball I was a power forward and I would go up and rebound the ball. So learning the timing of your jump, learning the trajectory of the ball coming off the rim, all those things play a massive role." In fact, when the 2015 Women’s World Cup Champions were surveyed, they had collectively competed in more than 14 different sports growing up in addition to soccer. Dreams of playing in a College Football National Championship Game? Clemson’s Head football coach, Dabo Swinney, who continuously has his team in playoff contention and won a national championship in 2016 famously recruites multisport athletes and had this to say about them. “I just think that the cross-training, the different types of coaching, the different types of locker rooms, the different environments that you practice in, the different challenges — I think it develops a much more competitive, well-rounded type person” Playing multiple sports makes you more athletic This one gets a little touchy...your kid has the best hands on his middle school football team, so naturally he needs to go to every SEC camp available and work year-round to improve his route running; right? Or, your daughter is the tallest on her 7th grade volleyball team so of course she's going to play year-round club volleyball to perfect her swing; right? Sure...practicing a skill is important, but the data doesn’t lie and improving overall athletic ability trumps all. Demarco Murray, one of the most decorated running backs in Oklahoma who also led the NFL in rushing yards in 2014, didn’t seal his fate with Oklahoma until the coach watched him dunk a basketball during a game. Sam Bradford played basketball, football, golf, and hockey all throughout his high school and then went on to be a heisman trophy winner and number 1 overall NFL draft pick. In fact, 91% of the athletes drafted in the 2018 first round of the NFL played multiple sports in high school and 96% of the players who played in last years superbowl were multi-sports athletes! However, the impact on athletic development goes well beyond the NFL and football. For example, a study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine looked at first found draft picks from 2008-2015 and found that athletes who played multiple sports in high school played in more NBA games, had a lower significant injury rate, and had more longevity in the spoty. The exposure to different athletic and movement demands, especially as an adolescent has been well documented in countless studies to have a strong carry over effect into your primary sport. The reason is simple, when you limit yourself to a single sport at a young age, the lack of diversified activity may stunt neuromuscular control development, leading decreased overall athletic ability. Playing multiple sports decreases your risk of injury. I’m a doctor of physical therapy, so I may be a little biased, but I’ve saved the best for last as a reason for playing multiple sports as a youth athlete. I don’t care how skilled your kid is, how physically gifted they are, they will never reach their full athletic potential if they can’t stay healthy and on the field and specializing into one sport has been shown time and time again to increase your risk of injury. Think about this, only 65% of athletes report returning to their previous level of play 1 year after an injury and up to 20% of elite athletes say an injury is what caused them to stop playing their sports. When you specialize into a single sport at an early age you’re risking increased exposure to repetitive technical skills and high risk mechanics, Over-scheduling leads to decreased time to recover from competition and early psychological burnout, all of which have demonstrated to statistically increase your risk of injury. So in review, let kids be kids. Don’t force their hands by specializing at an early age. Let them become a more competitive, athletic, and healthy athlete by playing in multiple sports. Thanks for reading, Dr. Jake, PT, DPT At some point you were probably a young athlete with aspirations of playing a sport in college or even professionally. Think back to that time and answer this question as your 15-year-old self. Would you rather run faster or be less likely to get hurt? If you were anything like me at a 15-year-old kid, an injury was probably the last thing you cared about. When we’re 15 we are bulletproof. We’re borderline superheroes with mega amounts of hormones flowing through our system that help us grow, recover, and have tons of energy. If you had tried to sell me on injury prevention program, I would have laughed at you and walked away (yes I was a little jerk at 15). Now, let’s talk about development of speed. If you had asked me at 15 if I wanted to be faster, I would have been all ears. I once spent 6 weeks doing a program to improve my vertical jump when I was 16 years old. My family was living in an apartment in Columbus, Georgia at the time. We had a storage garage in the apartment complex. I would go there everyday over the summer and do different plyometric jumping exercises onto a metal ladder because I didn’t have a box to jump on. I wanted the glory of being able to jump higher, run faster and being an overall better athlete. Here’s the interesting part about performance improvement and injury prevention. If done correctly, performance improvement and injury prevention are the same exact thing. Let’s take the example of a 15-year-old female soccer player for this next example. Let’s say that every time she lands or changes direction her knee caves in. This is a strong indicator that this athlete has an increased likelihood of having an ACL tear. To correct this we can improve landing mechanics, hip strength, foot and ankle control and general body positioning awareness. To do so, this athlete would need to complete a structured program to develop these weaknesses in her athletic movement. Now on the other hand, an athlete that has knee collapse when they cut will also be slower and less efficient. So, if we take this same athlete through a structured program to decrease their ACL injury risk, they also get faster. This means they will win more ball challenges. They will be able to jump higher and change direction faster. They will become an overall better mover and athlete on the field. The program is not the hard part. Buy in from the athlete is where the real magic is. If you can get a 15-year-old athlete(tough sell) to buy in on your program, you win. Buy in is a concept of getting our athletes to do what we want. It’s phrasing things correctly to gain the trust of that athlete. WIth trust comes effort and with effort comes results. It’s sort of like when I want my 5-year-old son to do something. I could ask him to clean his room and it’s likely that he will do it. Now, if I ask him to clean his room and tell him I’m timing him to see how fast he can do it, I get a much better result. One step further, if I tell him I’m timing him and his sister is cleaning her room at the same time, we now have competition. Competition between kids can be a gold mine of buy in. If you’re reading this and you have an adolescent kid playing a sport in the Decatur, Georgia area, we need to talk. We see countless youth athletes from sports like soccer, lacrosse, swimming, baseball, football, golf and even ultimate frisbee! Each one of these athletes comes to us because of an injury. Almost all of these athletes lacked basic movement coordination that lead to the injury. It’s hard to get your kids to listen to you. You can tell them all day to do exercises to decrease their likelihood of injury. It’s very unlikely they will take action and implement what you tell them. Send them to Athletes’ Potential and we delve into how to improve their performance on the field. We use a unique a proprietary athlete assessment to isolate where the strength and movement limitations are. We get them strong, moving well and winning more. One really nice side effect to all of this is….they become significantly less likely to have an injury. Now it’s your turn to make a decision. Do you wait for your youth athlete to get hurt or do you proactively get them checked out? The decision is yours and time starts now. Give us a call at 470-355-2106 or request to chat with one of our Doctors for free by clicking on the link below. Thanks for reading,
- Dr. Danny, PT, DPT With over 3 million registered athletes under the age of 19, soccer is one of the fastest growing youth sports in the United States, especially here in Atlanta (if you haven’t made it out to an Atlanta United game yet, put that at the top of your to-do list!). Along with its increase in popularity, youth soccer has drastically changed over the past 25 years. We are now seeing youth athletes play at higher intensity levels than ever before and, because of year round premier leagues and clubs, are doing so with less time to recover. This rise in popularity and increased physical demand is a recipe for disaster. In fact, a recent study found that from 1990 to 2014 total number of recorded injuries in youth soccer players skyrocketed by 111 percent, with the vast majority (80%) involving the musculoskeletal system. These statistics should absolutely be eye-opening, but fear mongering is not the point of this article, quite the contrary. Youth soccer players are some of the most fun and competitive people I work with, and with some basic understanding of preventive techniques we can help stop injuries from occurring in the first place and boost performance along the way. Lower extremity injuries are by far the most injuries I see in the clinic when working with youth soccer players. In soccer your hips are your power house and they constantly take a beating due to all the changes in directions, kicks, passes, lateral movements, and rapid accelerations and decelerations. Not surprisingly, because of these demands, the muscles around the hip are some of the most susceptible to injury (hamstrings, groin, etc). To prevent injuries and improve the performance of your hips there are two main components you want to look at: hip mobility and hip stability. Hip Mobility: Good hip mobility means your hips are capable of moving uninhibited and pain-free throughout their full range of motion. There are a number of directions your hip needs to have good movement in and there are many reasons your hip may be limited, but two of the most common problems I see in the clinic are limited hip internal rotation and tight hip flexors. Let’s take a look at a couple quick ways to check your out these two problem areas  The above picture shows how to check your hip internal rotation. To perform the test correctly you want to:
You are looking to get about 40-45 of hip internal rotation and if you can’t get to a minimum of 40 degrees, then the mobility drill shown below is for you. There are a number of ways to test and see if you have limited hip flexor mobility, but a safe and simple way to do so is demonstrated in the picture below. To perform this test correctly you want to:
 If the leg you’ve lowered down cannot easily touch the table of your knee has to straighten in order to get your leg to the table, then try the mobility drill below. Any time you do a mobility drill, you’ll want to perform a re-try the testing positions we went over to see if you notice a difference. If you do notice a difference great!, you’ll want to add that mobility work to your daily routine and can be done as part of your warm-up. However, If you’re not noticing an improvement than these specific mobility drills may not be the best option for you and you might want to give us a call. Hip Stability: Hip stability can mean a variety of things, but for the purpose of this article hip stability means being able to load and control your hip joint throughout its available range of motion. In other words, to prevent injuries from happening, not only must you be able to move throughout an acceptable range of motion, but you must be control the forces you exert throughout that range of motion. Poor hip stability is a huge problem in youth soccer and is a main reason why you’ll have experience a soft tissue injury such as a hamstring strain or pulled groin. Below you’ll find three exercises that target specific movements commonly found in soccer and are a great addition to your warm up before a game or practice. The goal of any injury prevention program should be to first make sure you can move through an appropriate range of motion and then to make you strong through that range. At our clinic in Decatur, GA we have successfully treated numerous youth soccer players, and when we do we make sure we arm them with the knowledge and ability to stay healthy and keep competing out on the field versus with us in the clinic. If you’re in the Atlanta area and you either play soccer or have a child who plays soccer and you’d like to learn more about how to prevent injuries or overcome an existing injury, give us a call at 470-355-2106 or fill out the contact request form below and we will be happy to contact you.
Thanks for reading, -Dr. Jake, PT, DPT Females are up to 7x more likely to tear their ACL playing sports than males. Soccer and basketball are the leading sports in ACL tears. These statistics should really make you raise your eyebrows. Studies about ACL tears showed that over 50% of female soccer players tore their ACL through their career. Why is it so prevalent? Is there something you can do to help keep your daughter’s knee healthy? The truth of the matter is- we are very different than men, in many ways! But there are some factors that predispose females to knee injuries. Anatomical Make-up: Female have wider hips that makes it more common for girls to be “knock-kneed”. This can lead to collapsed arches or knees caving in with jumping and cutting- a serious threat to the integrity of the ACL. Females are generally smaller than males, meaning the ACL itself will be smaller and thus more prone to injury.  More Flexible: Females tend to have hyper-mobile joints. This is sometimes called “double jointed” but can be more than that. If very flexible, each joint will allow extra movement that leads to decreased stability and usually less strength. Less Motor Control: This goes right along with flexibility and strength, but decrease motor control means females are less likely to know how to move their body in space. There is not as much awareness about the movement at the joint, thus are more likely/able to move in extreme ranges of motion. Hormones: After onset of menstruation, it is likely that your daughter’s performance will ebb and flow with her cycle. It is possible that in the lower performance window of her cycle, she will be more likely to sustain an injury. As preteens and teenagers grow and develop, they require adequate recovery, rest, nutrition for health. Unfortunately, this overlaps with a time when many athletes are playing their sport at every season with little rest and no time to recover.
Lack of Warm-Up: Many student-athletes are sitting 7 hours during the day then jumping on the field with little to no warm up. Group warm-ups tends to be very general and not including stability, strength and power development that they need! Coaches are often focused on skill development at this stage rather than fundamental strength and conditioning. What can you do to decrease your daughter’s risk of an ACL tear? If your daughter is playing sports, she is already 7x more likely than her male classmate to experience this injury. Many of the differences that contribute to ACL injuries are simply anatomical and physiological differences that we can’t alter. However, there are some variables we can control, or at least mitigate: strength and conditioning training, proper warm ups and instruction, adequate rest and nutrition for optimal performance. If your daughter’s coach(es) are not equipped or educated to focus on strength and conditioning, get her set up with a coach that understands her needs. Especially through the younger years, encourage her to play multiple sports with different seasons and demands on her body. As much as she focuses on training and practice, instill the importance of nutrition and rest! At Athletes’ Potential, we work with many student athletes, females and males alike! We understand the unique gender differences and biomechanical demands for performance enhancement. If you want your kid to be faster, stronger, better and less likely to sustain a season-ending injury, then give us a call! Thanks for reading, Dr. Jackie, PT, DPT We are starting to see younger athletes with more injuries and joint pain, whether they are very active or not. There are a few factors that play into this: sport specialization at a young age, absence of foundational strength, and lack of body control and knowledge of proper movement patterns. Sport specialization is conversation for another time. I want to focus on foundational strength and the need for adolescents to being resistance training. Why should my kid lift weights? For the same reason that you do, or should! For the athletes, adding strength training will improve performance, decrease the likelihood of an injury, and set them up for success later in life. The athletes will be more competitive in their age group by becoming faster, stronger and more resilient. It has been shown that young athletes can increase strength between 30-50%. Although we don’t think much about injury prevention until it is too late, this should be a huge focus for youth athletes! The adolescents who are not participating in sports or find themselves on the other end of the spectrum will also benefit greatly. Adding resistance training with physical activity promotes bone health, appropriate blood pressure and glucose levels and assists in maintaining a healthy weight. The benefits of lifting weights can be concrete, but it can also increase confidence and self-esteem! I know most kids could use a boost in the middle school and high school times. When is the appropriate time to start? There is not a hard-set age that an adolescent should begin weight training. Some researchers have used children as young as 8 years old while others start around 10 years old. It is important to gauge the maturity of the boy or girl—skeletal and behavioral. It is important that they can follow directions and understand how to move properly. Just as I say in nearly every blog post: it is not lifting weights that will cause an injury, it is moving improperly! What type of resistance training is best? This, again, will depend on maturity and interest. While there are kiddos out there starting Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting, a basic strength training regimen may be appropriate for others. Each of these will promote the desired health and strength impact. Foundational strength should initially be the focus- squats, deadlifts, overhead pressing. Later in the teens, athletes will begin to specialize and the mode of training should be tailored to their sport. Volleyball players need explosive power, football linemen require more foundational strength and power while cross country runners require muscular endurance and strength. Check out this kid. He is a 13-year-old Olympic lifter would can throw around some serious weight! I guarantee he has strong bones, increased lean muscle mass compared to his peers and would be more resilient in demanding situations. How often should they train? Training frequency can be as low as twice per week to still reap the benefits and see results. Keep in mind, the frequency would ideally ebb and flow with their sport season. For those that are not in organized sports, twice a week is a great start. Are they more likely to be injured? A common concern about youth resistance training is increased incidence of injury and growth plate fracture. With proper equipment, instruction and supervision, weight lifting is safe for youth and adolescents. Previously, growth plate fracture has been an argument against training youngsters but it has been shown that repetitive sports such as gymnastics and baseball are more stressful to the growth plates. These are two very popular youth activities in which parents wouldn’t think twice about enrolling their children. There are many myths and misconceptions regarding resistance training for youths and adolescents. There is a low risk of growth plate fracture and injury as long as the technique is correct and lifts are supervised. Youth athletes will be stronger, faster and more resilient than their peers who do not lift weights. Combining resistance training (Oly lifting, powerlifting, weight lifting) with plyometrics and conditioning will help your child reach their potential and engrain fundamental movement patterns early. Not only will their confidence be boosted but their bone density and cardiovascular system will benefit. When searching for a coach/trainer for your child, be sure that they have experience working with youngsters and focus on technique first and foremost. Thanks for reading, Dr. Jackie, PT, DPT  I recently saw this chart of the players on the Ohio States football team that won the National Championship this year. I thought it was fascinating to see that 42 out of 47 players played multiple sports in high school. In fact in an article interviewing Urban Meyers, he said he prefers multi sport athletes. Obviously, he’s had some pretty good success in his coaching career.
Youth athletics can be a polarizing subject. I get it, I have kids. I want my son and daughter to win and be great at everything they try. I also realize that they won’t win everything or be great at everything. As parents, it’s our job to set our kids up to be good at whatever sports they try to be competitive in later on in life. Let’s be real, just because your kid is the t-ball champion doesn’t mean he’s going to be playing for the Braves. If you put him on the course to only play baseball from the time he’s 6 until he’s in college, it’s likely he’ll get burned out on baseball and have significant trouble with overuse injuries. There are a few key areas we need to try to develop for our kids to help them be well rounded. If they choose to eventually focus on a specific sport, they should have a great foundation to do so with skill development in these areas. Learn How To Fall This may be the most under emphasized skill in youth sports. We all want our kids to be the fastest, tallest, strongest or most skilled. What we forget sometimes is that the best athletes are the ones that are the best at fundamentals. One of the most important fundamental skills is learning how to fall. If you know how to fall, you will be hurt less. If you’re hurt less you can practice more. If you can practice more you will get better. I never had anyone teach me how to fall until I joined the Army. While in the Army I had the opportunity to go through the first level of both the Army and Marines combatives system. One of the first things we learned was rolling drills in the Army. This is heavily drawn from wrestling and jiu jitsu. The Marines system went one step further and taught many of the fundamental skills from judo. Learning how to fall correctly is a skill. I learned this the hard way being hip tossed repeatedly in practice. It can be a trial by fire sometimes. If you land wrong, it really hurts. If you land correctly, it doesn’t hurt. That’s some good incentive to learn how to fall correctly. Get your kids involved in some type of martial arts early. They will learn valuable body control skills and decrease their likelihood of injury in the future. My personal preference would be judo due to the emphasis on balance, hip control/strength and learning how to land correctly. Learn How To Control Your Body I love watching my kids develop in a number of ways. Seeing their speech, behavioral and reasoning skills improve is a daily occurrence. Watching my kids go from crawling to walking to now running is amazing. One thing you will notice about young kids however is that they all gain gross pattern skills like squatting naturally. The more advanced body control skills have to be developed through practice. One of my favorite sports to recommend parents get their kids involved in is gymnastics. I recommend gymnastics for a number of reasons. First, it’s one of the best ways to help your children develop body control. There is no external load and until your kids learn how to control their own body movement, there is no reason to add weight. Second, it gets your kids inverted. This is great and undervalued skill. For those of you that started CrossFit as an adult, you will know first hand how difficult it can be to learn a handstand. I’ve seen 6 year old kids that go to gymnastics twice a week hold handstands longer than I ever have. Not only that, it’s a great way of developing and maintaining shoulder/thoracic mobility. This is great to offset the amount of time most of our kids end up sitting at school. Third, it’s tiring. For those of you that are parents you’ll appreciate this one. A tired kid is a good kid! Learn How To Be On A Team This is an area where we can use a sport to help our kids with life skills. Learning how to fall is important from an injury prevention standpoint but I think is much more important to learn how to communicate with others. If you’re on a team, it’s no longer all about you. You have to run plays, help each other out and work together for a common goal. My preference is to recommend parents get their kids involved in a sport that emphasizes lower extremity skill and one that emphasizes upper extremity skill. Two great examples of this would be soccer and baseball. They both do a great job of developing rotational power/coordination. Soccer also develops tons of lower body coordination and aerobic training. Baseball develops high quality hand eye coordination. Get your kids on a team and have them learn how to work with others. It will be nothing but positive for them as they get older. The recommendations in this post are a great way to help your kids develop an athletic base for any sport they may choose to seriously pursue in the future. They are by no means the only ways to develop baseline athleticism. I’m sure I have colleagues that may disagree with me on some of these points. Here’s something we should all agree on. Sports are a great way to learn body/movement skills and life lessons. They should also be fun. Your kids need to have fun and should be exposed to a number of different sports. They need to make mistakes, they need to lose, they need to win and they need to understand that no matter what it’s just a game and we support them. Thanks for reading. Leave us a comment on what sports/aspects of sports you think are important for kids to develop. -Dr. Danny, PT, DPT  I recently saw this chart of the players on the Ohio States football team that won the National Championship this year. I thought it was fascinating to see that 42 out of 47 players played multiple sports in high school. In fact in an article interviewing Urban Meyers, he said he prefers multi sport athletes. Obviously, he’s had some pretty good success in his coaching career. Youth athletics can be a polarizing subject. I get it, I have kids. I want my son and daughter to win and be great at everything they try. I also realize that they won’t win everything or be great at everything. As parents, it’s our job to set our kids up to be good at whatever sports they try to be competitive in later on in life. Let’s be real, just because your kid is the t-ball champion doesn’t mean he’s going to be playing for the Braves. If you put him on the course to only play baseball from the time he’s 6 until he’s in college, it’s likely he’ll get burned out on baseball and have significant trouble with overuse injuries. There are a few key areas we need to try to develop for our kids to help them be well rounded. If they choose to eventually focus on a specific sport, they should have a great foundation to do so with skill development in these areas. 1. Learn How To Fall This may be the most under emphasized skill in youth sports. We all want our kids to be the fastest, tallest, strongest or most skilled. What we forget sometimes is that the best athletes are the ones that are the best at fundamentals. One of the most important fundamental skills is learning how to fall. If you know how to fall, you will be hurt less. If you’re hurt less you can practice more. If you can practice more you will get better. I never had anyone teach me how to fall until I joined the Army. While in the Army I had the opportunity to go through the first level of both the Army and Marines combatives system. One of the first things we learned was rolling drills in the Army. This is heavily drawn from wrestling and jiu jitsu. The Marines system went one step further and taught many of the fundamental skills from judo. Learning how to fall correctly is a skill. I learned this the hard way being hip tossed repeatedly in practice. It can be a trial by fire sometimes. If you land wrong, it really hurts. If you land correctly, it doesn’t hurt. That’s some good incentive to learn how to fall correctly. Get your kids involved in some type of martial arts early. They will learn valuable body control skills and decrease their likelihood of injury in the future. My personal preference would be judo due to the emphasis on balance, hip control/strength and learning how to land correctly. 2. Learn How To Control Your Body I love watching my kids develop in a number of ways. Seeing their speech, behavioral and reasoning skills improve is a daily occurrence. Watching my kids go from crawling to walking to now running is amazing. One thing you will notice about young kids however is that they all gain gross pattern skills like squatting naturally. The more advanced body control skills have to be developed through practice. One of my favorite sports to recommend parents get their kids involved in is gymnastics. I recommend gymnastics for a number of reasons. First, it’s one of the best ways to help your children develop body control. There is no external load and until your kids learn how to control their own body movement, there is no reason to add weight. Second, it gets your kids inverted. This is great and undervalued skill. For those of you that started CrossFit as an adult, you will know first hand how difficult it can be to learn a handstand. I’ve seen 6 year old kids that go to gymnastics twice a week hold handstands longer than I ever have. Not only that, it’s a great way of developing and maintaining shoulder/thoracic mobility. This is great to offset the amount of time most of our kids end up sitting at school. Third, it’s tiring. For those of you that are parents you’ll appreciate this one. A tired kid is a good kid! 3. Learn How To Be On A Team This is an area where we can use a sport to help our kids with life skills. Learning how to fall is important from an injury prevention standpoint but I think is much more important to learn how to communicate with others. If you’re on a team, it’s no longer all about you. You have to run plays, help each other out and work together for a common goal. My preference is to recommend parents get their kids involved in a sport that emphasizes lower extremity skill and one that emphasizes upper extremity skill. Two great examples of this would be soccer and baseball. They both do a great job of developing rotational power/coordination. Soccer also develops tons of lower body coordination and aerobic training. Baseball develops high quality hand eye coordination. Get your kids on a team and have them learn how to work with others. It will be nothing but positive for them as they get older. The recommendations in this post are a great way to help your kids develop an athletic base for any sport they may choose to seriously pursue in the future. They are by no means the only ways to develop baseline athleticism. I’m sure I have colleagues that may disagree with me on some of these points. Here’s something we should all agree on. Sports are a great way to learn body/movement skills and life lessons. They should also be fun. Your kids need to have fun and should be exposed to a number of different sports. They need to make mistakes, they need to lose, they need to win and they need to understand that no matter what it’s just a game and we support them. Thanks for reading. Leave us a comment on what sports/aspects of sports you think are important for kids to develop. -Danny |
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