Editor’s note: This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering leadership, personal development and performance through the lens of sports. Follow Peak here.
As an athletic trainer, I’ve been on the practice fields, in the training rooms and at games with athletes in the NFL, Major League Soccer and the Women’s World Cup.
Sports medicine and performance professionals are often frustrated with the youth sports industry because many well-established, scientifically validated best practices are ignored by coaches and organizations. Without the support structure of pro or college sports, parents have to be advocates for their kids’ health and well-being.
Here are three things I wish every parent knew about youth sports.
To play sports, kids need to get stronger
For a long time, there was the belief that resistance training wasn’t safe for kids. That’s a myth that was disproved decades ago, said Avery Faigenbaum, one of the leading experts on pediatric strength training and a professor at The College of New Jersey. Research says that the risk of getting hurt with strength training, including harm to growing bones, is about the same as playing soccer, basketball or baseball.
“The science is compelling that supervised and well-designed strength or resistance training — not to be confused with bodybuilding — is safe, effective and worthwhile,” said Faigenbaum. “I’ll go as far as saying it is essential for this generation of youth who are weaker and slower than previous generations.”
There’s also evidence to suggest that an early start to strength training, before 12 years old, gives a young athlete greater gains in strength and coordination. Strength training is safe, emphasized Faigenbaum, and does not have any negative effect on growth, growing bones or the cardiovascular system.
Since many of the injuries associated with strength training are related to misuse or inattention to safe exercise habits — primarily hand and muscle injuries — all young athletes should receive instruction on safety concerns, including technique, sensible starting weights, repetition guides and safe spotting.
As for the appropriate age for children to begin strength training? “Like organized sports, they should start once they demonstrate enough maturity to understand and follow instructions,” Faigenbaum said. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for resistance training, that can be as early as 5 to 7 years old.
Here are some tips to start strength training:
• For younger kids, keep exercise fun and developmentally appropriate. For example, instead of squats and push-ups, use frog jumps and bear crawls.
• All muscle groups should be addressed in a resistance training program. In particular, training exercises involving the core are important for sports and can help improve skill and body control.
• Begin with 1 to 2 sets of 8 to 12 repetitions using low resistance. With time, this can progress to higher volume and higher weight.
• Because children recover more quickly than adults from resistance-training fatigue, experts suggest 1 minute of rest between sets, increasing to 2 to 3 minutes of rest for higher intensity exercise.
• Achieving strength gains requires sessions to be at least 20 to 30 minutes long and performed 2 to 3 times per week.
• Above all, kids aren’t little pros, so keep strength training fun and engaging.
Maturity matters
Every coach wants to have the best players on their team. But differences in the timing and tempo of growth can be a big contributor to who is “good” at 10 to 14 years old.
This has important consequences for both early and late maturers. “Earlier maturing individuals, who may physically dominate youth sport, need to continue to develop technical, tactical and psychosocial skills to ensure development in the long term, which may come from challenging them in certain ways,” said Kevin Till, a researcher and professor at Leeds Beckett University. “Later maturing individuals need to be patient and find opportunities that are suited to where they are.”
Those later maturing kids need to be kept in the system for as long as possible, Till said, both for long-term health and enjoyment of sports as well as for future athletic development.
What part of the year young athletes are born in can also be advantageous, said Joe Eisenmann, the director of the exercise science graduate program at St. Xavier University. In one recent study cited by Eisenmann, 93 percent of U14 district and national team soccer players at a Portuguese national tournament had a birthdate in the first two quarters of the year. What’s more, 90 percent of the players were classified as early- or on-time maturers. For young athletes, birthdays matter.
Parents should understand:
• Keep playing. Experts urge kids to continue to be given the opportunity to play sports, even if their maturity and growth are behind that of their peers.
• If smaller, don’t play up. If possible, try to compete with kids or teams with others of the same or similar maturity level.
• Train for the future, not just for today’s game. Focus on developing athleticism and the sport-specific skills that will be beneficial when they’re fully mature and their physical development catches up to their peers.
Injury prevention equals winning
Despite research that shows many serious knee and elbow injuries can be prevented, clubs, teams and coaches rarely integrate prevention programs into practice. For athletes involved in sports that involve cutting, jumping and change of direction, ACL prevention programs do more than just cut the risk of non-contact knee ligament injuries in half. They also significantly reduce the likelihood of other common issues like ankle sprains and hamstring pulls. With research that dates back to the early 2000s, this isn’t a new or recently discovered finding.
Physical therapist Holly Silvers-Granelli has been researching injury prevention programs in high school, college and professional athletes for more than two decades. Now she’s part of a task force that’s implementing an ACL prevention program for the NFL. The results of her task force are not yet public, but the NFL’s interest in such programs is an indication that even the strongest athletes might benefit from specific training to reduce the risk of non-contact injuries, like ACL tears.
One common perception is that an injury prevention program takes too long — 20 minutes, 2 to 3 days a week — time that coaches feel would be better used with skill practice or scrimmaging. But, like other forms of strength training, prevention programs also increase strength, speed and vertical jump height.
Getting stronger is part of injury prevention programs like FIFA 11+, said Silvers-Granelli, also the director of research for Major League Soccer, but that alone isn’t enough to fully mitigate the risk of an ACL injury. Timing is an important factor as well. ACL prevention programs show a larger reduction in risk on the actual day the program is completed, probably due to an increased activation of the nervous system. Because of that, doing the program as a warm-up before practice or a game/match is more effective than doing it in the preseason or offseason.
• An injury prevention program should include core and lower body strengthening, as well as coordination, balance and cutting/landing technique.
• The most used programs include FIFA 11+, PEP, Sportsmetrics and RIIP Reps.
• Be your child’s ambassador, said Silvers-Granelli. “Highly value a club or team that places player health and wellness high on the list of priorities as much as they value player development,” she said.
• “For kids, the general rule is you should be doing no more hours per week (of practice and play) than your age in years,” said Nirav Pandya, the director of sports medicine at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. “So if you’re 10 years old, that’s less than 10 hours a week of organized sport.”
• Pandya believes one of the best ways to prevent injuries and optimize performance is to include time to rest and recover. “Sometimes the best thing you can do to stop the cascade of early injuries is by doing less,” he said.