Dylan is the two year old son of one of the therapists at Thedacare in Appleton Wisconsin. Just before I was going to do a staff development session this past week I was watching Dylan play in the clinic. It was amazing. He is 28 pounds and he picked up a ten pound med ball with perfect technique. Then he walked across the room carrying it. Then he squatted. Perfect, knees went where they had to go to control himself. Then he climbed, crawled reached and pulled. He moved in all planes used multiple joints, triple extension, triple flexion and had fun doing it. No instruction, no cueing all perfectly natural. This exhibition of great movement has stuck in my mind over the past several days, especially when I get questions about how to how to squat and how to lift. What happens along the way? What do we do to take these instincts away? For me it just reinforces the value and need for free play. Let them be kids. Start coaching them later, much later. Give them movement problems to solve and see how they go about it. Don’t worry about what is correct; let them follow their instincts and basic childlike movement patterns. It reminds of the line in the movie Seabiscuit when the trainer turned Seabiscuit out into the pasture so he could run free and be a horse again. Maybe we need to let out our athletes be kids again, more like Dylan.
