Posted In: Blog Discussion
Our recent global economic economic crises has some important lessons for long term athletic development. I think most of the world sees the U.S. as the source of this meltdown. And rightly so. While some might argue that it’s the mortgage crises, others banking deregulation, and still others the total culture of consumer over spending; the common thread is that what put us in to this situation i
ELITETRACK Founder
Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
(CFKA humming “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” )
^^
You lost me.
ELITETRACK Founder
I think we might actually have the opposite type of thing going on in the distance events in a way. Not enough activity early on for athletes to be able to handle the 100-120 mpw that it takes to be an international level 5k-marathon runner.
^^
You lost me.
Knowledge is an ever expanding shoreline. The more you learn, the more you dont know…
or
Just play an audio clip of the song and imagine your narration over the music!
Gotta start posting more. I fell off the first page of responders.
RE: website TrackJabber
CFKA channeling Artie Johnson
Verrry Interesting…..
Mike, as you know by the posts I’ve started about long term development, and the new series I started the other day about changing the culture and attitude of T&F, I couldn’t agree with you more. Speaking of, we (you and I, as well as everyone else on this site) need to continue to expand that thread.
As far as Obea Moore goes, you’re right. He WAS a track God. And it was his 4 x 4 that was insane, not the 4 x 1. John Muir HS ran 3:08.xx in the 4 x 4.
I have a story that I’ll never in my life forget about Obea. In the 1996 USATF Junior Olympics in Houston, TX he ran in the 4 x 4 (among other things). His team was in a couple heats before mine. I’d heard of him, and read all about him, but with me being from Ohio, had obviously never seen him in person. Anyway, he gets the baton, already with a 50m lead, and as he’s running the backstretch, one of the most amazing things I ever saw happened. The ENTIRE crowd in the U. of Houston stadium was chanting “Obea! Obea! Obea! Obea! Obea!”. It was like. . . . . .he was a God! I’d never seen a high school athlete inspire this much awe (until I was fortunate enough to see LeBron James play all through high school).
Anyway, 10.78, 20.8x, 45.14, 1:48.xx. . . . ridiculous. As the coach of a summer track club, I always see insane times run by these youngsters, and I myself have often wondered why you never hear from them in college. But you’re right, this is why we don’t. It’s because they are being trained to win and break records at a young age, not to develop for high level competition when they are adults. Sad. Very sad.
RE: the 4×1…I was just trying to show that he was also great at that distance even if he wasn’t top 10 ranked. I think Muir was top 2 in 4×1, 4×2, and 4×4. They set Penn Relays on fire.
He’s attempted 2-3 comebacks over the years but to the best of my recollection hasn’t broken 47. I’ve never definitely heard what they were doing over at Muir at the time but Obea was just one of a couple guys to be amazing out of the mid 90s Muir teams. If anyone knows a contact for whoever was coaching at Muir at the time I’d gladly reach out to get an interview for the site.
I actually hadn’t noticed your previous thread. I intend to make mine a series after I wrote it. It seems like it could be one of the better series topics yet.
ELITETRACK Founder
I have a sport sociology class and we were talking about this a couple weeks ago and watched an outside the lines video on what parents are doing to their kids. One was a lady who coached her girl in figure skating to live out her dreams and would have her up at 4 a.m. jogging a few miles while she drove beside her in her warm minivan. Another was about youth soccer leagues and how you have to play year round and make all the rec teams and travel teams, etc. I think this is a huge problem these days, just as the examples above prove it.
I think its Vern Gambetta who is always talking about the problems with youth specialization and the loss of “athletes”. Kids should be getting exposed to all sports instead of their parents specializing them in one an dropping thousands of dollars for clinics, travel leagues, and because of all that doctor bills! just to get their kids athletic scholarships.
My graduate thesis paper was on long-term athletic development and burn-out rates among athletes in early specialization. The early pressures along with the constant demand to produce for young athletes takes it toll fairly quickly. Gymnastics was topic for the bulk of my paper since most girls don’t make it past 12.
In the case of Obea, I believe he had incurred bad hamstring injury and some ill-advised treatment. It seems after that he lost the motivation to comeback.
I was there when he blew things up at Penn Relays, and the crowd was on its feet for him when he ran the 4x400m. It was insane.
I am very passionate about this subject. From my experience it is not until a child reaches their near peak in physical maturation abilities that they should begin to specialize in sports even then I believe they should still do at least 2 different sports and XC/track doesn’t count as two. The typical ages for this to occur are 16-17 for boys and 15-16 for girls. I also believe their should be less guided instruction on “form” or “technique” at younger ages as well, let the child learn by presenting them with challenging activities and not specific movement stereotypes. This allows creativity in the movement process and the child has more fun and gains competence as well. The biggest obstacle in the way of a child’s ability to perform in sports is the limitations on movement patterns allowed. My personal take is a child should not participate in organized sporting activities until they are 9-10 years of age, even then they should be participating is self-organized activities for the most part until they reach high school age.
The following are taken from “CFKA’s Greatest Hits“
What’s the biggest issue in training athletes today?
The biggest issue is today’s modern society and its inherent contradictions.
• We live in an entitlement society that expects something for nothing, and wanted it yesterday.
• We raise kids whose self-esteem needs constant reinforcement then turn them out into a competitive world that doesn’t care about an individual’s self-esteem.
• We have raised a generation that often lacks a serious work ethic.
A secondary but perhaps more topic-specific concern:
It is my unscientific belief that we have a lesser pool of true athletes at the same time the gene pool is continuing to improve. Through natural selection, better health care, etc, we bring healthier, more gifted children into the world but from day 1, poor parental decisions and later on, the individual’s poor choices, are detrimental from an athletic development standpoint. The race to get little Jimmy or Janey to walk and not crawl, progresses to throwing them into Super-elite, Traveling Team, All-Star, Regional Select Soccer programs at age 4 which then leads to hiring a personal trainer because they are falling behind by age 6. Too often this trail of tears leads to the final nail in the coffin, the discovery of the one game that is not strictly regimented and parent-coached, NINTENDO.
Drive through a residential neighborhood and tell me how many kids are running around in dynamic, unstructured play? Or, how successful has the US been in International Basketball as of late? Do we really believe that our little Air Jordan’s are going to develop a foundation to provide for their later success when they play (say at age 12) in a game where zone defenses don’t teach man to man defense skills but simply how to occupy space. Worse still, by employing a zone there is no offense because the little skippers cant drive the lane packed with zone defenders and they are too little to heave up 20 footers. I know, I am off on a rant here so let me try and get back to the question at hand.
The biggest issue in training athletes today is:
The poor quality of the best intentions of many adults working with our youth. This is much of why at the higher levels we have to waste time in remediation due to the lack of basic athletic competencies. Pick a random youth – teen – HS athlete and ask them to skip or gallop? Got a blank stare did you? Ok, now take something that they do well athletically and see how well they perform the same skill bi-laterally. Getting the picture? Jimmy or Janey has a shelf full of trophies at home but struggles with basic motor skills. The cut-backs to Physical Education in our schools is also of huge concern here.
Which changes now taking place in your field that should be encouraged, and which resisted?
It seems to me that in the US we have become successful? at creating boneyards filled with the athletes we put into accelerated programming before they are fully vested in the bio-motor skills & psyche necessary to handle the physical and mental impacts of high level training & pressures of competing at that same level. Think about how many athletes burn out long before their projected careers should come to a natural end.
Worse still are the horror stories one hears of programs that apply a Battan Death March approach to training. That is where you bring kids in and run them / plyo them / lift them / and compete them to near death with the survivors benefiting from a That which does not kill me, only serves to make me stronger – super compensation effect. Not quite in the spirit of Bompa, and this unique training method often parallels the athlete’s academic half-life at an institution. I recently read a European athlete’s trashing of anyone considering coming over to the US on scholarship, for many of the same reasons I sighted above.
We had an interesting situation here with a distance runner. One of the greatest talents to come out of HS in this country, she ran only casually here for a number of reasons including injury. She may never run at a high level again. But by not beating her up physio/psych wise, maybe she will get her legs under her again, so to speak. Whether she does or doesn’t, from a holistic, career, lifetime view isn’t that the proper approach? How about from a moral- ethical / responsible point of view?
To try and bring this back in line with the question, perhaps a good question would be:
What should constitute functional conditioning at a given age for a given athlete? And what should the training priorities be along the way?
I have serious concerns with the proliferation of web chat room’s self-anointed gurus and hired gun private coaches. It’s quickly becoming the case that where a kid doesn’t like or agree with their coach, that they go on line to find an expert to support their contradiction. While in many cases the local coach may not be fully aware of current theory or technique, the man on the ground remains the best bet for the athlete’s success. Mail order coaching is no replacement for hands on interaction. 99 times out of 100, adherence to a lesser gifted coach’s guidance will still get you better results than going it alone and or from part-time interaction with a hired gun or website guru.
As far as so called private coaches, there are loads of issues. Unless that same individual runs the program the athlete competes for, there is a huge disconnect. More than one coach, working with differing technical models, conflicting conditioning, different terminologies, etc, is of serious concern. While there are successful examples of athlete / team coach / private coach relationships, this remains a minefield fraught with both real and potential problems and liabilities.
Regarding biomotor development, a recent trend stands to make the coaching profession more difficult in the coming years. Although very well intentioned and I would never advise against doing so the recent practice of placing newborns & infants down to sleep on their backs has been cited as causing more and more infants to pass by the crawling stage in their development. Kids are standing sooner and walking sooner. This all before you add in the impact of anxious parents pressing the developmental timeline. The impacts this change will have on the developmental learning curve will be something to watch for. The potential is there for an even greater need for coaching intervention and remediation of the basics. These now newborn to say 10 year olds may very well lack some of the biomotor competency of previous generations.
Aside from that personal observation, I believe that the biggest issue for coaches training athletes today is the poor quality of even the best intentions of many adults working with our youth during their developmental stages. This is no small part of why coaches working with colligates have to waste time in remediation due to the lack of basic athletic competencies. Case in point: Dell Curry, ex-NBA player and father of Stephen Curry, the star of Davidson’s recent run in the NCAA tournament is said to have limited his son’s play in AAU Basketball because he didn’t believe they taught good fundamentals. In this case it seems father did in fact know best.
One thing to keep in mind: Is the individual sufficiently trained in the basic skills the task demands of them?
1. At the Lane Symposium a fellow speaker gave a presentation on his athlete’s needing to pass a Functional Movements Assessment, prior to full on training. If they can’t stabilize in the statics, then dynamics / rotationals are more likely to blow them up. If you think back over past years you can see where on an athlete, the dynamic demands of an event has the potential to blow up them up.
Follow the anatomy from the manifestation point to the actual weak link looking for cause not result. At the start of each fall assess the quality +/- of the potential weakness areas and remediate prior to piling on dynamic demands.
2. A coaching friend had recent success with one of his female field event athletes. I gave him a call to offer my congratulations. In the conversation I asked him what he thought it was that brought about such a dramatic improvement. He told me, “I train them all the same. Like heptathletes…”That simple statement made a huge impression on me. My feelings were even more confirmed when he went on to explain that he had learned to do so by a mentor, someone who I have great respect for as well. In a sense, isn’t multi-event training simply defined as being a search for the ultimate expression of biomotor mastery? Look no further for confirmation of this than the title conferred to the top Decathlete and Heptathlete, The Worlds Greatest Athlete.
To try and bring this back in line with the question, perhaps a good question would be:
What should constitute functional conditioning at a given age for a given athlete? And what should the training priorities be along the way?
I agree with you wholeheartedly CFKA. In my very short time of coaching (8 years), I have gorwn disgusted at how other coaches sacrifice DEVELOPMENT and PROGRESSION for winning. This thread has already become one of my all time favorites on this site. Please, lend me your two cents on these two threads.
https://elitetrack.com/forums/viewthread/7790/
https://elitetrack.com/forums/viewthread/7710/
They are both very similar to what we have here, and I think insightful threads as this one (and mine) should continue to be brought to the light by all of us.
and last but not least, borrowed from our friends to the north
Scientific research has concluded that it takes a minimum of 10 years and 10,000 hours of training for a talented athlete to reach elite levels. For athlete and coach, this translates into slightly more than 3 hours of training or competition daily for 10 years.
This factor is supported by The Path to Excellence, which provides a comprehensive view of the development of U.S. Olympians who competed between 1984 and 1998. The results reveal that:
• U.S. Olympians begin their sport participation at the average age of 12.0 for males and 11.5 for females.
• Most Olympians reported a 12- to 13-year period of talent development from their sport introduction to making an Olympic team.
• Olympic medalists were younger – 1.3 to 3.6 years – during the first 5 stages of development than non-medalists, suggesting that medalists were receiving motor skill development and training at an earlier age. However, caution must be taken not to fall into the trap of early specialization in late specialization sports.
2. A coaching friend had recent success with one of his female field event athletes. I gave him a call to offer my congratulations. In the conversation I asked him what he thought it was that brought about such a dramatic improvement. He told me, “I train them all the same. Like heptathletes…”That simple statement made a huge impression on me. My feelings were even more confirmed when he went on to explain that he had learned to do so by a mentor, someone who I have great respect for as well. In a sense, isn’t multi-event training simply defined as being a search for the ultimate expression of biomotor mastery? Look no further for confirmation of this than the title conferred to the top Decathlete and Heptathlete, The Worlds Greatest Athlete.
I couldn’t agree with this more. I had the opportunity to witness a few days of training of one of the best teams in the country. One of the things that struck a chord with me was that while all the event groups had different activities planned for a given day, they were working similar abilities in similar areas.
What do you think about “forcing” athletes under a certain age (say 14 years old, just as an arbitrary number) to enter a variety of events outside of Athletics “championships”?
For example, we have a fair number of local meets but only one age group championship indoors and one outdoors; at those local meets should younger athletes be “forced” to enter a run, a jump and a throw? Additionally there are school meets so quite a choice.
The “force” is, of course not really enforced but more encouraging athletes and coaches to enter one running event (say 60m or 150m), one jump (long, high, triple is only allowed after a certain age), one throw (shot indoors, more variety available outdoors). The entire meet event list is covered between every 2 meets and that means, indoors for example, there are about 4x a season that “your” event is planned on the schedule.
Related to this are somewhat informal competitions for “triathlons” as well using the same results, adds a few more ribbons but allows those who are good but not the “best” to be competitive as well.
In terms of training: Speed/Power base. I think for as long as possible as I have witnessed a number of individuals locally who in running middle/long distance that seem to forget about speed/power near completely and it only takes a couple of years until they can not keep up with what was their peer group any longer.
I don’t think many people under the age of 16 could decide on their own that they want to dedicate a large part of their lives to athletics. I would think it was rare for a 12 year old to decide “Yeah I really want to do well in this sport and I’m willing to give up a some things to achieve it”.
I recall seeing a stat that in Massachusetts only 5% of those who played a sport in high school go on to play that sport in college. It was a surprise but it cemented the realization that most are done competing at their sport(s) by the age of 18.
I am in CFKA heaven. Love the reposts.
especially this one.
• U.S. Olympians begin their sport participation at the average age of 12.0 for males and 11.5 for females