Mistake No. 1: Neglecting the Development of Motor Abilities (Skills)
We are all aware of the fact that in professional sports, only victories count and only champions are remembered. Unfortunately, such a trend is today becoming common also in youth sports.
The focus on achieving short-term goals (winning championships, being top-ranked, etc.) is evident in almost all aspects of training young athletes. In working with young athletes, starting from the youngest categories, there is an excessive emphasis on learning technique (sport-specific skills) and, somewhat later, the tactics of a specific sport.
Neglecting the development of motor abilities and skills in the process.
Such an approach could have had a positive impact a decade ago, and with slightly higher probability, about two decades ago. And not without reason. However, today, with the complete transformation of the lifestyle of young individuals, such a strategy no longer produces results.
Children today spend a lot of time sitting at home and playing video games, connecting with others through social media, while in the past, this interaction occurred through outdoor play. Playing with peers used to enable previous generations to develop what is known as spontaneous motor skills and the underlaying motor abilities.
However, such non-obligatory activities in the daily schedule of today’s children are becoming more limited. Children are getting weaker, slower, and less enduring. They lack proper running skills.
The consequences?
Fundamental skills such as running, jumping, climbing, catching, throwing, stopping, maintaining balance, rolling, and similar activities are largely neglected. Inadequate stimuli hinder the optimal development of fundamental motor abilities—coordination, strength, endurance, speed, and flexibility.
All the mentioned issues cannot be compensated for by sports-specific training in today’s children.
It is crucial to emphasize that addressing the consequences left on young athletes by insisting solely on sports-specific training becomes more challenging, especially if they were subjected to such training during the so-called “sensitive years.” According to Josef Drabik, these are periods in life when the organs and systems determining a particular ability (balance, endurance, speed, strength, etc.) undergo intensive development. These periods are most susceptible to stimuli that foster specific ability development.
The ultimate result is a lack of “athleticism” necessary to adopt the increasingly complex technical and tactical demands of a specific sport in later years of training. At one point, children can no longer keep up with the demands of the sport and end up quitting.
How to avoid the first mistake?
The solution lies in progressive, optimal, and long-term development of fundamental motor abilities and skills through various exercises with general loads, especially in the early stages of sports engagement.
Proper athletic development in the initial stages of sports training should focus on enhancing fundamental abilities through diverse exercises that do not have direct connections to the technique of a specific sport. We are talking about so-called general exercises and general loads. Hence, experts caution that 60% of the training programs for young athletes up to the age of 15-16 should be composed of general exercises or loads. This implies that in the typically isolated training of technical (sport-specific) skills, changes should be introduced by integrating conditioning training for young athletes. By this, we don’t mean training in the gym or running endless laps around the field solely for acquiring “fitness”.
Before embarking on the journey to excellence, coaches must establish solid foundations for young athletes through progressive, optimal, and long-term development of motor abilities, coupled with the gradual development of sports-specific skills. Using the example of speed and agility development, this would mean that learning the proper techniques of running, accelerating, decelerating, stopping, and so forth should precede sports-specific speed and agility exercises.
Because, as the saying goes:
“To learn to walk, one must first start crawling…”
Wishing you success,
Igor Macner
Co-founder of Mozaiq Sports
