In the last 10-20 years, youth sports have become big business. This has led to more young athletes involved in training programs outside of their normal team practice. I think this is a great thing, but programs involving young athletes require considerations that adult programs generally will not.
Teach the Basics First
Youth athletes usually have little or no training experience and must learn how to perform basic movements prior to progressing to any advanced training modalities. Squat, hip hinge, push, pull, lunge, and rotation must be taught first since these are the basics for any program. If they can’t control their bodies well enough to squat or hip hinge proficiently, it’s a good bet they can’t land from a jump or change direction safely.
Too many coaches want to immediately throw young athletes into “speed and agility” drills since parents like to see stuff like that and they may not understand how to build a safe and effective training program. Once athletes learn how to safely perform basic movement patterns, they can progress to more complex patterns.
Have One Voice During Training
This means keeping parents away from the training session. This can be tough because the parents are the ones writing the checks, but if the expectation is set at the beginning there are usually no issues. The coach is the expert and should be the only person instructing and holding the attention of the athletes. Safety and effectiveness will both suffer if conflicting instructions are given, and it’s distracting for everyone if kids are looking for their parents throughout the session.
Make it Competitive
Most athletes live to compete, hence their interest in sports. So anything you can safely make competitive can help make the training session more fun and effective. Depending on the training age of the athletes involved this can be somewhat challenging. Obviously, if you have a group of kids who have only been training for a week, they probably aren’t going to see who can deadlift the most. But, they may be able to see who can do the most push-ups or some other self-limiting movement, like an inverted row.
Youth training programs are awesome and should lead to fewer injuries on the field or court as long as the program is well thought out and properly supervised.
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