I’m interested in talking with any coaches who are helping girls specifically in the 14 - 16 age bracket. I’m interested to know if you’re doing anything around knee / ankle strength with them - and if so what? Would like to pick the brains of any one over in the UK as I believe you have a good youth development program in place over there, a PM would be great!
Look up Bob Seebohar in the coaches database on Slowtwitch, or just Google him. He’s done some work with the SE Junior triathlon team, and coaches his own junior team in Colorado in addition to his regular coaching gig. He’s known mostly for his nutritional expertise, but I’d trust his input on almost any area of coaching. Stand up guy.
Steve, I can put you in touch with Sharon Donnelly who was the Canadian Junior Coach for a couple of years after she moved back to Canada from her Colorado Springs USAT 2008 Olympic coach job. Sharon can link you up with several of the junior development coaches around here. You might also want to talk to some track coaches and see what they do.
I coach kids 13-17 in XC skiing…different sport, but during dryland season I get them to do a lot of walking and hiking in addition to light running and biking. A lot of coaches break their kids before the XC ski season starts with too much running that their growing bodies are not ready for. It’s especially bad because most of these kids don’t run in the winter but have huge enough engines that they can quickly do damage to their joints. You might find the same scenario with swimmers with big engines getting into running and quickly blowing body parts.
I coach 12 to 14 year old girls in another sport and I also have 2 girls heavily involved in sports. I think every coach of this age should read “Warrior Girls: Protecting our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women’s Sports” by Michael Sokolove. It’s important just to be aware of the differences in girls and boys. You can’t train girls the same as boys. Their bodies are different and they mature differently too.
The primary thing that I do in my practices is to make sure the girls get a good warm-up with lots of mobility exercises. I use pieces of the PEP program developed by the Santa Monica Sports Medicine Federation. You can see the whole program here:
Lots of good stuff in the various sections on that website.
Thanks Dawn…I’ll make sure I forward that publication to some of the other coachs in my XC club. I really don’t think that some of them are recognizing those differences. Unlike some other sports where boys and girls are on different teams, in XC skiing things are co ed, so the girls might be getting pushed too hard at times for their development.
It’s tricky in a co-ed setting because you really don’t want to be obvious that you’re treating the girls differently than the boys. However, the PEP program is great for both girls and boys and serves as a great warm-up. Everyone can benefit from it, so it doesn’t have to be something that the girls do separate from the boys. In my experience, not enough teams do a good warm-up since they’re in a rush to get to the meat of the work-out, but a good warm-up can help the overall development of your program. This PEP program has plyos and other good stuff in it too.
The most important thing for a coach is just to be aware of the differences. It’s not that girls are more fragile, they are just different.
Thanks Dawn…during dryland training season we do a 20-30 min hike before we get into the running, sprints, plyos and body weight exercises. We also do all the running on grass as I don’t need to get these kids ready to run on pavement for their competitions. Their competitions are on skis on snow. They just need to be in good shape come december. As it stands there is a wide range of skills on skis, so no one really feels left out. I have to be innovative in designing practices where the stronger and more skilled feeled challenged and the less skilled and less fit don’t get discouraged regardless of gender. We also end off with a 20-30 hike.
Thanks Guys, Dev I’ll PM you in a sec.
Dawn thanks for the reading advice, I’ve been doing a lot of internet based study on the subject and it all seems to highlight that you need to structure training inline with developmental age as opposed to chronological, which is no real surprise coming from an education background.
We’ve looked after kids via my school / local area before but on an occasional basis. However we’ve just agreed to help a couple of girls more long term who are in that bracket and showing potential nationally. Just seems from the research I’ve done we have a lot of great talent that never seems to get to that magic 10 years / 10,000 hours, they’re breaking down long before they get there. Majority seems to be around the calf / ankles as a result of improper prescription (I’m guessing) through and just after puberty as their body shape changes.
One other thing that I’m noticing with a lot of young athletes these days is that they don’t have a true off season anymore. If I add up the hours my daughter is training with school and club sports, it ends up being more than an NCAA division 1 athlete in her 20’s. The NCAA forces an off season and maximizes the number of hours they can train in season. Young athletes go from indoor to outdoor club seasons and throw school sports on top of club. My daughter is often committed to 2 teams at a time, plus extra stuff from the provincial/national level when that comes into play. It gets to the point where you have to start saying no and that’s a hard thing for a kid to do when they have such great opportunities to keep playing.
In my opinion, we have to force these kids to have an off season where they truly rest their bodies and then work on base fitness. There’s not enough rest and recovery for young high-level athletes anymore.
I can see that from both sides being a Phys Ed teacher. We’re telling our kids to generalize before they specialize - and hence get involved in as many sports as possible. And being in the ‘Winterless North’ as they call it here in NZ they really can be doing lots of sports all year round. But then dealing with them out of school you’re right, they seem to be on the go ALL the time and you need to rein them back in.
One other thing that I’m noticing with a lot of young athletes these days is that they don’t have a true off season anymore. If I add up the hours my daughter is training with school and club sports, it ends up being more than an NCAA division 1 athlete in her 20’s. The NCAA forces an off season and maximizes the number of hours they can train in season. Young athletes go from indoor to outdoor club seasons and throw school sports on top of club. My daughter is often committed to 2 teams at a time, plus extra stuff from the provincial/national level when that comes into play. It gets to the point where you have to start saying no and that’s a hard thing for a kid to do when they have such great opportunities to keep playing.
In my opinion, we have to force these kids to have an off season where they truly rest their bodies and then work on base fitness. There’s not enough rest and recovery for young high-level athletes anymore.
Thanks Dawn…I have this battle with other coaches in my XC ski club who want the kids training all year…I tell them to get the kids (and parents) to take a break and do other sports for fun and establish different neural connections/coordination. Wayne Gretzky has lamented how kids play hockey 12 months a year and burn out by 14 because daddy wants sonny to be the next Wayne. Wayne played baseball, tennis and other sports in the summer “for fun”. I shut down my XC ski program from April to Mid Oct and then we start up again in the fall, and by the time the races roll around, many of my kids can keep up or surpass kids that train for the single sport year round.