Prepared Athlete Training & Health

Physical Development and Motor Skills Coaching

How can we prepare and equip our young athletes to steer them on the path to sustained success in sport (and beyond)?

gaps in the toolbox

Kids’ natural acquisition of fundamental movement skills is increasingly incomplete. One factor is generational; kids are playing less in the internet age, so have less opportunity to develop these skills through exploration.

Another factor is the increasing participation in organised sport competition from a young age, often to the exclusion of other activities

building resilience to injury

The majority of injuries in youth sports are overuse injuries. Overuse injuries occur when repetitive sports activity (running, jumping, throwing) exceeds the tolerance of the young athlete’s tissues.

One element in protecting against these injuries is through physical preparation including strength training to increase the capacity and load tolerance of the structures involved.

The other part of the puzzle is to develop and hone these skills to make them more mechanically sound. In this way we can better distribute the stresses involved to avoid overloading any one link in the chain, and make them more mechanically efficient, reducing wear and tear.

biological age and stage

When approaching physical and motor skill development for young athletes we need to consider biological age and relative stage of growth and maturation. Physical preparation must work in concert with developmental changes, and be sensitive to the stresses placed on structures during growth spurts particularly. Similarly, when developing athletic skills we need to recognise that young athletes need to continually recalibrate to their changing limbs and capabilities as they grow and develop.