Redefining junior athletic development in Australia

Strength & Conditioning coach - Jaye Edmunds

Physical literacy can be defined as the ability to move with competence and confidence in a wide variety of physical activities. It is the foundation that sporting movement can be expressed upon. Dr Ian Jeffrey’s stated that sport is an expression of movement. The better an athlete moves the better they are going to play sport. 

Australia has been brought up in a culture of resilience and sporting success. Often it is resembled with kids replicating their sporting heroes for hours in the backyard until their parents force them indoors. At school they would often play hop scotch, skip, climb trees, play on monkey bars or tiggy. As a result they would begin to develop these physical literacy skills on their own. 

But we are now in a generation that is vastly different to what we have encountered previously. The use of electronics, social media & a lack of free play has played havoc on the modern junior athlete. We are often now presented with poor motor skills, faulty biomechanics, mixed messages from coaches and parents, low training age and a fundamental misunderstanding of the process of training. 

This physical decline is supported by the research. In a study of nearly 14,000 Australian kids aged between 9-15 (Hardy 2013) showed that over 50% of kids were incompetent at fundamental movement tasks such as sprinting, jumping, throwing, catching & kicking. Of those that were competent the majority did not exceed average. Another study of nearly 28,000 students between the ages of 6-12 (Tester 2014)  found significant decrements in physical performance compared to previous generations. Not only is the athleticism of our junior athletes declining, but injury rates are rising rapidly. Over the last 15 years alone, ACL injuries have nearly quadrupled amongst our adolescent athletes. (Zbrojkiewicz, 2018)

So what’s going on here?

Well the short answer is we don’t prepare our kids well enough physically. 

 If we compare our training systems as a nation to other countries such as the United States or Russia, training athletically is something very foreign to us. It is not uncommon seeing kids in these countries lifting weights, training explosively and being properly coached on the fundamentals of movement from a young age.

In Australia we are the opposite. We place an extremely large emphasis on sport specific training without first establishing a solid foundation of movement. The easiest way to describe this is like trying to learn calculus before they can add or subtract. This is because as stated earlier, sport is an expression of movement, the better an athlete moves the greater potential they are going to have to maximise sporting performance. 

This was a great infographic by Cornwall High Performance in regards to maximising athletic development. As you can tell here without a strong foundation of movement than performance and the sporting skill itself can not be maximised. With athleticism being such a large part of the game of football, and speed & power being perhaps the most sought-after physical attributes, it would make sense to develop a big foundation so we can maximise these qualities. 

The school physical education curriculum, along with local sport is heavily games and skill focused. As a result we have little to no emphasis on developing athletes physically. This isn’t a bad thing. In order for these kids to reach a high level of sport, an excellent level of sport specific training is necessary. But as a result we have a generation of over specialised but underprepared athletes to encounter the rigorous demands of competitive sport. Often as a result the athlete experiences burnout or injury begins to run the risk of ruining their potential. 

If we can focus on combining a strength and conditioning program alongside their sport what you will find is not only longevity in the sport, but an athlete that is physically and technically equipped to dominate the competition. 

What does the research say? 

Over the last 15 years we have seen a spike in the amount of research articles published on the benefits that these strength and conditioning training programs have on junior sporting performance. Not only are these programs safe and reduce the likelihood of injury, but they improve performance. Here is a position statement by the UKSCA on the benefits that these programs deliver. 

The image below is one of my favourite comparisons when educating parents on the benefits that a strength and conditioning program can have on sporting success. The research is pretty clear that just playing your sport isn’t enough. Neglecting this critical aspect of sport performance is going to leave athletes significantly underdeveloped from a physical standpoint and will increase the likelihood of preventable injuries. Developing physical attributes such as strength, power, speed, agility, coordination, conditioning require technical proficiency, intelligent programming and a sound understanding of exercise principles to maximise performance.

Just throwing a whole heap of boot camp style exercises with no emphasis on fundamental exercise principles is extremely unproductive and potentially dangerous for the junior athlete. In my opinion, if they don’t know how to run properly, how to jump, how to land, and how to coordinate their body in space, than I don’t think movement is magically going to improve when the athlete is placed under large amounts of fatigue. 

We need to understand that the adolescent athlete is a unique population that are experiencing a range of physical, physiological and psychological changes as a result of growth and maturation,  As such, they require specific and specialised training programs that help develop physical literacy. Depending on how we train them during this period may not only lead to reduced training adaptations but also increase injury risk. We need to be smart with how we approach this. 

So what are the key fundamentals of movement and how do we go about developing this?

Sprint - (acceleration, max velocity, deceleration & change of direction)

Jump - (hopping, landing, jumping, skipping, bounding in all planes of motion

Strength - (squat, hinge, lift, lunge, push, pull, brace, rotate)

Frontal plane 

Transverse plane

Conditioning/energy system development (aerobic, anaerobic) to repeat these above qualities time and time again.

 These movements are the foundation to all good movement and sporting success. Unfortunately if I was to ask junior athletes who taught them how to do these movements, I could confidently say 90% of kids wouldn’t be able to answer. Now we can go one of two ways. Continue to accept mediocrity and go down the path we are currently going, or see it as a huge opportunity to separate these kids from the pack. If we teach these kids to do the basics savagely well all else will follow suit.

In the next article I’m going to expand on these above movements and outline my methods on how I develop the junior athlete. Within this I was outline the necessary progressions and phases critical for long term athletic development. 

Jaye Edmunds is a Strength & Conditioning coach at Woodford Sport Science Consulting. He is currently finishing up his double degree in Secondary Teaching & Exercise Science. Jaye has worked with a variety of both male and female footballers ranging from VFL to junior level football.

He is currently the head Strength & Conditioning coach at the SFNL umpires association.

He can be found on the following social media platforms;

Instagram: @performancecoach_edmunds

Facebook: Jaye Edmunds - Athletic Performance Coach

References

1.Zbrojewicz D, Vertullo C, Grayson J.  Increasing rates of anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction in young Australians, 2000-2015