Training Young Athletes: The Philosophy of a Part-Time Trainer and Full-Time
Dad
By
Kelly Clinevell
I used to be an athlete. Not a great one but an athlete all the same. I
played multiple sports—some better than others. My dad lifted and was more
interested in staying physically fit than most of my friends’ fathers. I noticed
this from an early age, and having an exercise room in the house allowed me to
be aware of the need and benefits of exercise for the sake of exercise. I
started lifting around age twelve, and by the time I was in high school, I was
stronger and faster than most of my classmates.
My hand–eye coordination wasn’t any better, so my gross athletic skills
didn’t translate as well in baseball, basketball, and soccer as they might have
in track, wrestling, or football. I went to a very small school where baseball,
soccer, and basketball were the only sports available. In college, I played in
both intramural and adult leagues. A few years after college, I met my beautiful
wife and her daughter and we were married. We soon had another little girl. My
transition from athlete to something else was progressing.
I was 29 when I happened to stumble across a Powerlifting USA magazine
and started reading the articles. I was particularly impressed with the methods
of some of the more famous powerlifters and the conjugate method. I continued
lifting and had even gathered some reading material along the way like the
Secrets of Soviet Sports Training, The Bodybuilding Encyclopedia by
Ahhhnold, and Power by Fred Hatfield. The Powerlifting USA
articles in particular and the information available on the internet made me
look at strength training in another way.
At 30 years old, I felt the itch to compete in something, so I started
competing in powerlifting. My transition from athlete to something else slowed.
I did this for a few years until my youngest daughter started playing sports. It
was obvious that she loved playing, but it was almost painful to watch her run
sometimes because she was so “knock-kneed.” This led me to study athletic
training from a different standpoint. I learned that my daughter wasn’t
“knock-kneed” but that her knees were in valgus and her ankles in eversion. It
was obvious from watching her that she seemed to be at risk for a knee injury,
and my research revealed that female athletes in general were much more likely
to have ACL tears. This prompted me to research what could be done to make her
less likely to have a knee injury.
I had helped my little brother train years before, but when I started
researching for my daughter, I developed a healthy(?) obsession with performance
enhancement. My oldest daughter played some sports but wasn’t as interested in
athletics as my youngest. My youngest really enjoyed playing sports and going to
my powerlifting meets. I still remember when she was about five years old and we
were watching the World’s Strongest Man on ESPN. One of the competitors had
fallen doing a car flip race. She looked at me and said, “You could do that
better than him, couldn’t you, Daddy?” I replied, “I don’t know. Those cars are
real heavy.” She got an extremely surprised look on her face, looked back at the
television, looked at me, and asked, “Are those real men or are they robots?”
As she grew older and started transitioning from recreational sports to travel
sports, I found that not only did I not have enough time to compete, but it was
difficult to find time to lift at all. When I went to the gym, it was to train
her. As all dads know, sometimes you end up coaching your child’s team, and I
was no exception. My transition from dad/athlete to dad/coach and trainer was
complete. I used the knowledge I had gained from training her to train the team.
I constantly read and researched, so the training programs were always tinkered
with. I found that not only did I enjoy helping my daughter, but I enjoyed
helping other people meet their athletic goals as well. My career was in
emergency mental health assessment, but I found myself doing some athletic
training on a part-time basis. I’m currently working with a travel softball team
and a high school volleyball team. I’m also finding time to train myself, which
I believe is a necessity when training others.
What follows is an overview of my current philosophy of training young athletes.
I wrote this initially to give to the families of the kids I’ll be working with
so that they would have some idea of what to expect from me. I’m sure there are
many dads who have had similar journeys, and I would encourage them to put their
philosophy to paper as it may help to give guidance to their program design.
Athletic performance enhancement is an exciting and dynamic field. More athletes
are realizing at increasingly younger ages that simply playing their sport
without training outside of their sport decreases their chances of successfully
competing at the level they desire. I believe that this has also led to the
unfortunate practice of early specialization. Young children who play one sport
year round retard their overall athletic development and open themselves up to
overuse injuries.
Research has demonstrated that athletes who specialize in one sport at an
early age do tend to reach a higher level of achievement quicker than their
multisport counterparts, but they also tend to peak at an earlier age while the
multisport athletes tend to continue to progress longer. Some forward thinking
colleges are considering this in their recruiting as they view the multisport
athletes as having a bigger “upside” than their early specializing rivals. Just
as in any other field, if you don’t spend at least some time looking ahead,
you’re in danger of falling behind. I try to learn from as many sources as
possible and have found that the more I learn the more I realize I don't know. I
love seeing kids improve and appreciate the opportunity to work with kids who
want to improve.
Although I’m not medically trained, my number one priority in training young
athletes is the physician’s creed: “First, do no harm.” In keeping with this
philosophy, I try to make sure not to give advice or recommendations beyond my
scope of practice. I also constantly attempt to search for and seek advice in
regards to the safest and most effective training strategies and methods
available. It’s been said that “the carpenter who follows everyone’s advice
builds a crooked house,” so I’m careful to only make changes that I believe are
sound, not follow the “newest fad.”
With the priority of doing no harm, my goals in training a young athlete are to:
· Reduce the likelihood of injury
· Improve the general health of the athlete
· Improve the performance of the athlete
Fortunately, meeting the first goal tends to work toward meeting the second
two. Meeting the third goal may or may not work toward meeting the first two.
It’s possible to improve athletes’ performance in the short term but make them
more susceptible to injury, thus severely hampering their performance in the
long term. Just because an athlete is physically able to perform a movement or
take a “supplement” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s appropriate for that athlete
to do so. I attempt to follow an appropriate progression of training protocols
and make sure that an athlete is ready to move on to the next progression before
doing so. This is sometimes complicated when working with groups of athletes,
and adjustments have to be made.
In order to reduce the likelihood of injury, I want to make sure that the
musculoskeletal system is functioning the way it’s supposed to. I want the
athlete’s joints to have an appropriate range of motion and the appropriate
muscles to provide that motion. Some trainers/coaches specialize in corrective
exercises and perform an assessment that can be very comprehensive in nature.
This can be the best way to go when working with individual clients. When
working with a team, you can often make assumptions (I know that this can be
dangerous) about what the athletes will need based on their age, gender, and
sport. Not just athletes but people in general tend to follow patterns as far as
their biomechanical needs are concerned.
Joints have varying needs of stability or mobility. Mobility can be defined
as the ability to move while stability is the ability to resist movement. As one
goes up the body, there is an interesting pattern that can be observed. The feet
tend to need more stability, the ankles more mobility, the knee more stability,
the hips more mobility, the lumbar spine more stability, the thoracic spine more
mobility, the scapula more stability, the glenohumeral joint more mobility, the
elbows more stability, and the wrists more mobility. There has been some debate
about the scapula needing more stability or mobility, but most of these debates
center around stability versus mobility in different planes of movement. This
debate can be made for every joint. For instance, we want our knees to be mobile
in the sagittal plane (flex and extend), but we want our knees to be stable in
the frontal plane (left to right movement) and transverse plane (rotation).
Softball is probably the team sport with the highest likelihood of overuse
injuries due to the extreme one-sidedness of the game. You throw with one hand
and catch with the other. Most players swing the bat either left-handed or
right-handed. You always run the bases in a counterclockwise direction (unless
you forget to tag up). Because of this, most softball players are unequally
developed when comparing their right and left sides. This is most glaring with
pitchers. Everyone has seen pitchers whose pitching arm seems twice the size of
their glove arm, but the differences can be more subtle. Softball players
typically have differences in shoulder and hip rotation due to the mechanics
involved in throwing a ball and swinging a bat. When you combine these
differences with the postural problems that arise from everyday activities
outside the world of sports, the potential for injury is increased. Teenagers
who sit at a desk all day tend to have a kyphotic upper back (forward, slumped
shoulders and sunken chest) and have hips with a limited range of motion.
You might wonder why the potential for injury is increased when a muscle has
grown and gotten stronger in an athlete. Every movement that we make is
accomplished by a muscle or group of muscles shortening or flexing and an
antagonistic or opposing muscle or group of muscles lengthening or stretching. A
muscle or group of muscles may grow or shorten in response to a certain activity
in an effort to aid in that activity, and the muscles that are the antagonists
for those muscles will lengthen or even shut off to aid in that same activity.
However, there are many other movements that our body needs to perform other
than swinging a bat or throwing a ball and what’s good for one movement may not
be good for another.
Softball players will have injuries when they attempt to make movements that
require their joints to move in ranges that they are unable to move in. They
will also have injuries when they attempt to make movements that require their
muscles to provide motion and stability when they are unable to. These failures
of the joints and muscles are due to the adaptations that have been made from
movements (like batting or throwing) made on a repetitive basis. We’ve talked
about how joints have varying needs of mobility. When one joint does not have
adequate mobility, the athlete tends to compensate by having the joints either
above or below that joint move beyond their intended ranges while performing
various athletic movements. This hypermobile joint will move beyond the range of
movement in which it is designed to move and an injury will eventually result.
Injuries will also occur simply because of overuse without adequate rest.
Volleyball players can be at risk for overuse injuries. If volleyball players
perform excessive repetitions of the same movements with the same side of the
body, they can experience unequal development between their left and right
sides. A volleyball player who serves and hits excessively with one hand can
experience many of the same issues as a softball player because the movements
are very similar. Thoracic spine mobility is a high priority for volleyball and
softball players because if the thoracic spine doesn’t move enough the lumbar
spine and/or the shoulder will have to move too much to perform the actions
needed in these throwing or “overhead” sports. Volleyball players and female
athletes in general can be at particular risk for knee injuries. Studies have
shown that girls are four to eight times more likely to experience ACL injuries
than boys. There are many different reasons theorized for this increased risk
including the angle from the hip to the ankle, quadriceps dominance in females,
decreased hip and ankle mobility, and menstruation. Decreasing quad dominance
and increasing hip and ankle mobility are high priority items for me when I
design programs for female athletes.
I consider there to be seven qualities necessary for athletic movement. These
qualities are strength, speed, power, flexibility, endurance, coordination, and
balance. Some would argue that power is simply a combination of speed and
strength, but for training purposes, I believe it best to consider power a
separate quality. Other qualities come into play when one considers athletic
movements that add a visual component, but these qualities aren’t necessary for
movement itself. Visual skills can be incorporated into training and visual
skills training could be considered a separate field.
To accomplish my goals of reducing the likelihood of injury, improving
general health, and improving performance, I need to do two things. First, I
make sure the athlete is moving correctly, meaning that the joints are able to
move in a proper range of motion, the correct muscles provide the force in the
right sequence to move the joints, and the athlete knows the proper positions to
put her joints in. Second, I make sure the athlete is able to make her joints
move with the optimum amount of speed and force possible over the necessary
length of time. The seven qualities necessary for athletic movement must be
addressed to different degrees to make sure the athlete moves correctly with the
optimum amount of speed and force over the necessary amount of time.
I use four methods to ensure the athlete’s joints are able to move in a proper
range of motion—self-myofasical release, self-joint mobilization, passive
stretching, and dynamic mobility drills. I use these methods as part of training
and movement preparation prior to any athletic movements. Muscle activation
techniques are used to make sure the correct muscles provide the force for the
movements and these are also used for movement preparation when needed. Movement
coaching is used to make sure the athlete knows the proper position to put
herself in and consists of demonstrating and explaining the proper technique
when performing specific athletic movements such as jumping, landing, starting,
and stopping.
Self-myofasical release is basically a form of self-massage that can be
accomplished with a number of different implements. The foam roller is a
personal favorite. Myofasical release is an attempt to change the quality of
muscle tissue and would benefit many people, not just athletes. Self-joint
mobilization techniques are attempts to alter the structures at the site of the
joint. This alteration is accomplished by the athlete, not by any physical
manipulation by the trainer. Passive stretching involves different techniques
including static stretching and proprioceptive neural facilitation techniques.
Passive stretching certainly has a place and is necessary at times but is not a
technique I use as often as the other methods mentioned. It is an attempt to
increase the passive length of a muscle.
Dynamic mobility drills are attempts to take the body through dynamic
activities that increase the length of a muscle in movement. They can also
increase strength, speed, coordination, balance, power, and endurance depending
on the athlete’s condition. Muscle activation techniques are attempts to isolate
and activate a muscle. This is done in an attempt to “wake up” the muscle so it
will be used in other movements that don’t isolate the muscle in question. Some
techniques are combinations of all of these methods. When used as movement
preparation, all of these techniques serve to raise the core body temperature
and prime the central nervous system to operate at peak efficiency. Most of
these techniques have progressions that can be followed depending on the needs
of the athlete.
Of the seven qualities necessary for movement, strength is the base that all of
the other qualities are built on. Without strength, movement is impossible. An
optimum strength level is the number one priority. This doesn’t mean the
strongest athlete will necessarily have more of the other six qualities, but
without a certain level of strength, the other qualities can’t exist. Athletes
have varying needs of strength depending on their sport. They require different
levels of strength in different areas of their bodies. Athletes have different
needs in all seven qualities dependent on their sport. The selection of the
proper methods for training athletes can’t be accomplished without knowledge of
the needs of the athlete within her sport. The proper selection of methods can
contribute to developing all of the seven qualities concurrently.
Other methods may be used to focus specifically on certain qualities to the
exclusion of the others. Certain methods are inappropriate to use with some
athletes if the athlete isn’t physically ready to perform them. In an attempt to
insure that I “do no harm,” I have to make sure a proper progression is
followed. For example, power is a combination of strength and speed and can be
developed with a number of different exercises and drills. An athlete is put at
risk of injury when certain power specific exercises are used if she hasn’t
developed an appropriate level of strength, speed, coordination, balance, and
endurance. Program design is a complicated matter. Many factors must be
considered, including but not limited to preparedness of the athlete, exercise
selection, load selection, repetition range, set range, rest periods between
sets and sessions, recovery methods, periodization methods, proper progressions
of movements, and movement tempo.
This is a basic overview of my philosophy for training young athletes.
Additional detail in regards to the specific methods that I use are beyond the
scope of this introduction. My specific methods are often modified when I become
aware of what I believe to be more efficient methods. My philosophy isn’t as
dynamic as my specific methods but will also probably be somewhat altered as I
learn more.
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