What should my child be doing in the gym?

It's a big question and it can be confusing for parents, in as much as our bodies are complex machines and there are conflicting messages.  It doesn't help also that schools, which should be front and centre in the discussion about evidence-based physical and athletic development, lose their minds when it comes to sport.  Where schools practice values-centred, 'no one gets left behind', curriculum driven academic programs, they resort to pissing contests in their sporting programs.

The purpose of gym is to strengthen bodies but the obvious question would be to ask
what and why.  At Sport Performance we work from the following set of core principles:

1. The structural health of our bodies provides the foundation stone.  Critical to this is muscle balance and posture.  Joints and segments need to sit in the correct anatomical position and articulate in a stable manner through a wide range of motion
2. The structure of our bodies - universal to all - awards us with basic motor skills.  These are the building blocks of sporting and specialised skills.  All children need to be able to jump and run, climb and throw, and do so without hurting themselves.  The more complete the toolbox of basic motor skills, the more quickly and completely we acquire specialised skills and capacities, and the less likely we are to injure ourselves
3. Children need lots of different kinds of activity, often  

These ideas are incorporated in our development performance template or pyramid (link below).
The pyramid outlines the basic strength conditioning priorities: activities that promote structural health come first, followed by basic motor skill extension.  High demand (sporting and maximal muscle strength and power) can be safely programmed only when the body and it's skills are sufficiently advanced/ mature.  The template is also used to detail specific deficits/ work-ons for individuals.

Children require a learning environment in the gym: a progressive curriculum underpinned by a sound understanding of motor skill acquisition, personality, and stages of biological development.  We have to recognise and account for the vulnerability and variability that applies during childhood.  What an adult calls exercise is actually 'play' for a child until they are ready to make it something more.


physical development and performance pyramid