Lessons from the dominance of east
Africa runners for young Kiwi athletes
In most sports, the obvious
exception being Rugby, NZ cannot compete with other countries in a battle of
participation numbers and programs of such extremes so as to filter for
outliers; genetic freaks of nature. Our
sports must play by different rules. To
drive our young athletes to extreme fatigue; to assess them against an ‘ideal’
and support them accordingly (or not) is to pitch us into a war we can never
win. So it is that sports such as tennis
and swimming find themselves falling further and further behind historical
levels of achievement. I should preface
quickly by saying I work in both of these sports so I am familiar with
organisational models, as well as coach values and attitudes. I don’t make these statements lightly or
blindly.
In the above model, participation
drives not only the development of sporting skills and capabilities but it also
drives basic athletic development.
Certainly, there are sports and countries with excellent and
longstanding positive attitudes to the importance and role of athleticism, but
the prevailing practices of early specialisation and very high time on task are
displayed in high injury and drop out rates.
Those that are left standing have the stuff of champions, so the model says. In NZ, we have practiced, and still do in the
majority of clubs and bodies, the same ideas.
Our coaches believe there is a correlation between high outcomes and the
development of adult behaviours during childhood and the possibility of achievement
in open grade and adult competition.
Examples of non-sporting achievements, such as the academic and musical accomplishments
of the gifted, are given to support the ideology.
This thinking is catastrophically
false. To begin with, sport has an
athletic foundation – more basic movement skills and capabilities are needed
with which to participate and drive the development of specific sporting
skills. There is no such physical foundation,
beyond basic sensory abilities, in music or academic programs. The practices of the gifted are also not
useful guides for those closer to the middle of the bell curve. The basis of their achievements is not merely
the countless hours on task but also that their gifts reward these hours of
practice. Each of us has an upper limit
on how large a dose the brain and body can assimilate and adapt to. It is the nature of the gifted, those at the
right edge of a population bell curve, to be able to cope with and adapt to more
and not the other way around. The third
lie of the outlier model is drop out.
The catastrophic levels of drop out in sport and exercise tells us, if
we care to listen, that when it is no longer fun or interesting it is no longer
of use. At what age would we ideally
like participation to peak at? The
answer is late twenties to early thirties.
More than a decade beyond the time our current practices achieve. By itself, that should be food for thought;
grist for the mill of change.
I could talk for hours on this subject
but I suspect you are probably already glazing over so I will wrap this up with
a question: what do we believe is the most important outcome of sporting programs
dedicated to the ideal of excellence? The
answer is to maximise participation when it is of greatest value. That is not during childhood but during
adulthood. If we wish to produce champions,
our children must stay involved for a lot longer. The current ideology – fit the kid to the
ideal – destroys any hope of this.
Instead, we need to see them and treat them as they are. Help them to be the best version of themselves. With that idea and perspective in mind, we
will make different decisions.
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