Reflections on performance. Part-1

Preparing for performance is one of the most difficult things for an athlete.  New city, new course/ court/ pool/ ground, lots of noise and distraction.  Different routines.  Certain personalities can really struggle, making life difficult for themselves and teammates.  Coaches and managers have a lot of work to do introducing responsibilities and helping athletes manage detail.  Some (coaches and managers) are better at this than others.

There are two big pieces that an athlete needs to grasp.  It helps also if coaches and parents understand too, and can reinforce the key messages:

1. There are lots of variables, and time and plenty of practice is needed to discover them and find a sweet spot.  The critical goals are to ensure good rest/ recovery processes, effective eating strategies, and comprehensive warm ups.  Errors are common in each
2. Athletes aim for personal bests and high performance levels at specific events but we cannot, despite best efforts, guarantee an outcome.  What we can do is give ourselves 'the best chance possible', and the probability of a good or great outcome depends on how often we achieve a 'best chance possible' state.  More of one improves probability of the other

Our performance strategy is not to hit a personal best or win the event but to arrange things in such a way that we achieve a 'best chance possible' state.  Winning is somewhat out of our control much of the time.  What we can control are the variables that make it possible.  This is a key message that young athletes need to hear and learn to grasp.

Why young athletes slow down during puberty, and many tap out soon after

Young athletes end their involvement in sport for two reasons: because it's no longer enjoyable, and/ or because they stopped making progress a while ago.
Many young athletes experience a performance plateau during puberty.  Speed/ endurance athletes often get slower.  The body grows significantly before puberty, and power to weight rises.  This, more than any other factor - coaching included! - is responsible for progress.  With the onset of puberty the nature of weight gain changes.  For females, the extra weight is non-lean mass (not muscle) due to the expression of the hormone oestrogen.  Before puberty, weight gain is associated with linear increases in strength (and power to weight).  With the onset of puberty, weight gain now has the opposite effect - it increases body weight for no additional gain in strength. 
There is a secondary factor superimposing all of this, which is that sporting skills tend to mature around the time of puberty as well.  This is a natural consequence of practice over time.  The problem is that the brain and body are running out of resources or tools with which to keep things moving forward: the body is now much heavier but not stronger with it, and the brain is also finding it harder and harder to refine skills.  We call this diminishing returns: more and more training time for less and less reward.
This is all very normal and impacts the majority of female athletes and some boys as well.  It also doesn't have to be the end.  What's needed, in the first place, is an explanation to them that this is what's happening.  In the absence of an understanding, children think it's their fault; they're just not good enough any more.  This interpretation couldn't be further from the truth.  New rules now apply and these need to be articulated and understood by the athlete as well.  There are there things children need to know:

1. what happens to my body and my performance, as a consequence
2. what do the changes mean - what are the new rules
3. I will be the best I can ever be another decade and a half further down the track (or more) - I have loads of time to get used to, and take advantage of, the new rules

Parents it's your responsibility to understand all of this and play a role in communicating to your child.  It's also critical that coaches understand, and true as well that most don't.  Hold them to account and insist they get off their butts and go find out.  It will likely change their coaching at every level, and if that means they stop treating every child like a performance athlete and do a better job of making sport more enjoyable then that's the biggest win of all!