Why does sport stall in the teenage years and what’s the solution?

Most children experience a performance plateau in their middle teens – slightly earlier for girls.  Understanding why depends on knowing what drives skill development in pre-adolescence, and how adolescence changes the rules. 

Though there are exceptions, growth when we are young tends to enhance tools for movement.  At the same time, the immaturity of movement skills provides a strong flow of new information to the motor centres in the brain to build the ‘instruction manuals’ for movement.  The spontaneous extension of movement capacity combined with rapid motor learning means that simple biological growth is the basic driver of skill development in pre-adolescence.  The onset of puberty changes everything because when growth begins to slow in late adolescence, everything else slows down to.  

The connection between general athletic and specific sporting skills provides clues as to what can be done to keep things moving forward and it also explains why it most often doesn’t.

Let’s use the example of a young child learning to play football.  There are two discrete and complementary outcomes at work.  At one level, running around trying to kick a football enhances all facets in the act of running around: accelerating and decelerating, changing direction, capacity for exercise etc.  On another level the child is learning the specific skills associated with football. 

For young children, sport and athletic development is of mutual benefit but what happens to athletic development as the sporting skills reach a high degree of maturity?  Let’s go back to the example of the young footballer.  Early on, getting to the ball is the predominant feature of training and run skills are, consequently, the limiting factor.  The ratio of kicking to running is low.  As ball control improves, running ceases to be the limiting factor and ball control assumes more and more of the training focus.  From this point forward, the run stimulus is defined by what happens with the ball.  Athletic development becomes constrained because movement is increasingly specific and not general.  How does this explain a performance plateau?

The connection between the development of specific/ sporting skills and general athletic skills only appears to be mutual or circular because it is largely so when we are very young.  The connection is in fact vertical.  Basic movement skills are the ‘building blocks’ for specific or contextualised movements.  We can’t catch a moving ball without first being able to move, or without grasping skills.  In young children, ‘sport specific’ movement is only loosely so.  The immaturity of the brain and body means it is mostly general.  Athleticism determines the boundaries of what’s possible at the level of specific skills.  Consider two individuals at football training: one is much quicker than the other.  We can say that the additional quickness expands the range of possibilities with respect to ball control and tactical advancement.  Athleticism determines everything that is and is not.   

Adolescence/ puberty is not only the period during which the body stops growing but for talented young sports people it is also the time when sporting skills reach a high level of maturity and general athletic development begins to plateau.  In the absence of additional biological capacity and extension of athletic skills, an individual depends solely on finding marginal gains in comparatively advanced sporting skills.  That is beyond most individuals and most coaching environments and is the reason for the teenage performance plateau. 

The solution is to seek further development of athletic skills which, as we have discussed, were the building blocks of the sporting skills all along.  However, for the reasons explained, these can’t be ‘wrapped’ into the sport skills program.  They need to be targeted and conditioned separately.

You might have noticed something missing in my explanation of the causes of skill development: coaching.  Coaches like to believe (and I am one) that we are indispensable.  Without us children wouldn’t know which way round to put their swim suits on let alone how to swim!  This is bullshit pure and simple.  The biggest human influence on skill development is other sports people.  The greatest constructive influence coaches have is to engender a positive and productive environment.  This is not to say that coaches don’t provide useful feedback, they do.  The point is that most of what appears coach-driven is spontaneous and self-driven via the standards and modelling other individuals provide, biological growth, and athletic extension.  The gift of coaching is a framework that educates and inspires. 

Core strengthening 2018, September routine

We need to begin with definitions for core stabilisation, and strengthening.  Stabilisation refers to the pattern of muscle activity in the 'core' region (above the pelvis and below the bottom rib) when we place the lower back and pelvis under load.  The basic idea is that we need to keep this region stable or within healthy motion limits as intensity of movement is raised.  The core region needs to be relaxed when we need to pick something up off the floor but very stiff when we jump or sprint.
Humans have an inner layer of core stabilisers attached to the spine, ribs, and pelvis and an outer layer of much larger power muscles.  The design and position of the inner or deep core stabilisers allows them to function throughout the day primarily to maintain healthy spinal shape or posture.  The muscles of the outer layer produce much larger forces but they're not designed for continuous activity; they're 'phasic', which means on and then off.  Dysfunction of the two layers is common due to the volume of sitting and poor breathing patterns in our modern lives - we don't move a lot and that means muscles and patterns of muscle activity become weak.
Stabilisation is any activity that focuses on the position of the torso relative to the pelvis and lower body, and on the shape/ position of the lower back relative to the pelvis.  Examples include squatting and lunging exercises as well bridging positions and Swiss ball exercises.  Loads must be low enough to permit control of the torso/ lower back position and motion.
Core strengthening occurs any time we stimulate the stabilisers but it generally involves 'targeting' these over other muscles, i.e. the core musculature is the dominant feature or the limiting factor.  Prone bridging is a good example.  This is analogous to the idea that a dumbbell curl is a biceps strengthening exercise though chin ups involve significant amounts of biceps activity.


Individuals make two big mistakes with core strengthening:

1. overworking - too much intensity or accumulated fatigue corrupts patterns of activity, resulting in muscle substitutions.  There is often also a failure to correctly stabilise the lumbopelvic (core) region.  Prone holds held to failure are an excellent example of this
2. poor regulation of breathing leading to dysfunction of the inner layer and substitution of activity by the outer layer: weak and ineffective deep muscles and overactive outer layer muscles

Specific considerations are needed to avoid these issues: 

• be patient and work according to the doctrine of correct shape
• breathe at all times, even if only small breaths are possible
• use lots of variation to provide a large body of information/ feedback for the brain to work with.  Variation is also an excellent strategy with which to avoid overworking muscles
• stimulate in all planes and axes: prone, supine, and lateral/ anti-rotational bridging strategies in addition to simple whole body motion

The core muscles are postural muscles, and the greatest influence on posture is the time between gym sessions.  Move more and be still less

Core strengthening 2018 September - downloadable PDF

Strength without additional muscle is a big thing for athletes

One my boys approached me the other day regarding conditioning planning for sport.  His coach had requested that he not gain weight and the impression I had was that this was considered an unusual request.  In the regular gym community, I only ever received that request from women but among sports people it’s entirely around the other way.  There are few sports in which extra mass, even via additional muscle, is an advantage.  Athletes need more strength but not more weight.

Why is more muscle a disadvantage?  The answer is that the extra weight slows the body down.  Let’s use an example.  An athlete weighing 100kg who adds an additional 5kg of lean muscle (now weighs 105kg) must improve speed or mechanical efficiency by 5% to offset the extra weight or he will slow down.  It’s a better strategy to make the body stronger without adding the weight.  A stronger body at the same weight is automatically more powerful: more grunt per kg.

I should add at this point that strength and muscle mass are not the same thing (it surprises me that common knowledge hasn’t caught up with this yet).  Strength is a function of muscle and the nervous system – the brain and the nerves that control muscle activity.  All tasks are skills where the brain is concerned, and by improving the organisation of existing muscle potential we raise task skill and strength.  In fact, most of what is often conceived of as muscle-induced strength gain is skill-induced improvement.  A bench press that advances from 50 to 100kg – double the weight – can’t easily be explained as the result of a 50% increase in muscle mass!

So what are the basic considerations for minimising muscle mass gain and maximising strength improvements?  The first thing to say is that we are searching for the sweet spot between high loads, needed to drive strength improvements, and those variables that stimulate and facilitate muscle hypertrophy.  The precise position of the sweet spot is found over time by making small variations in the basic formula.  The basic variables are: variation, volume, frequency, and large movements versus single joint or isolation motions.  Minimising the effect on muscle growth is more or less the same as controlling the likelihood of growth taking place:

·        Lots of variation of large movements to avoid overworking specific muscles

·        An emphasis on movement skill development and the postural/ joint function foundation to drive up biomechanical efficiency

·        Lower training volume and frequency, but maintenance of high intensity to drive strength gains

The critical variable is training frequency.  The sweet spot is found when frequency enables strength development and controls muscle gain.

Notes on the warm-up

The purpose of a warm-up is to ready for the contest.  We cannot know what will be required of us in the first moments, so we must be ready for anything.  That’s a big ask!  How do we become ready for anything?

A complete warm-up comprises three phases: a structural phase during which blood flow is raised and the neuromuscular system is readied for intense exercise.  This phase should always begin with simple cardio: jogging, skipping etc.  Dynamic stretches and basic movement patterns are then used.  Every part of the body needs to be exercised.  The rhythm phase is next.  This phase involves speed and agility drills progressing from low to high energy states as movement rhythm is achieved.  The final phase is the sport-specific patterns.

Warm-ups are most often, in my experience, poorly thought out and organised but there is only one catastrophic fault, which is to not raise the bodies engagement to the highest energy state.  Energy begets energy and if we wish to be fully plugged in and ready then we need to find that state in the warm-up.  Different bodies and personalities have slightly different calibrations in this regard but a coach can’t be too cute and it’s a safe strategy to work every individual intensively.  

The highest energy state is not found quickly regardless of how hard it appears the athletes are working.  It takes many reps and several minutes repeating simple movement sequences.  Explain your expectations: develop rhythm in your movements – consider and control the critical executables.  Once you feel you have rhythm, begin pouring the energy in.  Only one repetition or set can be the best on the day, and that’s what we need to find.  Once we’re there, we’re done.

You know you have your formula correct when your athletes start the contest with quick, reactive movements and decision making.  Anything less is a sign you’re missing the high energy states.

What kind of person makes a good coach?

I can assure you that this post is not moralising, irrespective of how it may appear.  The various environments I work across have allowed me to learn the values or traits needed to underpin good decision making when we are responsible for someone else.  That’s in fact the first truth that needs to be understood: coaching, like teaching, involves being responsible for others.  That being so, the first and most important trait of a good coach is that they are not self-centred.  Coaches, like any other professional person, are entitled to their own journey but a good coach places the athlete first. 

Coaches need to be curious and empathetic.  Both require that they are not especially ego-driven.  Effective coaches understand the basic principles of adaptation, of efficient movement and energy transfer, and the technical and tactical principles that define their sport but they also recognise through experience that sport is constantly evolving in it’s practices and, for this reason, that an open mind is essential.  Insecurity is a common problem among coaches and, like self-centredness, it shuts down curiosity and diminishes empathy for others.  Empathy is the ability to ‘feel’ from the standpoint of another.  Sport is always a mix of psychological and physical factors and empathy is needed to understand subtle influences and the nett or full effect of everything.

The final basic traits of a good coach are organisational and communication skills.  An unresponsive or improperly organised coach wont be able to knit the various departments together and a program with gaps cannot function any better than a car missing wheels or doors.

Altogether, the basic traits of a good coach permit them to make good choices for their athletes; to know what influences are missing or incorrectly applied and when to simply be patient.  Whereas adults change very little month to month or year to year, it’s the nature of sport that an athlete must change.  It’s also the natural state of childhood.  Good coaches, who are themselves adults, have to drive change and be sensitive to it.  There is an obvious natural tension to this which is why these traits are essential.