Back in the day, I used to umpire for a living. Long story short, when I was finishing up my academy training, it was finally time to work some games.
Our instructors gathered us at one of the fields in the complex and told us the players would be arriving shortly.
In about 15 minutes, two buses of little leaguers showed up and began to warm up.
We were gob smacked. We just went through weeks of training to work minor league baseball and we were reduced to working little league games.
Our instructors looked at us laughingly and said: “If you can work a little league game, you can work a big league game”.
Much to our dismay, we suited up and began our rotations on the field.
And you know what?
The instructors were correct! You have no idea where the ball is going, you are constantly out of position and the usual predictability that certain baseball games afford you, is non-existent.
In the weight room, it is the exact same.
Working with youth athletes teaches you far more about yourself as a coach as opposed to working with nothing but professional ones.
Most youth athletes show up with minimal to zero training experience. Some can hinge halfway decently and others take a long time to learn. Some can do 5 decent pushups while most cannot do one. The program that you wrote usually gets thrown out half ways through the session and oftentimes, you feel like you are treading water.
However, I would not trade working with youth athletes for all the professional ones in the world. In fact, there is a lot to learn when it comes to training these awesome kids.
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What I Learned
Lesson #1- My old man always said “keep it simple, stupid”. And in most cases, I was the stupid one in this equation. Not only do we keep our programs simple but we keep our rules and expectations simple as well. When kids first start at the gym, we need them to pay attention. In most cases, our kids can pay attention for 60 minutes…which is a huge help. They need to learn specific mechanics that will help develop their progress so listening is imperative. In-between sets, we keep the chatter to a minimum. Once they show proficiency, we move to rule number 2 which is, you cannot talk to anyone who has weights in their hands. In-between sets is fine just as long as it is not taking from the session.
The key here is to be positive but refocus the athletes if need be!
Lesson #2- Design the program for where the athlete is at. Not where you would like them to be. Each athlete learns at a different pace and starts at a different place as well. Youth athletes need a lot of repetition. This is where motor learning is done. Volume and intensity must be managed. We aim to make motor patterns challenging to perform. We do not want the load to be the challenging portion of the routine. Remember, we are teaching exercises and want to develop kids appropriately.
Lesson #3- You will need multiple programs to get the job done. We have tried large batch programs and they work sometimes. We like to evaluate each kid and write a program for where each individual is at. We do this in our group training as well.
For the kids that have been with us for years, they are proficient, have gone through all of our movement systems and get a longer leash in the gym.
Beginners get a program that includes a few of our lifting staples with 4 to 5 sets and a lot of repetitions.
This is done for one major reason. Each set is a coaching moment. 3 sets of goblet squats affords you more coaching points than 2 sets. The more we can expose a new athlete to a certain movement pattern, the better chances of significantly increasing their ability to perform the exercise correctly and thereby increasing the benefits that derive from that exercise.
In closing- training youth athletes is tough. They are not little adults and should not be trained las such. But…if you master it, the benefits of kids training regularly and safely is fantastic!
