'Sport Specific' Training Is Injuring Our Kids Not Helping Them

American youth athletes have gotten into this “sport specific” training cycle that is tearing them down and increasing their injury rate. Kids are bouncing from one specialized camp to another while still playing their sport of choice year round. With all this “sport specific” training that they think will make them better is actually hurting their performance because they are over-specialized and never actually working on movement fundamentals.

Movement fundamentals include things like being able to touch your toes, being able to squat down until your back side can almost reach your heels, being able to do a proper push up or being able to hop on one leg. And I have yet to even mention actually adding real strength training. According to Gray Cook, MSPT, RKC, CSCS who is trying to steer coaches and parents in the right direction, “This “sports specific” training created throwing athletes without legs and running athletes who could not do a single push-up correctly. It created swimmers who could not control their body on dry land and cyclists who could not stand up straight.”

A solid foundation of general strength and conditioning must be achieved before getting into specialized training camps or even doing your sport coach’s pre-season conditioning programs. Sport coaches tend to unknowingly run athletes into the ground and focus on drill after drill while trying to get kids ready for the upcoming season. These drills and conditioning are of course important, but if the athlete can’t move in all planes of motion and do movements fundamentals to begin with, then they are being set up for failure or even worse, injury. Things like joint mobility, lateral movement, rotational patterns, general endurance, general strength, coordination, and flexibility are cornerstones to an athlete succeeding but are almost always missing in high school athletes training programs.

Look at it this way, if there is a play being coached on the field and the players are not where they are supposed to be or not in the correct positions, then the play has a very poor chance of working. The same thing applies to strength and conditioning. If you continuously allow athletes to move poorly in warm ups or while doing things like push ups and lunges, then the body will eventually choose the poor movement patterns over proper ones, which is really limiting all the benefits you are supposed to be getting from training. Not to mention that the risk of injury for these athletes is actually increasing instead of decreasing!

There are two general conditions that should be met before getting heavy into sport specific training. First, you should be at a national or all-state level of play. Second, you should already have a high level of general strength and conditioning. At this point, you need to find a highly qualified coach to work with you on improving your sport specific skills while at the same time maintaining your foundation of fitness.

There are athletes doing a single leg squat holding 100 lbs for reps like its nothing. That is a great measuring stick for true strength, however, if you try to do this before mastering body weight squats and lunges and developing a strong core, you will get nothing but injured out of trying it. This situation is similar to coaches running kids like crazy to get them ready for the season. If you want real gains in running speed and quickness, you must first build more strength, better flexibility and improve overall mobility.

This scenario is very similar to "over-scheduled" kids as well. You know, the kids that play 3 sports per season. Juggling practices and games like a circus clown and then they just start to break down.

Skipping the basic foundation movements in a proper strength and conditioning program and doing only sport specific training (ie. running and sport drills) is like building your house out of straw. It just won’t stand the test of time. Sport coaches and parents, with the guidance of a Strength and Conditioning Specialist, can really get kids ready to play at a much higher and safer level.