Are Technical Models Ruining Youth Athletes?
Youth training sessions are increasingly becoming overly coach led, with a bombardment of instructions which are being delivered at a pace that a young athlete has hardly any time to consider the purpose of the session. This subsequently leads athletes to miss the key kinaesthetic of what good movement feels like. Although the coach might be well intentioned and knowledgeable about the session they are delivering. But this over-coaching and approach of rigid technical models might be doing more harm than good.
This style of coaching is often not a reflection on young coaches; it is often an insight to how they were coached as an athlete themselves or trained as a coach. Often manifesting itself into an instruction equals outcome approach. For example, if a coach can explain and demonstrate what perfect technique is well enough, then the athlete will be able to mimic and reproduce it just as the coach has performed, and the more detailed and better the instruction is, the better the outcome produced by the athlete will be.
The biggest flaw in this approach, is the direction of how the human brain learns to move and the evidence in research on motor learning seems to point. How we learn could have significant implications for how coaches deliver sessions for youth athletes, and how to better develop the S&C practice for youth athletic development.
How the Brain Learns Movement
Whether an athlete is jumping, sprinting, changing direction or performing a squat or hinge, every athlete performing each of these skills, they are engaging in a highly complex and subconscious process that their neural systems are organising movement responses to the demands of the environment that have been imposed on them. These movements because they are being performed below the level of conscious thought develop best when an athlete can explore and correct rather than be directed through separate components of a task.
Instruction heavy coaching often forces the athlete to consciously focus on the movement they are performing. If an athlete is told to track their knees over toes when they are performing a squat for example, their working memory is activated and is immediately forced to process that instruction to perform the movement correctly. Because their attention is then brought inward to the mechanics of their own performance, it can cause the movement to seem stiff and deliberate and often disconnect them to the environment around them, which could have subsequent damaging effects when they are performing a similar movement pattern during a more chaotic environment in their given sport.
This distinction between the controlled environment of the gym and the sports athletes may partake in matter enormously. Field based athletes for example when performing a rapid change in direction, if they have been over cued to hit specific body positions when they are planting their foot or dropping their hips, when fatigued, this movement can break when more when they are actually needing the skill to be performed correctly. On the other hand, if an athlete has developed the skill to change direction or decelerate in a contrasting open environment, where their practice has been varied, could produce more effective and efficient movement quality instinctively, without having to check off cues in their head as they are performing it.
The Problem with ‘Perfect Technique’
Human bodies and the anatomy of each individual athlete are not identical. Young athletes bring vastly different anatomies to every training environment they are in. Different limb lengths and mobility profiles are not flaws that should not be corrected for these athletes, they are differences that require coaches to provide solutions for the individual, rather than confining them to perfect technical models. Forcing an athlete to reach a squat depth they are anatomically restricted in being able to achieve, creates unnecessary stress on joints and could harm performance and development.
For Coaches, the implantation of a single standard should not be the goal. It could be argued that the goal for coaches should be facilitating functional movement competency for their athletes. To develop the ability to distinguish between movement patterns that are effective and safe for the athlete and to mitigate any injury risk they might have by trying to mimic the technical models perfectly. This skill is significantly harder than trying to match athletes to a template and requires coaches to be adaptable and not follow what coaches have always been told to follow.
Movement Variability
There has been a shift in research of motor learning that changes the perception of movement variability. Variability of movement has been seen as a problem and has often been treated as one, for example if an athletes landing mechanics changes or slightly varies in the third rep than the first, then a coach is often quick to jump in and correct the repetition that might have looked different to the first which leans heavily to the idea that movements should be consistent and look the same each time any movement pattern is performed.
However, the research has suggested that this might not be the most appropriate way to tackle this ‘issue’. It leans to the idea that not only is movement variability acceptable, but it could be beneficial. When an athlete is learning a movement pattern through varied practice which might be over different surfaces for example, which might alter their speed or load on joints. When the athlete is exposed to these unpredictable environments, their nervous system has been shown to adapt to different movement strategies subconsciously through an idea which has often been cited as a ‘solution pool’. This can be practically seen through certain scenarios in sport where an athlete may be bumped mid-air, changing the course of their landing mechanics, and their response to this stimulus is to find a different, safe movement strategy to combat it. This creates the question, if an athlete has been conditioned to land in a fixed position. What happens if the pattern is disrupted?
Although this does not mean that for the athlete that everything is safe or appropriate, there must be an important distinction between what is a productive variability in movement and what is a harmful compensation that could indicate mobility limitations and or injury risk. Recognising this important distinction is ultimately a skill that a coach will have to develop. However, the impulse to correct every variance that steers away from the technical model is worth examining, because what could be classed as a mistake that the athlete has made might in fact be exactly what their nervous system is designed to do.
Designing Environments vs Delivering Instructions
If explicit, rigid instruction is becoming a hindrance to a youth athlete's physical development, what could a different approach look like? One alternative that has been compelling in research has been a constraints led approach. This framework shifts the coach’s role from purely delivering instructions to designing environments that suit the athlete more appropriately. In practice, this could look like a coach structuring a task and the environment that it is completed in a way that make the desired outcome more natural and logical, rather than making it a case of telling them what to do and where they are going wrong.
One of the most traditional ways of training acceleration mechanics in athletes is to have them placed pushing against a wall, with the coach cueing their knee position, shin angle, foot position and torso angle. When a constraints led approach is adopted instead of a more rigid way of coaching, it could involve adding resistance to the athlete horizontally and cueing them in a different way to get the desired outcome. A sled for example, would automatically demand that the athlete has to lean forward and require a more powerful ground strike without the coach needing to cue such things. Changing the environment that a movement is performed can cause the athlete to learn the kinaesthetics and learn through completing the task as opposed to being instructed in different environments.
This can also be applied to change of direction training. Cone drills with prescribed mechanics could be gamified where you might design a small sided game with a constraint on space in the play area, forcing athletes to change direction and decelerate without the need to cue athletes on how to cut or avoid players in an environment that doesn't replicate the chaotic nature of their sport. Within sports that are chaotic and have a certain level of unpredictability, athletes can not rely on predetermined plans on how to move, they must adapt and respond in the time of the game.
"The best coaches create athletes who solve problems independently."
Wayne Goldsmith
The View of the Parent
Watching your child during a training session where there are lots of explicit instructions where there are lots of close technical corrections can create the view that what their child is doing is purposeful and an active part of their learning process, and an environment that is based solely around games may look less controlled and chaotic. It could be hard to perceive that this type of practice is actually producing more robust and overall better athletes.
Whether you are watching your child partake in a session or discussing a session with their coach, try to evaluate how much the athletes are discovering by taking part in more gamified drills rather than how much the coach is teaching them as these are vastly different perspectives. Although technical commentary can sound impressive, it can lead to less time moving and discovering different ways to adjust and problem solve and more time listening to coaching instructions. Sessions where the athletes are exposed to varied environments and situations are the ones to look out for. Athletes need to be able to make mistakes and gradually develop the skill to problem solve themselves, this in the long term will build their competence of the sport they are playing through engaging with the tasks at hand and not just complying with them.
Of course, there is a place for correct and instruction led coaching, this isnt to say that there isn’t a place for it as technique does matter, particularly when there is a level of risk to the safety of the individual that could cause harm or injury. The goal is to not silence the coaches, moreover it is for the coach to develop the skill to recognise where instruction is needed and implement it selectively and effectively to get the best desired outcome. Cues that are delivered at the right moment to a situation where it is needed can be highly valuable for the athlete, it is when these cues are delivered from a place of impulse to every single athlete is where the problem is created.
Creating the Self-Sufficient Athlete
The shift to more environment driven coaching where instructions are less explicit and more implicit is not just about creating athletes who are mechanically great, it is about making youth athletes more physically intelligent and athletes who can see and adapt their movements to situations safely and effectively without needing cueing from the coach through every step. Athletes who can do this effectively whilst under fatigue in the absence of coach instruction are most likely to be able to perform higher than those who are reliant on being corrected constantly.
The skill of developing physical literacy is one that takes a significant amount of time to develop and develops best when an athlete can explore through varied style of practice that a constraints led approach can give them. It is not likely this can be achieved as effectively through verbal instruction, however detailed or correct it may be. Ultimately it must be learned through practice and experience, as opposed to just being instructed on how to complete a movement.
For coaches, being comfortable with silence and accepting a certain degree of mistakes an athlete must make is paramount. This could be resisting the urge to correct every imperfection or variance that you see and trusting the athlete that they will find a way to adapt and correct themselves when the movement looks messy, and design sessions that facilitate the learning of physical challenges.
