The Deception of ‘Elite’ Youth Programming
What you will see within most modern high performance youth academies today is a scene that tries to mimic a professional set-up that is used by their senior counterparts, where the use of GPS units, 1RM trackers, force deck utilisation and linear periodisation charts are plastered all over the gym walls. Whilst this for the coach it might make them feel organised as a professional and validate their degrees’, it is fundamentally flawed.
There is a reductionist ideology surrounding the strength and conditioning community that a youth athlete is simply a less developed, ‘smaller’ version of an adult athlete. Whilst this might bare some truth, periodisation models that have been designed for Soviet weightlifters and Olympians in the peak of their career, simply scaling down the weights and applying these models to youth populations where their nervous systems and skeletal structures are vastly different may be causing them more harm than good.
By succumbing to this ideology that the youth athletic development journey being a linear and predictable equation, we are not building elite performance. In many cases we are facilitating burnout for these populations which may result in the exit of the sporting pipeline before they reach their full genetic potential. Challenging the widely accepted approach in designing “elite” youth programmes could be beneficial and rethinking the way we foster genuine physical robustness for long term success.
Illusion of Linear Periodisation in Youth Development
Traditional S&C programming is built on the foundation of predictability. It is often assumed that when we apply a specific stress the body will produce a specific outcome, allowing a smooth transition from a general hypertrophy block into a max strength block and finally into a phase where the athlete peaks.
Whilst this model absolutely has a place for a well-developed athlete who has a stable biological baseline, it fails when it is applied to a developing youth athlete experiencing peak height velocity. During this phase, the reality is that the bones are growing and elongating faster than the facial networks can adapt. Creating a temporary drop in coordination as well disrupting the proprioception with changes in lever lengths, seeming overnight. Movement patterns that were stable for an individual a month gap might suddenly look completely different and awkward.
When rigid technical models are imposed onto a youth athlete by a coach during this phase, it can be counterproductive to try and shape the athlete into a specific model when the goal posts are constantly moving. A programme based on developing an athletes 1RM, can be problematic when between testing dates, the athlete physiology has changed, and biomechanical advantages might have altered.
S&C practices amongst youth populations must adopt and pivot towards a more fluid and adaptable approach to programming that recognises non-linear biological processes. Athletes who are experiencing a growth spurt or a change in their physiology, their programmes must shift towards focusing on developing their open-chain kinetic awareness, jumping and landing mechanics, rather than trying to continuously add load to key lifts in the attempt to complete week 3 of their accumulation phase.
Chronological vs. Biological Age
A systemic failure within youth athletic development is the stubborn reliance on chronological age grouping. For example, grouping under 14’s, 16’ and 18’s etc. might make the administrative process for leagues and academies easier and might be more logical, however, what it does not do is consider that athletes within this age group might be vastly different biologically.
This can force strength coaches to reward athletes who are early matures, marking them as “elite” level performers and advancing them onto programmes that are centred around their apparent power. Conversely, this neglects the late matures. Often putting them into the ‘non-athletic’ group, which creates a tragedy for youth development.
Early matures survive on raw physical dominance over their peers rather than movement efficiency. Because this power imbalance over their peers, it can be easy for them to learn fundamental movement patterns (e.g. Deceleration, Change of Direction, Jumping), and by the time other athletes in their age group have caught up in maturity, not only has their physical dominance not an advantage, they also lack the ability to perform basic mechanics and are highly vulnerable to non-contact injuries. This trap can also feed into the exclusion and oversight of late matures. These individuals might have superior movement literacy and be more technically skilled, but they are often dropped and overlooked purely based on their lack of ability to compete with others in their age group who might be more physically developed.
To challenge these existing ideologies, then bio-banding athletes must be championed. Grouping youth athletes by their biological maturity rather than their chronological age.
Imagine this scenario, lifters within a strength session are determined by their percentage of predicted adult height. The early matures are placed with the older, more powerful athletes, which would force them to develop their tactical intelligence and refine their mechanics. On the other hand, athletes who are later to mature play together, which allows them to showcase their technical skills without being physically dominated by their peers.
The Death of General Movement Literacy
Youth athletes today are paying the price for the trade of unstructured play for hyper-structured, sport specific metrics. It is not uncommon for a youth football player to have an excellent 30-meter sprint and a high aerobic base, who cannot perform basic skipping patterns. By adopting hyper-structured sport specific S&C programmes we are narrowing the movement vocabulary of the athlete.
Movement skills should be treated the same as learning the language. If you only teach nouns, you will never be able to form a full sentence. This can also be applied to learning and developing skills for youth athletes, if they can only sprint linearly and squat on a bilateral plane, the second an unexpected chaotic stimulus occurs on a pitch then the highly specialised system breaks down.
It could be argued that a session for U12’s or 14’s should not look like scaled down simulations of seniors training. Practices that include gymnastics, wrestling and other more combative play could develop their spatial awareness and games that facilitate open ended skills could develop their acceleration and acceleration in a less rigid way. I believe that true physical robustness does not have to be developed through flawless, ‘technically’ sound squats and deadlifts. It can be built by exposing athletes’ nervous systems through more creative and a wider range of sensory and mechanical inputs.
To change the way, us coaches approach traditional ways programming to better suit youth development, we must ask ourselves if our programmes are designed and built around the biological timeline of our athletes? Or are they based on generic templates that have been used out of habit? And are we tracking the metrics that matter to the individual? Or are we making assumptions on the adaptations that a 12-week block of training we take them through gives us the adaptations we are expecting?
It is often not questioned why a certain athlete might dominate in a specific session, so it is important to ask why we think this is happening. It could be down to brilliant coaching, but sometimes it is simply because that athlete might be more developed than their peers. Neither is right or wrong but mistaking one for the other could mean that we aren't challenging that athlete enough and could be pushing them a little further. Likewise, they could be put through programming that is far too challenging, and programmes need to be stripped back.
A simple and highly effective way we can test this is if we were to strip everything away, does the athlete in front of us move well enough, and would adding external loads through barbels and weights be beneficial for that athlete or not? If the answer is no, then this tells us something about the programme that we have built around them, and a more appropriate way could be more useful for that individual. The goal is always the same for the athlete, to be physically robust and have a strong foundation of movement competency by the time they reach the senior level, and this should not be compromised by forcing the athlete to peak early which causes them to decline in performance over time. This might mean that we should meet the athlete where they are biologically, and not where the programme expects them to be.
