How to Prevent Injury and Improve Performance When Training Female Youth Athletes

Every time I visit a sports-related web site, I see more and more advertisements for personal trainers for young athletes; some are sport-specific trainers and some focus on speed and strength development. These ads target parents of children as young as eight and capitalize on the fanatical pursuit of college scholarships which has led to year-round sports teams for eight year olds, ignoring the fact that most eight year olds cognitively do not understand the spatial relationships necessary for most team games; hence the "bumble bee soccer" of under-eight soccer leagues .

Personal trainers have value, if they know what they are doing. However, many lack sound physiological principles in their workouts. I watched one trainer (whose true job was as a social worker) work with 10-12 players ranging in age from 8-18, all doing the same workout. Not only are eight year olds at a different developmental level than eighteen year olds, meaning either the eight year old was at-risk for injury or the eighteen year old was doing a workout well beneath his level, but the workout was unsafe in multiple ways. First, the players did box jumps onto an unstable metal bleacher that moved forward almost every time a player landed; more than one player barely escaped injury while just missing the edge of the bleacher with a knee. Second, the trainer had no idea how many jumps each athlete performed. Third, the trainer did the plyometric workout at the end of the training, when the athletes were tired, meaning they were more prone to injury and less likely to reap rewards, as one cannot build speed and power in a fatigued state. The key to plyometrics is a short amortization phase-the time between the eccentric deceleration from the drop and concentric action of the next jump and a fatigued athlete fails to maximize benefits of the plyometrics because he extends the amortization phase.