Stages of Youth Athletic Development

In the United States, youth sports compete with a pre-professional fervor, as if the games of ten year olds make or break the children's future. More and more, Little League, AAU Basketball and club soccer teams train athletes in a pre-professional manner. Players use personal pitching coaches or attend $1000/week camps in pursuit of the college scholarship holy grail. Every mother and father believes their son or daughter is the next Mia Hamm, Dwyane Wade, or Derek Jeter.

In this pre-professional environment, basic physical fitness for all youths is almost completely ignored and basic motor skills are left untaught as young athletes instead pursue advanced sport-specific skills. In a July USA Today article, researchers estimated that the average youngster (10-12 years old) spends six hours a day in front of a television, watching TV, playing video games or playing computer games, while sports sociologist Jay Coakley says the peak participation age for youth sports is twelve years old, meaning teenagers increasingly find other activities to fill their days.

Athletes play competitive sports and participate in structured practices more than ever. Therefore, children lack free, unstructured play: pick-up games in the front yard, tag, riding their bike, and playing in the street with their dog. The lack of these unstructured activities undermines their athletic development, as they unconsciously learn important movements through these activities.

In England, sports administrators developed three stages of athletic development to guide the physical education of young athletes (Sports Cumbria). The three stages are Fundamentals, Training to Train and Training to Compete. Unfortunately, Americans increasingly ignore the first two stages and move directly to the third stage.