It's not rocket science! Youth sport coaches can be trained to teach proper movement, understand movement sequencing, and identify and correct movement chain errors.
“ staffing at the youth sport level is limited economically and knowledge of movement sequencing is not widespread amongst youth coaches. But it's not rocket science. Youth sport coaches can be trained to teach proper movement,”.
The first step would simply be an awareness among coaches that the movement chain means something and then come up with ways, especially at the lowest levels of their sport, to allow youngsters to explore different movements and create practice sessions that emphasize movement and not just the skills required for the sport. Focusing only on skills rather than how the athletes move is how performance is reduced and injuries increase. Right now this is almost baked into our youth sports.
Next would be the NGB thinking of a way to institutionalize this as part of coach training for the sport. Recognizing that staffing youth programs with strength and fitness specialists (who ARE trained in this stuff) is impractical, there's simply no money for it. The next best option, I think, is to train coaches to do it. They don't have to become experts, they just have to recognize that it's important and have some tools to help them implement it.
“ staffing at the youth sport level is limited economically and knowledge of movement sequencing is not widespread amongst youth coaches. But it's not rocket science. Youth sport coaches can be trained to teach proper movement,”.
Ok great. Where? How?
The first step would simply be an awareness among coaches that the movement chain means something and then come up with ways, especially at the lowest levels of their sport, to allow youngsters to explore different movements and create practice sessions that emphasize movement and not just the skills required for the sport. Focusing only on skills rather than how the athletes move is how performance is reduced and injuries increase. Right now this is almost baked into our youth sports.
Next would be the NGB thinking of a way to institutionalize this as part of coach training for the sport. Recognizing that staffing youth programs with strength and fitness specialists (who ARE trained in this stuff) is impractical, there's simply no money for it. The next best option, I think, is to train coaches to do it. They don't have to become experts, they just have to recognize that it's important and have some tools to help them implement it.