"But her technique is getting worse!"

For young athletes, learning sport skills isn’t a one-time thing. They will need to relearn, tweak, and adjust as they grow into bigger, heavier, and stronger bodies.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

I’ve written several articles delving into the growth stages and development of athleticism in young athletes. In this article, I’ll focus on how young athletes acquire the specific skills and techniques required for their sport.

It’s not as straightforward as taking lessons, receiving coaching, or joining a team. While these factors are important, age and movement experience also play a significant role. For instance, what is the youngster’s movement background? Are they involved in other sports? What other physical activities do they engage in?

The answers to these questions determine how easily youngsters can acquire new physical abilities. For instance, an active child will learn skills faster than one who spends most free time gaming.

Growth rate is another factor that influences athletic development. Children who grow faster than their peers have advantages in terms of height, strength, speed, and weight. This is the primary reason early maturers are often labeled as talented. They appear to be better athletes because, along with accelerated growth, they develop better motor control, making it easier to learn gross body movements. As a result, Junior may be bigger, faster, and seem to have better skills and learn them quicker than his peers.

However, this apparent advantage doesn’t last forever. When late maturers catch up with their fast-growing peers, the advantages provided by greater strength, speed, and height disappear.

Technique is also influenced by growth, a factor that many overlook. While most children can rapidly acquire physical movements and techniques, the quality and reliability of their skills depend on other physical attributes. As limbs elongate, levers change, and the way skills are executed must adapt.

• Muscles grow stronger and heavier, necessitating adjustments in balance and positional awareness.

• As individuals mature, their capacity to fine-tune movement improves. Athletes will eventually develop elite-level techniques and produce more precisely executed movements with age.

Watching a toddler learn to walk, you know it takes time to transform amusing initial attempts into a functional skill. While we recognize that persistent efforts eventually lead to a passable walk, how many of us realize that this process is repeated for all physical skills? It may not look as clumsy as a toddler’s walking practice but it’s the same process. The three essential components for gross motor skills like walking—muscle control, coordination, and balance—must be acquired and practiced.

Children who learned to control their bodies as 10-year-olds later find that their 12- or 13-year-old bodies are bigger, heavier, and suddenly unwieldy. Increases in height are responsible for the greatest disruptions but being stronger and heavier also produce some less obvious changes. Technique suffers, and they have to relearn things.

The good news is that growing young athletes don’t have to start over—the movement patterns are already there—but some adjustments will be necessary.

Learning technique isn’t a one-time occurrence. Initially, young athletes concentrate on fundamental movements. However, as they grow, their central nervous system undergoes increased myelination, enabling them to acquire more sophisticated skills with faster and more precise movements. The basic skills they learned a few years ago become more efficient and appear more athletic. Even skills that seemed impossible for youngsters to learn gradually become part of their skill set due to the enhanced myelination.

Young athletes are limited in the types of sports techniques they can learn and perform during their youth. However, this limitation gradually changes as they age. For instance, not being able to perform certain skills at the age of 8 doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll never be able to, the growth process plays a crucial role in determining this. Families and coaches should work with the resources they have and be patient, as sport skills, like any other skill, take time to develop.