Yup Tiger Woods.

Why?

Because he introduced the idea that specializing
in one sport from birth is the key to riches and
success.

OK, not him specifically. But the idea of being
‘The Next Tiger Woods’.
 

The prevailing theory is that by practicing one sport
all year, the athlete will develop the skills of
that sport and become dominant. Then they’ll get
the scholarship, get the girl (so to speak), go
pro and be rich and famous.

Well that’s wrong. Flat. Out. Wrong.

But the level of knowledge of youth sports coaches
and parents is not the topic for today.

Saving your athletes from a career ending injury,
peaking at 15 or suffering burnout is.

Sport specialization before the mid-teens is a
bad idea. Think I’m an idiot or your kid or
athlete in THE exception to the rule?

Come on, we all know someone who thinks like that.

Not you of course…

Listen to Al Vermeil. Al Vermeil is the only
strength coach to have World Championship rings
from BOTH the NFL and the NBA. He is also the
only strength coach who has been in the NFL, NBA
and Major League Baseball. Al was honored by
being one of the initial inductees to the
Strength Coaches Hall of Fame in June 2003.

And he doesn’t just work with pro athletes. Here
is what he had to say in our recent interview:

But why talk theory and opinion when we can look
at real research.

According to Tudor Bompa (1999), the father of
modern program design:

“Regardless of how specialized the instruction
may become, initially there should be exposure to
multilateral (overall athletic) development to
acquire necessary fundamentals.

You can often observe extremely rapid development
in some young athletes. In such cases, it is
paramount that the instructor resist the temptation
to develop a specialized training program. A broad,
multilateral base of physical development, especially
general physical preparation, is a basic requirement
to reach a highly specialized level of physical
preparation and technical mastery. Such an approach
to training is a prerequisite for specializing in
a sport or event.

The followers of multilateral, overall training in
the early (8-15) years of athletic development will
build a solid base and avoid overuse injuries,
monotony, and staleness in training.”

Let’s look at two studies performed in two different
countries whose athletic dominance was well established
a couple decades ago. These studies prove the
validity of this generalized approach to
training young athletes, regardless of sport.

A 14 year East German study (Harre 1982) divided
a large group of 9-12 year olds. One trained under
the North American model (early specialization in
a specific sport) and the other used a general
program of participating in a variety of sports.

Nagorni’s (1978) Soviet study looked at the best
Soviet athletes. They started training at 7 or 8,
participating in a variety of sports. Specialized
sports programs started between 15-17 years old.

What were the results?

Early specializers had quick performance
improvements. I’ll give you that.

But their lifetime best performances came at age
15-16 due to quick adaptation. (Remember that college
scholarships are year to year, not 4 year deals.
Trust me, you don’t perform, they won’t keep
paying your kid to compete. There are plenty more
just like them who will.)

Early specializers had inconsistent performances
compared to their multilateral peers.

By 18 many early specializers quit the sport due
to burnout and overuse injury. Multilateral athletes
had a much longer shelf life.

Early specializers are prone to injuries because
of forced adaptation. Multilateral athletes have
few injuries.

The bottom line is this:

If you want your athletes to have the greatest
chance at long term success, don’t specialize them
when they are developing.

As parents it is your responsibility to think long
term. And to watch out for the (many) coaches who
only care about what they can get out of your
athletes right now.

As coaches you have to make sure you are doing what
is best for the athlete, not what is best for your
ego. And deep down you know which approach you’re
really taking.

So if you want to roll the dice on your athletes or
children and hope they avoid that ACL injury,
burnout or peaking at 16, I can’t stop you.

But it’s tough to look a crying kid in the eye when
they fail to perform because they can’t meet the
level of performance at 17 that they could do when
they were 14.

Unfortunately I’ve seen it many, many times.

And I don’t want that on my conscience, do you?

The safest, most appropriate training program is
one that is based on developing the total athlete.

Complete Speed Training is that program. It isn’t
sport specific because it doesn’t need to be. It’s
not supposed to be. It’s not what your athletes
need. Follow the program and they’ll get better
at every sport they play and whatever sport you
coach.
 

In fact, I flat out guarantee it.

To your success,
Latif Thomas

I’m not one to buckle under social pressure. In fact,
its usually just the opposite.
 
But the responses to yesterday’s email were good
enough to get me to modify my description of the
state of US Athletics.
 
So I won’t say it’s collapsed, but it’s not what it
once was. If you get better and I stay the same,
that’s equal to me being on the decline.
 
It’s just a matter of semantics.
 
I’ll cover some of the other disputes with my
argument down the road.
 
But to today’s discussion:
In the US, we are obsessed with team sports. More
specifically Football, Basketball, Soccer and
Baseball.

More specifically, some parents/adults are
obsessed with professional team sports. So they
try to live their dreams by funneling their kids
into those mainstream sports as early as possible.

Then many of them live the dream that their kid is
going to ‘make it’.

I can’t count how many thousands of emails I’ve gotten
over the years that say something like ‘My 13 year
old son is a football player’, or ‘My 11 and 12 year
old soccer players’.

Really?

After my last email Ron brought up a great point:

“Basketball, football and baseball siphons off a
tremendous amount of track and field talent in
the U.S. In Jamaica there’s no football or
basketball to take away the speedy athletes. I
think the main lack of U.S. depth of high jumpers,
long jumpers and triple jumpers is that they are
playing basketball at some level. A lot of
average-talent basketball players could be elite
track and field athletes if they were
“cross-trained’. The kids play basketball all
year now and aren’t recruited into T&F. Can you
imagine Lebron James in the TJ? For example the
U.S. women’s pole vault champ was a former
basketball player.”

He’s absolutely right.

I lose more talented athletes (especially girls)
to 12 month a year soccer than I even want to think
about. It’s a joke. 
 
So many kids and parents cling to the ‘athletic
scholarship/going pro’ dream that they completely
miss the fact their kid could excel at another
sport.

I only ran track because I had nothing to do in
the spring. I was living the basketball dream
until I started abusing kids on the track.

I was a marginal basketball player but a Division I
scholarship track athlete.

And I can name dozens of others in the same boat.

And with Title IX, they practically throw scholarships
at female athletes. When I was in college there
were guys on my team who were NCAA All Americans
who weren’t on full rides. But women who couldn’t
score in duel meets against bum teams were. Sad.
 
(Save your Title IX comments, I get why it exists.)
If more mediocre basketball players became jumpers,
we’d have more medals in those events.

If more mediocre football players became throwers,
we’d have more medals in those events.

If more kids went into swimming….

…you get the idea.

We don’t lack talent here in the US. As coaches
and parents we lack objectivity.

Instead of being smart and giving young athletes
a diet of multilateral training during the
developmental years (9-14), one that allows them to peak
higher once they do decide to pick a focus, they
specialize kids early. And then wonder why kids
burn out or don’t perform like they should.

But I’ll get into that soon enough.

Now, since people in this country only care about
revenue sports (football, basketball, baseball and
to a lesser extent soccer) the individual sports
get no love. In the rest of the world, that isn’t
necessarily the case.

So the blame there goes to the piss poor business
and marketing ability of your swimmings, track and
fields, gymnastics, etc. 
 
Until these fringe sports do a better job of making
people know that they exist, or care, athletes in
this country will stick to what they know.

You can’t blame the NFL or NBA for being good at
marketing and promoting their product.

But it’s also the reason we’re not as dominant on
the international stage. Because there are about
357 medals available in swimming, but only one
in basketball.

Of course, in this country people don’t care about
that as long as their kid makes varsity football
as a freshman or their daughter makes the club
soccer team that requires a 12 month commitment.

At the end of the day, part of the reason American
sports dominance on the international stage is
falling off rests in the average American’s obsession
with professional team sports and their inability
to comprehend that countless other sports actually
exist.
 
And that they are fun, exciting and take considerable
talent.

To your success,

Latif Thomas

NOTE: I felt compelled to respond
to a couple of the responses to
this post. Of course, I’ll be
covering these ideas later.

Alan (#4): Yes. I do blame parents for wanting
their kids to specialize early. Ignorance is not
an excuse for bad parenting. Their kids are not
going to be A-Rod, a Manning or Michael Jordan.

To put that idea in their kid’s head or allow it
to fester in their own is, in my opinion (and all
the other professional strength and conditioning
coaches I know) akin to child abuse.

Basing theirchild’s youth sport choice on their
money making potential only further proves my
point that parents are a danger to their own
children.

A more appropriate idea (not that it is) would be
to have their children run track or another ‘lesser’
sport. They have a much better chance of getting
an athletic scholarship (especially females) in
those sports than in basketball, soccer, football,
etc.

Michael (#5):  I don’t disagree with you. And I
don’t think you should prevent an 11 year old from
playing soccer if he loves it. But you should
prevent him from playing it 12 months per year.
And you should have him play other sports as well.

He’ll be a better soccer player if he plays 3-6
months per year than he would if he played year
round. Young kids need multilateral training, not
sport specific repetitive motions.

 It hurts to say it, believe me. But the American
Sports Empire has cracked. And it’s crumbling all
around us.

What’s the proof you ask?

The influx of European players to the NBA. The
number of Latino players in Major League Baseball.

USA basketball refers to itself as the ‘Redeem Team’

Redemption for its abysmal showing on the world stage
over the past 4 years. And basketball should be the
sport we clean up in no matter what.

Have you seen how many Gold Medals the Chinese have
won? As of this writing it is:

China: 40
USA: 25

Ok, OK we still have a 5 medal overall lead….

But let’s be real for a second. It’s about winning
GOLD medals for the USA, not scrapping up on the
bronze.

And China is wiping the floor with us when it comes
to the medals the count.

At least we can have the ever reliable USA Track
and Field athletes to do what they always do.

Nope. The Caribbean went 1-2 on us in the Men’s 100
(with a ridiculous world record to boot).

And the women? Swept by the Jamaicans.

(I’m sure someone will upset Usain Bolt in the
200……)

That sweep in the men’s shot put? In the end that
ended up being just one medal. And it wasn’t the
Gold.

Even our best 1500m runner didn’t make the final.
And he wasn’t even born here!

At least the 400 hurdlers took care of business.

And if they made track posters, Lolo Jones would
be on my wall. For sure.

If your best rebuttal is Michael Phelps, just hold
on a second.

Sure the guy is a freak of nature. But take him
out of the equation and our gold medal count is even
more embarassing. If that’s possible.

It’s true, China has 20% of the world’s population.
And that is a staggering statistic. But is that what
we’re going to start using as an excuse?

I know we have a few more people than Jamaica does.
That didn’t stop them from wiping us off the track
in the sports most famous event (sorry milers).

So why is the American sports machine sliding back?

And how does it get fixed?

I think there are a couple of reasons.

And in the coming days I’m going to lay them out.

I’m going to detail the  biggest reasons why
American athletics are no longer the overwhelming
force we once were. And what we can do about it.

Some of you will disagree. I know how testy some
people get when you imply that America isn’t perfect
in all ways, shapes and forms. Some of you really
sensitive people will suggest I’m being un-American.

(Trust me those are the kinds of emails I get)

I think it’s exactly the opposite.

So let me know if you agree that we’re witnessing
an Olympic sized choke job from the US delegation.
Or if I’m being ridiculous.

And keep an eye out for my next email.
To your success,

Latif Thomas

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To your success,

Latif Thomas
.