Endurance Coach

Endurance Coach

Thursday, March 15, 2012

What Trees and Young Athletes have in Common


Excerpt from today's MMTT Youth Team letter:

Here is one of the guiding principles for coaching youths to reach their maximum potential in a sport:

"Young athletes are like young trees.  Bend them too far and they will break." - Coach Romas, coach and stepfather of Lukas Verzbicus. 

Remember that if a parent or a coach pushes a young athlete too far too soon, they will quit.  This is one of the basic youth coaching "laws" that guides the best coaches (and parents).  If the youth loves what they are doing, they will pursue it with age-appropriate passion and therefore eventually achieve their potential.  It's all about the JOY. 

And beyond the "joy," young kids are physiologically different from us adults in so many ways.  Their training must not be like ours.  They are growing and changing.  They are in their prime window for developing speed (not endurance).  They process heat differently, sweat less, cannot tolerate much effort at their anaerobic threshold and must endure some performance set backs while their bones and bodies grow rapidly and their hormones change.  Good youth triathlon training will focus on developing raw speed, sport specific skills, race experience and a love for the sport.

So, sit back and enjoy this ride.  We are pursuing excellence.  And we aim to achieve it by making sure that your kids have fun participating in age-appropriate skill and speed building and that they feel a vital part of their team, feel like they are progressing and feel like they are "winning" often (and winning does not have to mean 1st place in our world).  Along this journey we will also attempt to build good citizens - confident, polite, assertive, humble, proud and happy. 

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