Archive for the ‘Behind The Blocks-Parent Corner’ Category

News For

SWIM PARENTS

Pub­lished by The Amer­i­can Swim­ming Coaches Association

5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200

Fort Laud­erdale FL 33309

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One Day in The Life of an Age Group Parent

Guy Edson

(From a 2003 Newsletter)

My wife was off to a con­tin­u­ing ed class. My 12 year old daugh­ter was at swim prac­tice. I had the much needed chance to spend a cou­ple extra hours catch­ing up with some work at the office. That is, until my cell phone buzzed at 5:30. “Dad, can you come pick me up?” “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I got kicked out of swim prac­tice,” she said. I was stunned! My daugh­ter is a fairly stan­dard 12 year old, as fully capa­ble of get­ting into trou­ble as any other 12 year old – except at swim prac­tice where she is unusu­ally com­pli­ant and very coach­able. I decided we would talk about it later and said, “Well, just come home with Coach Rob like you always do and we will talk about it when you get home.” “Rob said you have to come pick me up now,” she said.

The pool is 18 miles from my office by way of the most con­gested inter­state in the whole met­ro­pol­i­tan area. The last thing I wanted to do is drive 45 min­utes out there and another 45 min­utes back. My build­ing anger focused on Coach Rob. I thought to myself, “OK, my daugh­ter screwed up but just let her swim. It’s no big deal. Besides, why do I have to pay the price? If it really is that bad he should just make her sit out and then bring her home like usual. After all, that is what I would do.”

Impor­tant note: I am also a swim­ming coach and have been for nearly 30 years. Nev­er­the­less, the par­ent side of me had taken over my thought process and I wanted to blame the coach for the incon­ve­nience I was fac­ing. “…the incon­ve­nience I was facing.”

Look­ing for a way out I asked, “What did you do?” She told me she was three min­utes late to prac­tice and he wouldn’t let her in the water. “Three min­utes? THREE min­utes?” I asked. In my mind I was curs­ing at the coach. “How could you be three min­utes late to prac­tice? You get there 45 min­utes before prac­tice time!” I said. She told me was doing home­work in the locker room and lost track of the time. “And he kicked Jackie out too,” she said. I asked, “Jackie was doing home­work also?” “No, she was chang­ing her swim suit and we came out together.”

At that point dis­tant mem­o­ries started com­ing back and with them ratio­nal think­ing crept back into my brain. In my 30 years of coach­ing, how many times did mul­ti­ples of 11 – 12 year old girls emerge from the locker rooms 3 min­utes late and how many ridicu­lous excuses had I heard? Plenty. And how many times was it the same group of kids? All the time.

“If I were to ask Coach Rob if this was the first time you were late, what would he say?” I asked. I heard a faint “what?” I repeated, “If I were to ask Coach Rob if this was the first time you were late, what would he say? Have you been late before?” “Sometimes.”

And what did I do years ago with those who became chron­i­cally late by 3 min­utes? I sent them back to the locker room, and told them to call their par­ents. This scene is all too famil­iar to me.

“OK,” I said, “I’ll be there in 40 to 45 min­utes. I’ll be think­ing of the con­se­quences along the way.” As a last ditch effort for clemency and a play on my fatherly love, I heard my daugh­ter faintly say, “I’m sorry.”

When I picked her up I was all smiles. And she lighted up right away. She might have been think­ing I was going to be cool about this. I asked her what home­work she was work­ing on in the locker room and she told me it was math. “You’re pretty good at math, aren’t you?” I asked. “Get out a piece of paper and pen­cil and solve this prob­lem: a man dri­ves a car that gets 15 miles to the gal­lon. He has to drive his car 36 miles. If gas costs $1.79 a gal­lon, how much did the trip cost him?” She loves these kinds of prob­lems and started divid­ing then mul­ti­ply­ing and proudly came up with, “Four dol­lars and twenty nine cents!” “That sounds cor­rect,” I said. That’s what it cost me to come pick you up and it’s com­ing out of your next allowance.” The rest of the trip home was on the quiet side.

The next day, Coach Rob reported to me that she was on the deck 15 min­utes early and ready to go.

News For

SWIM PARENTS

Pub­lished by The Amer­i­can Swim­ming Coaches Association

5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200

Fort Laud­erdale FL 33309

___________________________________________________________________

Help­ing Your Young Child Set Goals

Goal set­ting for young swim­mers is an impor­tant process that requires inter­ac­tion of the par­ent, coach, and ath­lete. It is impor­tant to remem­ber that for young swim­mers the goal of goal set­ting is to learn how to set goals. The pro­gres­sion for learn­ing how to set goals is based upon the age and com­pet­i­tive expe­ri­ence of the swim­mer. In this issue we will look at one approach for intro­duc­ing goals to 8 through 10 year olds.

There are many approaches to goal set­ting for younger swim­mers. The fol­low­ing approach is pre­sented because it is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from the “nor­mal” rou­tine of coach‑swimmer inter­ac­tion and one that I per­son­ally find more reward­ing for the parent‑coach‑athlete relationship.

With younger, inex­pe­ri­enced swim­mers, gen­er­ally ages 8 ‑ 10, goal set­ting needs to be care­fully guided by adults. The pur­pose of goal set­ting with this age is for the young swim­mer to learn what a goal is, that to achieve a goal a series of steps toward the goal must be taken, and that some amount of prepa­ra­tion and work is required to meet the goal. These are very pow­er­ful life­long skills.

I think it is very impor­tant that chil­dren are suc­cess­ful in achiev­ing goals at this stage. For this rea­son, the coach, who best knows the abil­ity of the swim­mer, should sug­gest goals to the par­ents who, in turn, guide their young swim­mer to set goals well within the pos­si­bil­i­ties described by the coach. Goals should be objec­tive and based upon time stan­dards or per­for­mance stan­dards. In addi­tion, goals need to be short term goals aim­ing at com­ple­tion in 4 to 6 weeks. A long term goal is a dif­fi­cult con­cept for 8 ‑ 10 year olds.

Billy is a 9 year old who has been on the swim team for 18 months. He has all “B” times except for the 100 IM which he has an unof­fi­cial “C” time. He has been dis­qual­i­fied in his three 100 IM races because he has an ille­gal breast­stroke kick. His best friend, neigh­bor, and swim­ming rival, John, began swim­ming at the same time as Billy but has achieved “A” times in the breast­stroke and freestyle, sev­eral “B” times, and was recently moved to a more advanced group. Billy’s ambi­tion is to swim in the same work­out group with John. Billy’s dad and John’s dad are friends and week­end golf rivals. Coin­ci­den­tally, John’s dad reg­u­larly beats Billy’s dad. Billy’s dad’s goal is to see Billy beat John.

What should Billy’s goals be and who should set them? Billy’s goals must not be based upon John. At this point in time John is a more accom­plished swim­mer. Per­haps he will always be more accom­plished for a vari­ety of rea­sons which will frus­trate Billy if Billy’s goal is always to beat John. On the other hand, maybe John is tem­porar­ily big­ger and stronger than Billy. As the boys reach and pass puberty Billy may become the big­ger and stronger and more skilled of the two and beat­ing John may not present an ade­quate challenge.

The coach should sug­gest sev­eral goals for Billy to Billy’s par­ents. These goals are based upon the coaches’ assess­ment of Billy’s abil­ity to improve in the next two months. One sug­gested goal might be for Billy to make an “A” time in the 50 free. Cur­rently, Billy is only 4 tenths of a sec­ond from an “A” time. A sec­ond goal might be to swim a legal 100 yard IM. The coach has been work­ing on Billy’s breast­stroke kick sev­eral times each week and is con­fi­dent that Billy will have a legal kick in time for the next swim meet.

Why sug­gest these goals to the par­ents? Two rea­sons: 1) It is a good way for the par­ents and coach to com­mu­ni­cate on the progress and future expec­ta­tions for the young swim­mer, and 2) the most impor­tant and most influ­en­tial peo­ple in the young swimmer’s life are Mom and Dad. What bet­ter source is there in guid­ing the young swim­mer towards set­ting goals?

How should par­ents dis­cuss goals with young swim­mers? I think the best way is to ask the young swim­mer a series of ques­tions designed to bring him to the goals sug­gested by the coach. A con­ver­sa­tion may go some­thing like this:

Par­ent: “Billy, our team is host­ing a meet in six weeks. Do you have any goals for our meet?”

Billy: “What’s a goal?”

Par­ent: “A goal is some­thing you want to do that you have never done before.”

Billy: [with­out hes­i­ta­tion] “I want to swim in John’s group!”

Par­ent: “Some­day I think you will. What does it take to move up to that group?”

Billy: “Coach says I need an A time.”

Par­ent: “Do you know what your best time is?”

Billy: “No”

Par­ent: “Coach says you have 32.2 and that’s only 4 tenths of a sec­ond from an “A” time which is a 31.8. Would you like to make an “A” time?

Billy: “YEA!”

Par­ent: “Do you know how short 4 tenths of a sec­ond is?” [Demon­strates with stop watch.] “Coach says you can knock off those 4 tenths of a sec­ond just by stream­lin­ing bet­ter off the start and turn and by fin­ish­ing with a long arm and strong kick. What are you going to work on in prac­tice to help you make your goal?”

Billy: “I’m going to work on stream­lin­ing and fin­ish­ing with a long arm and strong kick.”

Par­ent: “Great! I KNOW you’re going to make your goal! There is a dual meet with Fair­port in three weeks. What do you think you would like to do in the 50 free in that meet?”

Billy: “An “A” time?”

Par­ent: “Right! Now let’s write down your goal.”

The next step is for Billy to write down his goal(s) on two pieces of paper. He should write his cur­rent best time, his goal, tar­get date, and things he needs to work on in order to accom­plish his goal.

His goal state­ment may look like this:

My Goal: 31.8 “A” time in the 50 free

When: Feb­ru­ary 17 home meet

Best Time: 32.2

Every day in prac­tice: stream­lin­ing and good finishes

Billy should keep one at home in his room where he can look at it every day. Mom and Dad should ask Billy once every week or so how he is doing on his goal. The sec­ond copy he takes to swim prac­tice to review with the coach. Then he can keep it in his locker or swim bag and look at it every day before practice.

Of course, it’s a won­der­ful thing if a young swim­mer is aware enough of times, both his own and qual­i­fy­ing times, to set his own valid goals in addi­tion to those sug­gested by the coach. If a swim­mer sets a reach­able goal it should be accepted by coach and par­ents. Most young swim­mers how­ever need the expert guid­ance of coach and par­ents to set obtain­able goals. Remem­ber, at this age it is vitally impor­tant that swim­mers are able to accom­plish their goals.

News For

SWIM PARENTS

Pub­lished by The Amer­i­can Swim­ming Coaches Association

5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200

Fort Laud­erdale FL 33309

___________________________________________________________________

The Mar­gin­ally Moti­vated Swim­mer
Guy Edson
ASCA Staff

The other day I was remem­ber­ing a time when I was a much younger coach and the day I asked a swim­mer to leave prac­tice and “not to come back.” In recall­ing and think­ing about this inci­dent I believe there is a mes­sage for par­ents of older, aged 13 and above, lesser com­mit­ted swimmers.

What was this swim­mer doing that was so ter­ri­ble? Noth­ing. He was doing noth­ing; and that was the prob­lem. For what­ever rea­son, he sim­ply decided he wasn’t going to do the set I had pre­scribed and decided he was going to leave practice.

This 13 year old had a dis­mal atten­dance record mak­ing just a cou­ple of work­outs a week and when he did come there was min­i­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tion with me. He would arrive sec­onds before we began the first set and he would imme­di­ately leave after the last set. I only saw the mom one time; the dad, never. Quite sim­ply, it appeared that he didn’t want to be there.

I thought about the inci­dent through­out that evening and it was the first thing on my mind when I woke up in the next morn­ing. I hated kick­ing a swim­mer out of prac­tice. I asked myself these questions:

Did I need to per­ma­nently dis­miss him from the team?

Should I have just let him go with­out com­ment at the time or should I have taken the time to find out what was both­er­ing him?

Should I have had a dis­cus­sion with the par­ents long before the inci­dent about what my expec­ta­tions were and to find out what their expec­ta­tions were?

Before I tackle those ques­tions there are a cou­ple of con­cepts I would like all par­ents to con­sider. First, one of the pri­mary duties of the coach is to pro­vide adver­sity for the ath­letes. That may sound like an unusual way to describe it but the real­ity is that a work­out is not meant to be easy. It is meant to be a phys­i­cal and men­tal chal­lenge. Good coaches throw the chal­lenge out there and then attempt to pro­vide the envi­ron­ment where the athlete’s will to meet the chal­lenge is high. At older ages and upper lev­els, say 13 and over at sec­tional and above level, coaches some­times design entire work­outs meant to make the ath­lete fail – tem­porar­ily fail. At lower lev­els, right down to novice level swim­ming, swim­mers need to be exposed to sets that are dif­fi­cult, per­haps so dif­fi­cult that no one can achieve the set. Good coaches use these sets to build a desire in the ath­letes to achieve higher lev­els of phys­i­cal and men­tal tough­ness. Good coaches know that being suc­cess­ful requires a com­bi­na­tion of chal­lenge and suc­cess in the work­out envi­ron­ment and that the rel­a­tive amount of each will change as the swim­mer ages.

The sec­ond con­cept has two parts: the coach’s time and effort; and the athlete’s sub­mis­sive­ness – best described as the athlete’s will­ing­ness to release them­selves to the coach. To whom should the coach give their time and effort? Answer: to those ath­letes who give them­selves to the coach. The coach has lim­ited time and energy and the fairest behav­ior of the coach is focus­ing on those who are ready to meet the adver­sity. Coaches sim­ply do not have time to cod­dle and con­vince reluc­tant swim­mers to do work while there are other swim­mers will­ing and ready to go.

Now, back to the ques­tions at hand. Did I need to dis­miss him from the team entirely? In this case, Yes. But it should have been dis­cussed with the par­ent the next day rather than shouted to him across the pool. Why dis­miss him from the team? He had a poor his­tory of effort, bad atten­dance, and it was not worth the team’s time to try change his work ethic. In a case where a swim­mer had a his­tory of good effort, and had shown a high degree of coach­a­bil­ity – well, this sit­u­a­tion wouldn’t have been an issue in the first place.

Should I have let him go with­out com­ment at the time? Yes. Run­ning a work­out where emo­tions are high is not the time to get into it with an ath­lete or the par­ent. It is bet­ter to dis­cuss such things in a dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ment at a dif­fer­ent time.

Should I have take the time to find out what was both­er­ing him? No. That would have been tak­ing time from those in the water who were doing the work and that is where the coach’s focus needs to be.

Long before the inci­dent should I have had a dis­cus­sion with the par­ents about “expec­ta­tions”? Absolutely Yes. This was a fail­ure on my part – and the parents.

The bot­tom lines: There are ado­les­cent swim­mers who are of mar­ginal abil­ity who come to prac­tice for a vari­ety or rea­sons. Some­times it’s friends. That’s a pretty good rea­son, but there has to be the will­ing­ness to work as well.

Some­times it’s Mom and Dad mak­ing the child go to prac­tice. There are good rea­sons and bad rea­sons for this. Good rea­sons include a sin­cere desire for the child to be involved in a whole­some activ­ity. Bad rea­sons include a parent’s desire for the child to be a cham­pion swim­mer and earn a swim­ming schol­ar­ship when the child doesn’t have that talent.

What­ever the rea­sons, it is impor­tant for par­ents and swim­mers and coaches to dis­cuss their respec­tive expec­ta­tions with each other. Frankly, some­times expec­ta­tions just do not match up with what’s being offered or what is being done. And then it is time to think about mov­ing on to another pro­gram or another activity.

Guy Edson is a Level 5 Age Group Coach and has enjoyed 5 years as a part time age group coach, 2 years as a full time age group coach, 8 years as a full time head coach, and 20+ years coach­ing novice/intermediate swim­mers. (In that order.) And, 7 years as high school coach mixed in with the above. He has served as an ASCA staff mem­ber since 1988 where his favorite role is help­ing young coaches with every­thing from teach­ing tech­niques to design­ing work­outs. He also man­ages ASCA’s Job Ser­vice pro­gram help­ing both coaches and employ­ers with a wide range of needs includ­ing con­tract reviews, inter­views, and rela­tional and club struc­tural issues.

News For

SWIM PARENTS

Pub­lished by The Amer­i­can Swim­ming Coaches Association

5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200

Fort Laud­erdale FL 33309

___________________________________________________________________

Train­ing Aids:

Legit­i­mate Tools Or Friv­o­lous Fads?

If you talk to par­ents of swim­mers from other teams, if you read swim pub­li­ca­tions, or if you watch swim­mers dur­ing warm ups at swim meets, you will notice a vari­ety of train­ing aids that swim­mers lug around. Let’s see, there are kick boards in every size and shape imag­in­able; there are tire tubes; there are pad­dles — boy are there pad­dles!, round ones, rec­tan­gu­lar ones, con­toured ones, ones with holes, incred­i­bly large ones, ones that cover the fore­arms, ones that inflate around the whole lower arm, etc, etc.; there are webbed gloves made out of lycra or latex rub­ber; there are fins — stan­dard depart­ment store types, expen­sive scuba shop types, short stubby ones, monofins, and fins cut in a vari­ety of shapes; there are ankle weights, wrist weights, and even head weights; there are fiber­glass rods vel­croed to the legs; there are suits with pock­ets in them; there are plain old sneak­ers used on kick sets; there are plain old t-shirts; there are plain old, really old, swim suits — two or three or four worn at the same time; there is tub­ing; there are stretch cords; there are short pull buoys, long pull buoys, and pull buoys that can be filled with water; and on and on and on.

When you notice a 10 year old star swim­mer from another team lug­ging around a train­ing bag with sur­gi­cal tub­ing explod­ing from the torn end of the bag, you ask, “Could this be the rea­son she always wins?” Do you want to go out and buy sur­gi­cal tub­ing for your young swimmer?

Or, between long course and short course sea­son you are con­tem­plat­ing your child’s swim­ming suc­cesses and short com­ings of the past sea­son while you read an ad about a “rev­o­lu­tion­ary new” buoy­ancy device. Do you want to equip your child with it in time for the start of the season?

Who invents these things? What things really work and what things are com­mer­cial con­trivances of ques­tion­able value? Can some of these devices do more harm than good? Should your child use some of these devices?

Most train­ing aids are invented by coaches. There are hun­dreds, maybe thou­sands of train­ing aids invented by coaches but only a few make it to com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion. Most coaches do not invent a train­ing aid for the profit poten­tial but rather they are invented for the sake of improv­ing an individual’s or team’s strength, speed, endurance, and/or technique.

Many coaches would add that train­ing aids can do more than improve strength, endurance, and/or tech­nique. They also add vari­ety to a work­out and help moti­vate swimmers.

What things really work? There are very few pub­lished inde­pen­dent stud­ies done on

spe­cific train­ing aids to test their effec­tive­ness in speed, strength, endurance, or tech­nique enhanc­ing qual­i­ties. (Actu­ally, I could not find any pub­lished inde­pen­dent stud­ies — but there might be some out there.)

But good coaches do not need stud­ies to know that some things really do work. Most coaches use kick­boards. Most coaches use pull buoys. Many coaches, but I’m not sure most coaches, use pad­dles. Same for fins. Fewer coaches use sur­gi­cal tub­ing. Almost all coaches try nearly every train­ing aid at least once but almost no one uses all the train­ing aids all the time.

So what things really work? The answer is: most train­ing aids, whether com­mer­cially pro­duced or coach/home made, are effec­tive to some degree when the coach and swim­mer prop­erly use them with respect to the devel­op­men­tal age of the swim­mer, the psy­cho­log­i­cal needs of the swim­mer, the appro­pri­ate time dur­ing work­out, and the appro­pri­ate time dur­ing the sea­son. The answer also is: no train­ing aid will work if not used properly.

Can some of these devices do more harm than good? The answer is a def­i­nite yes. No train­ing aid is safe when improp­erly used. Most train­ing aids are designed to increase resis­tance or to increase train­ing speed. Exces­sive work­loads with train­ing aids can lead to overuse syn­dromes and injuries espe­cially in younger chil­dren not phys­i­cally mature.

Should your child use some of these devices? Who decides IF they should use train­ing aids and if so, which aids to use? Ques­tions like these are the rea­sons you and your Board of Direc­tors hire a qual­i­fied pro­fes­sional coach. The coach makes these deci­sions based upon his or her expe­ri­ence and coach­ing edu­ca­tion. If your coach is hav­ing your child use a train­ing aid and you are con­cerned that use of that train­ing aid may cause an injury, then speak directly to the coach about the extent and inten­sity of use for that train­ing aid. If your coach is not using var­i­ous train­ing aids that you’ve seen or heard about and you are curi­ous about, then once again speak with the coach.

When speak­ing with the coach keep these things in mind:

1. Approach the coach after prac­tice or dur­ing office hours qui­etly and sin­cerely with an atti­tude of “Could you help me under­stand…”. Many of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion prob­lems between coach and par­ent arise from abrupt chal­lenges to coaches judg­ment calls.

2. Coaches have selected favorite train­ing aids and don’t like to be told they should be using addi­tional or dif­fer­ent meth­ods. There is more than one way to accom­plish a desired train­ing effect and it is the coaches area of respon­si­bil­ity and author­ity to select that method.

3. There is a lim­ited amount of work­out time in the water and a coach must make deci­sions about the type of train­ing aids to use and the amount of work using train­ing aids. These things must fit in with an over­all daily, weekly, and sea­sonal work­out plan.

4. Smart coaches are not quick to jump on the band­wagon when a rev­o­lu­tion­ary new train­ing device comes along. They want to speak with other coaches, observe its use, per­haps try it them­selves, begin using it on a lim­ited trial basis, and eval­u­ate its effec­tive­ness before using it on a reg­u­lar basis with the whole team.

5. One of the great strengths of Amer­i­can Swim­ming is in the diver­sity of approaches coaches use to develop young swim­mers. From this diver­sity comes great new ideas. Your coach may be a future Olympic coach and her use, lim­ited use, or lack of use of a train­ing device is her spe­cial approach to train­ing your young swimmer.

6. Many train­ing aids are not designed for young age groupers to use. Coaches like to intro­duce var­i­ous train­ing aids in a pro­gres­sion fol­low­ing the swimmer’s devel­op­men­tal age and abil­ity to han­dle greater workloads.

7. Some train­ing aids have a dual pur­pose, they can be used at low resis­tance for stroke devel­op­ment, and they can be used at high inten­sity for speed, strength, and endurance devel­op­ment. A coach may use this type of train­ing aid pri­mar­ily for skill devel­op­ment with younger ages and grad­u­ally use it for more intense work as the swim­mer grows.

8. Moti­va­tion is a large fac­tor in the use of train­ing aids. If a swim­mer gets to use all the “toys” at an early age they will become bored in years to come as they keep using the same “toys”. Smart coaches use this as a rea­son for the grad­ual intro­duc­tion of train­ing aids.

These are not easy issues for coaches, ath­letes, and par­ents. Ques­tions about “how much”, “how hard”, and “what type” are part of the sport. Coaches will make deci­sions based on first­hand expe­ri­ence, infor­ma­tion from other coaches, and pub­lished reports. What­ever the deci­sions are, one thing stands out, there are no quick answers and no short cuts. A new super duper rev­o­lu­tion­ary train­ing aid will not trans­form your age group swim­mer into a super­star. And even if there was such a thing, what would it mean? In age group swim­ming we want steady growth, a sound aer­o­bic base, excel­lent stroke devel­op­ment, and an appre­ci­a­tion for the rela­tion­ship between day to day effort and the real­iza­tion of goals.

News For

SWIM PARENTS

Pub­lished by The Amer­i­can Swim­ming Coaches Association

5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200

Fort Laud­erdale FL 33309

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Weight Train­ing for Age Group Swimmers

By Jack Wilmore, Ph.D.,

Phys­i­cal Edu­ca­tion pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Texas and Austin.

Gen­er­ally, young­sters adapt well to the same type of train­ing rou­tine used by the mature ath­lete. One area of con­cern, though, is the use of weight train­ing to develop mus­cu­lar strength and mus­cu­lar endurance. For many years, young boys and girls were dis­cour­aged from using weights for fear that they might injure them­selves and pre­ma­turely stop their growth processes.

Results of ani­mal stud­ies sug­gest that heavy resis­tance exer­cise leads to stronger, broader, and more com­pact bone. How­ever, since it is nearly impos­si­ble to load these ani­mals to the same extent as young­sters, it has not been prac­ti­cal to design an exper­i­ment that accu­rately defines the risks asso­ci­ated; there­fore the poten­tial for injury and struc­tural dam­age from heavy resis­tance appears to be extremely low. Still, since the future of the young­sters is at stake, it is appro­pri­ated to take a con­ser­v­a­tive approach until addi­tional stud­ies can be conducted.

Thus, to strength-train a young ath­lete, a pro­gram using low weights and high rep­e­ti­tions would be pre­ferred to one using high weights and low rep­e­ti­tions. One of the safest tech­niques for strength train­ing in young­sters would be to use the iso­ki­netic con­cept of match­ing resis­tance to the force applied, so that the young­ster does not have to con­tend with actual weights, such as bar­bells and dumb­bells. Cybex, Ortho­ton, Mini-Gym, and Hydra-Gym are exam­ples of iso­ki­netic equipment.

It has been sug­gested that since young pre­pu­bes­cent boys have rel­a­tively low cir­cu­lat­ing andro­gen lev­els, there is no rea­son to expect them to ben­e­fit from strength train­ing prior to ado­les­cence. Sev­eral recent stud­ies have demon­strated that pre­pu­bes­cent boys can not only par­tic­i­pate in this form of activ­ity but also can gain sub­stan­tial increases in strength.

In a study con­ducted by Sewall and Micheli, pre­pu­bes­cent boys and girls took part in a nine-week pro­gres­sive resis­tance strength train­ing pro­gram, 25 – 30 min­utes a day, three days a week (J Pedi­atr Orthop 1986;6:1234 – 6). They expe­ri­enced a mean strength increase of 42.9%, com­pared with a 9.5% increase in a non-training con­trol group.

Welt­man and his col­leagues fol­lowed 16 pre­pu­bes­cent boys (mean age 8.2 years) through a 14-week strength pro­gram using iso­ki­netic tech­niques with hydraulic resis­tance (Med Sci Sports Exerc 1986;18:S55). Iso­ki­netic strength increased 18 – 37% in these young boys. Only one injury was recorded caus­ing the boy to miss three train­ing ses­sions. In the con­trol group of 10 boys six injuries were recorded as the result of activ­i­ties of daily liv­ing. None of the boys had any evi­dence of dam­age to bone, or the mus­cle struc­ture as a result of strength train­ing. Form the results of these stud­ies, one can con­clude that young, pre­pu­bes­cent boys and girls can increase strength from using resis­tance exer­cise, and that few risks of injury are asso­ci­ated with such exer­cise. How­ever, it should be noted that in both of these stud­ies, free weights were not used. The resis­tance was pro­vided by pneu­matic (CAM-II), hydraulic (e.g., Hydra-Fitness and Orthotron), or fixed stacked weights (e.g., Uni­ver­sal Gym or Nau­tilus). The use of free weights pro­vides a much greater poten­tial for seri­ous injury.