Long Term Athletic Development

Athletic development is a long-term process, not an overnight quick fix. Think crock-pot, not microwave.

Speaking of crock-pots, chili season is here. My wife makes the BEST chili.

Anyways, on episode 38 of the R/Strong Podcast I broke down the topic of "Long-Term Athletic Development." Check out this resource from Canada's Sport for Life for great information on this topic.

In my opinion, in today's youth sports world there is way too much emphasis put on over-specialization and winning, rather than long-term athletic development.

It is vital for young athletes to build a solid foundation to support their performance path. Too often, parents and athletes want to skip to the "Train to Win" stage, while completely ignoring all the stages that support.

Can your kid do a solid push up? How about a pull up? Squat below parallel without collapsing into a ball of goo? Jump and land without their knees banging off each other?

No? Then they probably don't need to be doing the same program you saw a professional athlete perform on Instagram.

Sorry, rant over.

Back to my crock-pot analogy, think of athletic development as a slow cooking process. There are no microwave tricks to developing into the best athlete you can be. You must take the time to build a solid foundation to support peak performance. Don't rush it.

Check out the podcast to learn more about the different stages of athletic development.

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