Back to the Basics

     A few weeks ago I was sitting in a conference room in Baltimore, Maryland listening to a Division I football coach speak. At one point during the session, he said something that blew my mind: we have kids who come into camp and they can't even jump rope. I sat there thinking,  how is it possible that a Division I athlete can not perform a basic movement skill that most athletic ten year olds can do?

     This statement got me thinking. I went home and dug around in some of my notes. It did not take me long to answer the jump rope dilemma: overspecialization. The days of the multi-sport athletes are coming to an end. America has gotten into sport specific training and forgot all about the fundamentals. This football coach went on to tell us that his player was an offensive lineman and spent his entire athletic career doing one thing: playing on the offensive line. He spent his summers at camps specifically for offensive lineman and never really learned any other skills. This premature specialization may deliver a quick increase in sport skill, but it is then followed up by stagnation. The National Strength and Conditioning Association believes that "the development of skills in a wide variety of sports and activities may be more related to later sport success than early specialization". The reason? The more movement skills you have in your "bag of skills" the easier it is to learn and develop new skills that you learn later in life.

     For proof you don't have to look much further than professional sports. The most well-known examples are guys like Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders who were professional athletes in multiple sports but there are tons of lesser known examples. There are guys like Ray Lewis and Warren Sapp who were state champion wrestlers in high school. Or how about Lynn Swann. This Hall of Fame football player took ballet class during his NFL career to improve his footwork and balance. One of my favorite examples is of Tony Dungy. He once stated that if he was forced to choose a sport while he was in high school he would have chosen basketball. This is coming from a guy who made history by becoming the first African American coach to win a Super Bowl.

     Tony Dungy's story is important because it speaks of the potential pressure put on young kids when it comes to athletics. There are coaches and parents who believe it is beneficial for their children to focus on one specific sport. I have been coaching high school and middle school athletes for the past six years and see this occuring every year. There are kids quitting Track to "get big" for football, or kids quitting football to focus on wrestling or basketball. Each sport offers a unique skill set and when kids begin to focus on one thing, they totally miss out on the benefits of acquiring new skills. As John Madden once said, “I would have all of my offensive lineman wrestle if I could."

     There is one thing that all great athletes and that is that at one point in time, they were all considered to be youth. My advice for the young athletes: get out and get active. I came across a quote from Strength and Conditioning coach Dan John that exemplifies what this article is all about: "By the time I entered organized sports I'd probably been fouled 10,000 times and caught hundreds of touchdowns".


Hope you enjoyed,
Chris Fluck