And instead, heed the advice of financially motivated charlatans who were average at their sports 27 years ago. #Merica
“If we wanted to do what was best for youth athletes, we’d prioritize not the abundance of sport volume/specificity that we do.
We’d prioritize development & general physical preparation.
We don’t, though, because of the lack of $$$ associated with doing things the right way.”
-Ray Zingler on X
One of the, I guess you could say “coolest” aspects of my job is that I get to network and communicate with some of the best performance coaches on earth, weekly.
And what’s neat about not only communicating with these highly intelligent, but fascinating people is that many of them have varying training philosophies, which increases my own knowledge and critical thinking every time I speak with them.
But here is one fundamental truth that you’ll hear from every performance coach under the sun who is worth their salt, regardless of their training philosophy:
“Our kids are physically underprepared and overspecialized.”
Coaches who love Olympic lifts, hate Olympic lifts, love bench press, hate bench press, prioritize track workouts, and hate track workouts will all fundamentally agree on the above statement.
And when people, mind you the best in the world, who are (actually) qualified to design programs to improve athlete performance all fundamentally agree on something, we’ve got what’s scientifically known as, “one big ass, hell of a problem.”
Yet, parents tend to side with the advice coming from “that baseball coach who played a lot of JV Ball back in ’93” when it comes to their kids not only athletic development, but general well-being.
And what’s even crazier? They’ll pay an arm and a leg to act on the horseshit advice, too.
To take it a step further there is an abundance of data that quite literally proves the lack of efficacy and outright dangers (mentally & physically) associated with our current model.
Yet they still buy it, because “that kid over there is doing it, so we have to do it, too.”
I mean it’s absolutely bonkers.
But why is it like this?
Why don’t we prioritize development? General physical preparation? Build wide based, robust athletes?
There is only one reason.
Doing things the right way, especially in America, doesn’t sell.
And all it takes are a few financially motivated charlatans to leverage parents’ emotional levers, their kids, to bastardize and ruin what made youth sports great.
We are so conditioned to chase the shiny red ball and keep up with the Joneses in this country that we’ve not only screwed up development, but we’ve also ruined one of their life’s greatest teachers.
Youth sports.
