Most pretend like this is okay, but here is why it’s not & what we can do to combat it:
“If we’re going to do the whole year round, single sport, multi-team thing, & pretend that’s what’s best for their development..
The singular most important focus of their performance must be general preparation to merely give them a chance to keep up with today’s specific demands.”
-Ray Zingler on X
Not only does the abundance of research pertaining to General Strength & Conditioning’s positive implications on sport performance continue to skyrocket..
In the modern era, we literally don’t have the choice of not participating in a sound S&C program, if we want to merely give our kids a chance to A) Compete and B) Stay healthy.
(Yes, I know there are outliers out there, and unless you have major P5 offers before 9th grade or are projected a top 10 pick in the MLB draft out of HS, you’re probably not one.. and even if you are.. you’ll still benefit from S&C.)
The reason is because yes, sports are evolving, but more importantly, kids today don’t have the general skillsets and capacities that kids had even 2 decades ago.
They aren’t working hard, manual labor jobs after school.
They aren’t even doing yard work on the weekends.
They aren’t playing multiple sports.
They don’t even “PE” in PE Class.
They aren’t riding bikes, playing neighborhood games, or going for jogs, either.
They wake up, eat shit food if anything, go sit in chairs for 8 hours, stressed to the gills about some GPA nonsense, while they compare themselves to the kid next to them whose taking more AP classes than them.
When they get home, they eat a fruit roll up, 2 bites of yogurt and then go to their single sport of choice, practice for 2-3 hours.
And then they do that, every day, except for weekends/holidays where they increase the single sport volume even further to make up for the temporary lack of stress in their lives.
This is the way it is. We’re here. I can disagree with it all day long, but that doesn’t change it.
We can bitch about “kids these days” or we can provide them with solutions and that is what I aim to do every day.
Our kids, who are heavily overspecialized, MUST have a wide & deep reservoir of general capacity, (think armor) to tolerate the abundance of specific demands that are placed upon them in the modern era.
A sound S&C program to increase their general capacities isn’t a good idea..
It’s the only way they have a chance.
