3 Reasons You Should Never Test Young Athletes

The following articles is a republished coutesty of Brain Grasso 12.3.07

Hi ,

Just following up on last week’s article about ‘Training
Pre-Adolescent Athletes’.

It occurred to me over the weekend that there would be absolutely
no point in sharing with you the specific details about my
training system without first addressing a topic that seems to
always light a fire underneath my butt!

Testing Young Athletes.

Why do we do it?

Seriously.

What is the sense of testing a 10 year old athlete?

What kind of data are we expecting to generate that will prove
helpful in planning future training programs and sessions?

This is the question you have to ask yourself before you even
think about testing a kid.

And please don’t say “to see how well my training program has
worked so far”, !!

Kids improve at different rates and for different reasons than
adults.

Does that make sense?

If you take the average 10 year old athlete who is virtually
‘untrained’, and then train them with speed, strength or power
work for a few weeks…

… OF COURSE THEY ARE GOING TO IMPROVE!

That’s not necessarily because the training program was
so well designed, though.

It’s because at certain ages throughout our youth, our bodies
improve as a matter of growth.

Meaning – it doesn’t matter WHAT the training program was, the
kid is going to get better!

 
Here’s a link to the article: Testing your youth Athlete

http://developingathletics.com/articles/strengtharticles/test.html

‘Till next time, !

Brian

 ” ===> www.CompleteAthleteDevelopment.com

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