Parents, You Are the Athlete Manager: Avoiding Adult Injuries in Kids

A coach tells a kid, "You're not as fast as the other kid." The kid goes home and says, "Mom, Dad, I need to get faster."

The parents search "speed training," find the first trainer on the list, check the price, and sign up for a package. Now the kid has speed training Tuesday and Thursday on top of team practice Monday and Wednesday, plus games.

A couple of years later: "You need to get stronger." Add weight training. Now an 11 or 12-year-old is doing sport activity five or six days a week.

This is where I see parents go wrong. Not on purpose. Out of love and excitement. But it adds up.

Parents are the athlete manager

Kids give their preferences, they take feedback, and they produce the result. But parents provide the resources and make the calls on the schedule. That makes you the manager.

Where it breaks down early is:

• The trainer isn't vetted. The cost works, so you book it.
• Training gets squeezed into whatever pockets are open. Tuesdays and Thursdays, until school makes it late, so maybe once a week, maybe weekends. It becomes inconsistent.
• Nobody looks at the full day. Up at 7, school 8 to 3, eat, practice, homework, bed at 9. Then the next day, instead of resting after school, they're with a private coach and home at 9 again.

When I was a kid, we went to school, rode our bikes, did homework and went to sleep. One sport at a time. When the season ended, we changed sports.

Adult hours create adult injuries

A little here, a little there adds up to a lot. In baseball, kids have game innings, pitching lessons and practice, and then a 14-year-old needs elbow surgery.

You're seeing adult injuries because kids are doing adult hours of training.

Seasons matter

My club team runs year-round, so I'm not against it. But we have real seasons, and in each one we do completely different things. In the late summer and early fall, we're not running at all. We cross-train. Then we run. Then we're on the track. Roughly six months on, six months off.

We train twice a week. We do about half the meets most teams do: from January to July, maybe 8 to 10 meets, 12 at the most. Most athletes do one or two events per meet. They're rested.

So after four years in my program, our athletes have the wear and tear of maybe one year, while athletes in a nonstop program have six. That's a big reason our results are consistent.

A 7-year-old doesn't need form work

I get calls like, "My son's arms are all over the place, he's not strong out of the blocks, he loses form in the last 30 meters." I ask what grade he's in. "He's seven."

At seven, come to practice, learn where to stand, run, make friends, smile, and go home. I do coach five and six-year-olds. Sometimes it looks like they're just playing tag and screaming. That is part of the training. It can't be heavy pressure.

An hour of jump squats and lunges in a private session for a seven-year-old is a lot of deliberate, specific work for a young brain and body.

And parents who were athletes: your kid isn't living your childhood. They aren't riding bikes and walking to school the way we did. Their bodies are getting a different base.

You'll have to give something up

I've turned away athletes who wanted to join my club while doing track four or five days a week with meets on Thursday and Saturday, plus club soccer twice a week. That means double practices on some days.

You can love both sports. But you won't see your peak in track and field if you're always in another sport.

What parents can do

1. Know your numbers. Write down how many hours your child trains per week, across every sport. If it's 10 to 20 hours in middle school, what will it be in high school?
2. Before you add training, ask what it replaces. Two more hours a week has to come from somewhere, usually rest.
3. Vet the trainer. Ask what the plan is, how it fits with their sport, and how it changes by season.
4. Build in time off. Even in year-round sports, take real breaks. Coaches may push back about team dynamics. You only get one shot at your kid's healthy body.
5. Get a second opinion on the plan. Put the weekly schedule in a document and have a professional look at what to add, cut or change. You wouldn't want a surgeon who's "just trying." Your kid's training deserves a plan too.

Need a plan built around your jumper?

Most parents I talk to are doing their best without a plan. That's what I build in Jump Lab Academy: a training plan for your jumper with the season, load and events mapped out, so they get better and stay healthy.

Book a free Jump Lab strategy session here.

Coach Keinan Briggs is a former professional triple jumper and 6th-place finisher at the 2011 USA Indoor Championships. He has coached jumpers since 2003.