Sports Injuries Part #1 …. The epidemic

Working with athletes for nearly two decades has really opened my eyes to a growing issue. The more “athletic” we become the more injury prone we also end up becoming. I will not go back through the heart of the philosophy I now use as the bible for the way I train since it has been discussed on many posts. Just like so many other things we have discussed on this blog, injuries are predominantly caused by a lack of muscular efficiency in our bodies. My opinion on sports injuries becoming such a huge issue for younger athletes is simple. We as a society are no longer putting our children into situations where they are able to gain the necessary strength to promote proper movement of their joints. And unlike most trainers, it has nothing to do with fancy equipment, overpriced training facilities, and the latest greatest technique or sport specific move.

Trainers typically want to argue with me that they now have the techniques and training tools to really maximize an athletes abilities on the field. Every major metropolitan area has several athletic training and enhancement gyms to choose from, and to be honest, they are all more or less the same thing. Sports training has become a series of drills that trainers run the kids through to improve the individual movements of their given sport. This sounds like a great idea and really it is, however, there is more to it than that and I’ll explain what that is.

During the Early 1990′s I was living in Tigard Oregon. This is where a guy named Randy Smythe ran a company called Speed City. I may be incorrect in this assumption but I do believe that he was one of the very first individuals to use a training system based around the typical equipment that sports trainers use. The Agility Ladder has become perhaps the most commonly used tool by sports trainers. All the rubber tubing pieces of equipment that try to increase your strength and explosiveness. The little hurdles to do all the high knee drills over. All of this was what Randy used to create is “So Fast” Program. 

Now almost two decades later the entire sports fitness industry had developed off of these drills. the objective is to train our kids fast twitch muscle fibers and try to create high levels of muscle memory by repeating specific drills over and over and over and over and over again. My High School was only a few miles from the Speed City facility so we typically had a chance to try out new equipment and go through the drills. I think I have done the quick foot shuffle on the agility ladder at least a billion times in my life. 

Here is the key that most of these training systems are missing. High repetition of drills that cause the fast twitch fibers to establish new levels of contractibility is great as long as you have a perfectly working muscular system. When is the last time you saw a 13 year old with a perfectly balanced and highly efficient muscular system? the answer is never. Growth spurts, genetics, and a lifestyle that focuses much more on video games and computers than it does climbing trees or manual labor has caused our young athletes to lack the natural durability they need to be able to perform at the high levels we ask of them. 

I visit these training centers every so often to check in and see what the latest and greatest is and I am actually alarmed at how many young kids are being asked to train like a professional. This is another issue that has caused some problems for our young athletes. It is the fascination with professional athletes. even trainers get sucked into this, they see what the pros are doing and assume that this is what the younger kids should be doing to give them a better chance of making it to the big time. Now I know that if you work for Velocity Sports or Nike’s Sparq Training, that there are age appropriate drills that trainers should be using. I am pleased that these models exist. However at what point is the actual imbalances in an athletes muscular system addressed. Now I am not just talking about a lack of strength or flexibility but true imbalances that affect an athletes ability to move the skeletal system correctly.

Next up we will continue the discussion