Building the Athlete First

The one thing that most great players have in common is that they are also great athletes.  A look back into their childhood reveals a youth spent outdoors, playing with friends and trying a wide variety of sports.  These days, I hear from a lot of New Brunswick coaches that they don’t see a lot of natural athletes any more.

Today’s youth are much less likely to spend their time outdoors playing and exploring and much more likely to spend their time indoors playing computer games or watching NetFlix.  The result is that children showing up in youth sport programs often lack the basic skills needed to be successful.  Fundamental skills such as running, jumping, throwing, catching and sliding are underdeveloped.  This means that we must change the way we coach.

Teaching basic movement and general sport skills is now an essential component of early sport programming.  There’s little point in practicing break out drills if players can’t move, pass or control an object efficiently.

A growing number of sports have now embedded the development of fundamental skills into their developmental programs.  For example, Skate Canada has its CanSkate program, Baseball has its Rally Cap and Athletics has its Run Jump Throw.  All of these programs have a focus on developing movement and basic sport skills using fun activities and small sided games.  Coaches of other sports need to creatively including the development of fundamental skills into their practices.  The days where the warm-up consisted of 10 laps of the gym have disappeared from the progressive coach’s practice plan.   

In addition to developing better athletes for your sport, who will become better players in the future, the development of all-round fundamental skills is a win for the individual and society.  Physically literate individuals are more confident and more likely to be active throughout their lifetime.  Further, they will reap many benefits in their everyday lives from having better balance on icy sidewalks to improved dance moves on a Saturday night.