Specificity of running in Tennis
Watching Andy Murray running down balls in his semi final at the Australian Open made me think. There is a lot of literature in tennis fitness about the need for speciic running versus traditional training. We hear time and time again about how 80% or more of running is multidirectional and less than 4metres.
Recently I watched a powerpoint by Mark Kovacs from the USTA who superimposed Blake off the mark with Tyson Gay and showed the differences in gait.
But watching Murray it seemed that the key points involved 100% explosive running efforts. I think there is a need for a really good EMG study on this topic.
Often players are running laterally with their upper body twisted, but hips pointing in the direction they are running to. Thus in this case I would assume hamstring and quads are contracting maximally and whilst moving across the court it is essentially a straight line burst.
So how are these statistics compiled about movement needs in elite tennis? This is important because it impinges on training needs.
Just seems to me that the big boys really run heaps.
Food for thought.
Australian Tennis Open. SEN reports Nicole Pratt saying we have to start young?
Listening to Andrew Gaze and Tim Watson on SEN today chatting about Nicole Pratt’s opinion that kids should be pushed into early devlepopment and “leave school” etc in tennis. I haven’t heard her quotes but I did hear Todd Woddbridge also say this a few months ago. And Craig Tiley also pushed the youth development button last year.
First of all in defence of tennis in OZ is the fact that the whole world plays tennis. Everyone. All trying to get into that TOP 100. Cricket and Netball represent sports that are played in the Commonwealth so their results should be paralleled with our results in sport in the Commonwealth Games versus Olympic Games. Even sports like Rugby League are not quite international. So we need to be very careful in always saying how fantastic our sports science industry is when very few of our running based sports do as well internationally as we are led to believe.
China has 2 players in the quarters in women’s tennis and that is creating some hysteria as we speak. Of course they start young in China but also they pump massive amounts of kids through the system given the society they live in. And their society lends itself to getting kids into academies en masse and fnding the odd jewel. Wont work in OZ.
In Australia we have a different society. It takes many years to create a player. We have seen so many dysunctional people involved in tennis. So many broken dreams. Lost educations and poorly adjusted kids. So trying to say kids should leave school when a zillion people are trying to squeeze into the TOP 100 in tennis is seriously flawed.
It is a simplistic notion that if you take kids out of school and then that we will get results. This already happens. Parents who dont have enough money simply cannot afford tennis yet pay huge amounts to achieve the dream. And parents have morgtaged their house to get results and oten they get zero return and a heap of problems. This should never happen.
How the hell are we going to nab the right 10 year old? WHo knows at that age
Our tennis clubs have no structure to maintain kids that cannot afford tennis. We have no club tennis to keep players in the game to develop. This is a sport where the coach athlete relationship is pivotal. There is a role for institutes like the AIS and VIS but this must be more in the form of a transit point for young players.
We need to create an Australian system where kids are made to stay at school till puberty at least. They need to study all day and train at night. Play AFL and netball as kids. There is a complete lack of evidence that kids not going to school will work. What happens when they have a bad year in the 14 YO age group?. Do we go to the next player? NEXT! What happens if the young player is not at school? In a way tennis often is an excuse for young players to not go to school. HA.
Add to this is the mature age of players in tennis. Lets not forget this. Average age of the women’s TOP 100 is 24. A long way of 12. If we get players in the top 20 it wont be 15 players. It may be we have 2 to 3 which would be great. So what happens to the 100’s of kids who leave school in OZ. Forget the TOP 100 let alone TOP 100 in Australia.
Simply one has to create a huge base. Pinpoint the child prodigy and nurture the talent. Be aware that a problem in OZ is that tennis is too expensive. Better to play AFL and not spend money. Systems need to be put in place which allow young players to not spend as much on their development , so that one can track the next tier of players from 12 to 18 which is critical in development.
It is not as simple as start them young!
In fact I find many of these pre pubertal players totally overtrained and injured. The issue is not how much they train but how well they are developped over 10 to 15 years. I have had a good look at the tennis industry in Australia and quality is the key ingredient missing not quantity. Coaches, players and parents hardly know what they did the day before or the week before. It is just a big “IMBROGLIO” .
Track and Field, Weightlifitng and Power Lifting. More important than AFL.
AFL, netball and cricket have high participation rates. I love AFL footy. But these 3 sports will probably never be international sports despite some of the press recently. And in these sports one just needs a mix of fitness and athleticism.
And all these team sports ( and others) are contrived sports based on arbitrary rules or specific equipment. Track and Field, Weightlifting,Power lifting even swimming are really pure sports that almost 100% reflect fitness, strength and conditoning levels of the athlete and thus require pure training methodology.
In reality participation rates are very high in athletics given little athletics. Ahletics (or track and field) is a fundamental sport. The ability to run fast and also run long and fast is a critical need in many sports. And weight training and power development underpin nearly all sports.
But more Athletics has been the sport which simply has underpinned the understanding of how to run faster and longer/faster, jump higher/longer or throw further.
Trial and error combined with research has created the knowledge base which is utilized by strength and conditioning staff and fitness gurus worldwide. Not a laboratory. Certainly not human movement courses.
In track and field one has to find the extra .01 secs or the extra metre and this requires so much fine tuning. In team sports it is simply important to get things 95% right and get players very fit and very strong and resilient. Then added to that one has to have the best “cattle” and also wait for teams to mature with game sense and experience. Also finances become critical and so on. Thus the purity of athletic preparation is not the main ‘chase”.
I am amazed at how track and field coaches receive little funding in Australia. So many young strength and conditioning staff go straight from university to clubs and institutes and really just slot into systems. Put them to the test and tell them to fine tune sprinters and runners and many simply would fail. Yet by association they become gurus overnight. Odd.
In Australia we have this notion we are sports science leaders. Yes the AIS is awesome and some of the research is great but all these strength researchers abound and yet few can get people really powerful. Powerful people go to coaches like my brother in law Gus Puopolo who can get you to throw 20 metres plus in the shot put and bench and squat massive amounts. And his systems and training at Ringwood simply cannot be rivalled in many so called research/sports science places. Yet he receives a plaque. Weird.
The people researching sport (ie Crawford Report) need to understand that we need coaches (and athletes) striving to run faster/throw further/jump higher. It is a fundamental need and there needs to be a career path.
The spin off for OZ is a pool of people who know how to teach speed and strength and not just click a button on a GPS and connect it to a computer.
We are in danger of producing mediocre coaches who cannot see past repeated speed training and small games and gadgets to assist monitoring. I use all these gadgets but in the end I am sure Federer jumps off plyometric boxes and sprints down tracks and pumps squats more than download sports science data.
Weightlifting is also a fundamental need and yet hardly anyone knows how to lift properly now. The players at Geelong Football Club were lucky. I had people like John Minns teaching them how to squat year in and year out. We talk so much about how important power is and yet we do not encourage the sport of weightlifting (and power lifting). Yet institutions like Edith Cowan pump research out on these topics. Really odd because the people that actually can get people powerful generally reside outside these institutions.
These sports are fundamental. They are historically the main sports from Spartan days and they represent what we actually strive to often do. Run faster, lift heavier. Key needs in survival situations. Yet we are not encouraging them at suburban level.
Kids love these sports. They are key sports to develop coaches and underpin knowledge and research. Yet they are neglected at senior level. Ckubs and coaches are totally unfunded. Weird. Dumb.
Think again. People love these sports but more so they form the critical foundations for all training dogma.
When I see SLAM BALL I cringe. Kids love little athletics but really coaches do not exist after little aths and clubs are destitute. Weightlifting clubs simply hardly exist and gyms now look like factories. All weird. Yet our researchers say POWER is the key. Then they go and train on their treadmills.
Crawford Report? Have these people actually travelled and do they understand the process of training? Or are they good at marketing and political decisions?
Development Pathways in Junior Tennis? Multilateral Development and Superstars!
These anecdotes are from “GOOGLE” so one has to be careful. But it is interesting how often multilateral development comes into play in tennis when one delves into the past of great players. One issue of course that clouds tennis is that it is difficult for talented players from low socio-economic backgrounds to do well in tennis so I think pathways are a little clouded.
Nevertheless I have a suspicion that young tennis players in Australia should keep playing as many sports as possible till puberty then make a career choice. Then they will have balanced development. That is not to say that they should not have all the skills before ten for example, but I am convinced that puberty is the key to go wham bam thank you maam..
People will say Agassi or someone else started in the womb but this is reverse logic. There are thousands of tennis players and parents who invested early and got zero return apart from a junior trophy. And really the Agassi theory is clouded because he probably was simply talented also.
Again these are just little bits and pieces from Google below, but it would be interesting to draw comment on development pathways for tennis given the mature status of rankings. Talents should receive specialized coaching early but it is far better getting fitness at 11 or 12 running around chasing a ball than running laps. Also one cannot buy the decision making development that occurs by these players continuing to play invasion sports till approximtely puberty.
The problem in Australia might actually be that recently we might have forgotten the “Australian” way of development? Just a thought eh?
SOME GOOGLE BITS and PIECES which I have not verified:
***Full name is Lleyton Glynn Hewitt…Played Australian Rules Football until age 13, then decided to pursue tennis career…I
***At age eight, Nadal won an under-12 year regional tennis championship at a time where he was also a promising football player.[11] This made Toni Nadal intensify training, and at that time he encouraged Nadal to play left-handed—for a natural advantage on the tennis court, as he noticed Nadal played forehand shots with two hands.[11]
When Nadal was 12, he won the Spanish and European tennis titles in his age group and was playing tennis and football all the time.[11] Nadal’s father made him choose between football and tennis so that his school work would not deteriorate entirely. Nadal said: “I chose tennis. Football had to stop straight away.”[
***Roddick lived in Austin, Texas, from age 4 until he was 11, then moved to Boca Raton, Florida in the interest of his brother John's tennis career,[4] where he lived, first attending Boca Prep International School which Mardy Fish and later Jesse Levine also attended, until graduating from Highlands Christian Academy in 2000.[5] Roddick played varsity basketball in high school alongside Davis Cup teammate Mardy Fish, who trained and lived with Roddick in 1999. During that time period, he sometimes trained with Venus and Serena Williams; he later moved back to Austin
***He played football until the age of twelve when he decided to focus solely on tennis.[32] At fourteen, he became the national champion of all groups in Switzerland and was chosen to train at the Swiss National Tennis Center in Ecublens. He joined the ITF junior tennis circuit in July 1996.[33] In 1998, his final year as a junior, Federer won the junior Wimbledon title and was recognized as the ITF World Junior Tennis champi
***A natural athlete, as a boy Newcombe played several sports until devoting himself to tennis. He was the Australian junior champion in 1961, 1962 and 1963 and became a member of Australia’s Davis Cup winning team in 1964.on of the year.[34]
Tennis Australia-How young should we start and why?
Tennis Australia is embarking on a massive youth policy. That is great. Having a broad base with kids who have the skills is a real need. But the evidence never stacks up that tennis is a young sport. The average age for women top 100 is always 24 approx. and for men high 24’s approx. Grand Slam fields are usually 24 to 25 average for men. Grand Slam male winners average out at 25 over many eras. Forget prodigies. Forget awesome talents like Hewitt. Tennis is the same as all other running “eccentric” sports. So why do we train 12 year olds like adults? Why don’t we track players into their 20’s? Junior ITF results keep a lot of coaches in jobs yet really are fairly meaningless like most junior sport is. Junior sport is about providing experiences and pathways. Not an end itself. Important for the player of course. But even there the average age of Male players is 17 plus and 16 plus forFemales. So when a 13 year old boy is missing out on school and not getting a multilateral physical development I cringe.
Tennis is littered with failures and broken dreams. When we will wake up. Training immature skeletons like adults is almost a crime. Parents want to see their kids flogged. It is just friggin the dumbest thing I have seen.
And when Tennis Australia encourages players to not attend normal schools what are we developing? Misfits? Do they tell the parents the truth? There is very little chance of making money in tennis? Unlike AFL where young kids earn hundreds of thousands. Where is the evidence. Who says a kid cannot play AFL till 13 then choose tennis. I think this might be a real problem.
Tennis academies throughout the world push all this of course.
Strength and Conditioning coaches need to be always aware they are dealing with children in tennis not adults.
Parents need to know that on average players enter the rankings in their 20’s.
Let’s think about all this? Maybe Australia has to hang on to players of the 15 to 20 year old bracket and keep them going instead of always going back to kids in the hope of finding a diamond. A good 18 year old male might take till 22 to go from 400 to 76 in the world. But in Australia it is too hard. Next and the same again.
| Women’s Rankings NOV 2009 | |
| 1 to 100 | 24.10 |
| 100 to 200 | 23.55 |
| 200 to300 | 23.55 |
| 300 to 400 | 22.39 |
| 400 to 500 | 22.21 |
| 500 to 600 | 21.23 |
| 600 to700 | 21.14 |
| 700 to 800 | 20.26 |
| 800 to 900 | 20.56 |
| 900 to 1000 | 19.58 |
Model for Success in the AFL. Does one exist?
I listened with interest to a SEN radio interview that said Geelong now had the model for success. Does a model exist? The AFL is a very small, totally controlled and in fact non-elite “youth biased” competition. Salary caps, drafts etc. Players drafted well before they are even close to full maturity. The funnel starts at 16 then 18 then pours kids in.
I presented at an AFL conference on the optimal age for success in sport and as we know (or should) it is very predictable. Things happen around 25. I found that AFL champion teams had an average age of approx 25.7 and 70/75% of players were between 22 and 28 in general. There were more young players than old and if a player was < 22 they had to play approx 50 games. Most players need to be around 25/26 and maybe 27. A BELL curve slightly weighted on the youth side. When this hit me on paper, I understood my years in AFL. Even the 93 Bombers teams I was with was a lot more mature than people realized. Hills had been there 5 years and the other 4kids 2 to 3. The rest were hard nuts.
So when clubs self destruct and keep throwing players out and going young they simply will have to wait 5 years as a minimum. Forget amazing sports scientists and gurus. That is the problem. A good accountant and CEO are more important to a club given the impact finance and stability has on a club.
Geelong had the bulk of its player by 2002. By 2005 they had played 5 finals with the odd old player leaving. Sanderson and Graham for example. They simply were out thought in 2005 (and only played one Rickman, a massive mistake) and also that year most of the young crew was not ready. Some were still “sowing wild oats” and for some it had not sunk in yet what was required at the elite level. Guess what? That is normal and if a club tries to beat that good luck! Might happen but rare.
So when Leigh Matthews knew the era was over they simply went young in general. A young team went closish in 2008 to finals but fell apart and then improved a squeak in 2009. Getting to 25 average! Thus 2005/2006/2007/2008 was development. Normal!
Voss has simply tried to get mature players to top this now mature squad up to get ahead & win quickly. This is a slight variation on a model. Just has to make sure they are the right players
So if a club poaches coaches and staff from the current Grand Final team then will that work? Probably not! Rarely does.
Clubs simply forget that Luke Hodge needed as many pre seasons and games as did Bartel to get to the stage where he could help the HAWKS win flag.100 odd games and 5 to 6 pre seasons. Simple.
So these AMAZING people will go to a club and have to deal with 18 to 22 year olds with average talent in general and wait years. That’s it. In the end there is not that much talent in Australia in any sport so development and maturity is the key. The superstars start early and late. Then often they get edgy and at 22 good development is thrown out in a bad year and dumb comments like culture are made. What does culture mean? Weird comment.
So does a model exist? Yes and it doesn’t guarantee success but guarantees relative success. Collingwood missed its last opportunity in 2007 when older players nearly snagged a win versus Geelong. The model is simply make sure the club is financial given people are happy when they are paid and everything is available. Make sure a group has been together for a number of years and has developed their skills and bodies and also developed a combative nature to their game.
Steven King was captain of an immature young group. Tough gig and that was after years of carrying the ruck duties at Geelong.
Geelong was smart. They kept the playing group together. They stabilized a dodgy political situation. They had played 5 finals. Done 6/8 pre seasons together. Teams will be able to do it quicker than Geelong given players come into the system better prepared now than Corey/Ablett/Mackie etc. But there you go. That’s the model. Get your group to an average of 25. Tweak it as long as you can so it stays like that. Probably a window of 5 years. Have heaps of dough and resources and be slightly better.
The AFL is so predictable now. We are going to have so many teams of the century in the next 20 years. The reality is that the talent pool is very thin. So many clubs simply keep starting again and then get edgy on the way.
Basketball and Volleyball. Why such poor marketing appeal in Australia?
With absolutely no disrespect to Netball ( but some disrespect to Slamball and watching racing cars doing weird long curves on ONE HD ) one wonders why Basketball and Volleyball cannot draw the marketing required to launch the sports in OZ. Are there dark forces keeping these sports at such a low visibility or is someone doing something wrong?
It is weird!
These two are massive sports worldwide and will remain so. Professional leagues abound worldwide. Netball is a great sport and fantastic viewing, but simply played in the old Commonwealth.
The presentation of Netball has been superb and has been underpinned by the new channel. Also I realize there are a huge number of players in OZ which translates to a viewing audience. All makes sense eh!
I have had some involvement in Volleyball recently and it should have more presence. The dollar rules and marketing requires numbers. It is frustrating to walk down the road and see complete hacks getting good money in local footy when classy kids pay to play Volleyball, let alone get on the big screen. They way we structure our sports clubs is weird. There are heaps of stadiums all over the place but no big concentrated clubs like in Europe which house many sports under the one sponsor and generate funding and necessary exposure. Would work!
As an old Track and Field athlete I can understand a little the amatuer background that permeates the sport but Volleyball and Basketball are big sports around the globe with massive participation rates.
It is such a pity ( but understandable) that industry simply pumps money into sports that are marketable at present given 70,000 plus people went to watch Collingwood vs Essendon but I am sure a long term approach by sponsors to get behind these sports and then push them onto the stage would yield results in the long term given the global nature of the sports. In the end our soccer, basketabll and volleyball players are far better known worldwide than out “native” sports and that won’t chamge in our lifetime. How can that be translated to sponsors?
A little bit of insight is required. Newspapers are losing ground. Why. Because of the internet. We have seen many Asian soccer teams play in OZ recently. The world is getting smaller.Refugees are flooding in! Now I being stupid.
In the long term “global” sports will encroach. Once the pathways open up for kids to play soccer and earn money. Boom. Heaps of kids will play soccer. AFL is the best earner for young fellas so they play it. Equation is simple!
Right now good players are drifitng away from Volleyball to Netball on the women’s side. Yet a quality Volleyballer can play in any country in the world? But you are almost on your own as a Volleyballer here. And basketball is not far off as we speak.
So get rid of friggin SLAMBALL and put OZ Volleyballers and Basketballers on the screen! Geez!
Come on you guys. Wrest the initiative from the AFL and get kids to play Volleyball in Western Sydney. Paul Roos would be rapt! Before someone gives Lote another million to play Rugby League and Demetriou starts brainwashing newly born babies in Western Sydney get in there! I hear that every new baby born in Western Sydney will be given a Sherrin.
The men’s Volleyball team won the Asian Championship last year and is a great team. There are some awesome and spectacular athletes playing.
Someone has to realize that the one constant in life is change and there are some sports that simply are global and some that are not. Take the punt.
Get rid of slamball and put Volleyball on the screen and sponsor it. Go on. Do it!
And more so one needs to see the development of multi faceted sports centres and clubs. If a big sponsor took over a facility and simply from there ran 3 or 4 National clubs instead of clubs trying to market themsleves I am sure that sponsor would get results from investments.
The models exist overseas especially in Europe. Let’s get some lateral thinking going!
i hear Slamball is going to try and wrest the initiative from the AFL in Western Sydney. Every new born kid in Western Sydney wil get one of those little tramps that kids get! Watch out Andy!
Apology from Geelong Advertiser to Loris Bertolacci
Apology to Loris Bertolacci
June 23rd, 2009
TODAY the Geelong Advertiser extends a formal apology to Loris Bertolacci for three articles published on March 23 and 31 and June 6, 2007.
The articles published in the newspaper and on our website attacked Mr Bertolacci’s fitness coaching competence. The Geelong Advertiser unreservedly withdraws those imputations and also acknowledges that Mr Bertolacci has acted with utmost integrity in his dealings with us.
The Geelong Advertiser accepts the articles damaged Mr Bertolacci’s reputation and regrets that.
The Geelong Advertiser apologises for the hurt and embarrassment to Mr Bertolacci, his family and friends.
Specificity of Resistance Belts or Bungee Cords for tennis?
Recently I bought a bungee cord/resistance belt whatever you want to call it. Then browsing through some websites and articles I added a few “specific” exercises to the routines of some tennis players. Gee wihiz looks like you know what you are doing when the belt comes out. But how relevant?
On an ITF site there is a video of some player running out under resistance with a racquet then doing a split step and then lunging into a shot. This to me is about as relevant as jumping off a massive bungee cord and maybe that is more relevant given it is so scary and thus trains the fight or flight response as against a slow resistance exercise.
When one explodes into a shot a player might take 2 or 3 100% steps, then decelerate and then get into position for a shot. So why do this under resistance when all the motor patterns will be different. Have to be. Probably a little bit of core work involved and maybe some dynamic balance! But I am sure one can do better work in formal core and balance work anyway.
Yes we do outsmart ourselves in Strength and Conditioning these days and sometimes it is done so as to look good. As I said it looks pretty professional but how specific?
In the end it is probably just better to lunge, and side lunge and get low. That is critical. Maybe catching medicine balls at 100% pace is good exercise but again a very different exercise relative to running into a shot or trying to “dig” a ball out in Volleyball.
Hey I am just thinking out aloud so invite comments.
“Chaos” training in Soccer and small sided games. Developmental needs of young athletes.
There is a lot of confusion now in the fitness industry on how to manage kids. We now have this explosion of advice telling our young players to play games, games and more games. This mantra has evolved from Skill Acquisition dogma where random variable skills learning was seen to be more efficient than massed practice. So play games and create “chaos” and easy “peasy”. We are now told of all these amazing benefits from endurance to decision making. Then we have the research on reactive agility which is very ’sexy” and again has underpinned advice that games, games and more games is the way to go. There is an up side to this of course because it may stop over zealous youth coaches from running kids into the ground instead of focussing on the game.
I will target this article on young athletes close to puberty and/or at or past puberty. Young kids do need to play a lot but even there they would have maximum variety in their development. Another story. But I have recently dealt with one 7 year old who simply was not enjoying sport. By working one on one with him and doing simple fitness. Co ordination and general strength and fitness activities he has improved so much that he now wants to participate and is quite good. Also another 10 year old last year had terrible balance and little co ordination or confidence and again after a year of work with basic activities he has started to improve to the point where he can cut it with other kids. If he had simply played more and more games he would have been left behind and simply given up. In theory it all sounds easy but sports scientists out there, it aint that simple.
The more games young tennis kids in OZ have played the worse out tennis has gone. We have a massive coaching structure in tennis of private coaches and yet very few kids can sprint, jump, change direction and co ordinate their feet. And then all of a sudden at 15 or 16 they have to get this together even though they can hit.
Soccer is going down the funnel way. Get heaps of kids doing soccer and playing small games and then pick and choose on his way through. Guess what. Sure the skilled kids will come through but the quicker, fitter more nimble ones will rise to the top (if they can play). Sounds good to me. Bit like the simplistic TAC AFL system. Choose kids at 15 and really that’s it. They get coached and the rest go back to “dumbsville”. That creates a pool of kids to push into the AFL system.
In soccer super leagues are evolving at under 13 and under 14 and pretty much starting the funnel. I am involved in heaps of these systems. If a player is not good enough then he or she doesn’t come though the system. And that “good enough” is relevant to how they play. And fitter, faster kids will always bubble through (who can play). So if we do very little specific running and change of direction work (added to S&C) with kids simply genetics will be the factor.
It is such a lazy theory and in fact someone recently said you can only get a 3% improvement with players in speed so why work on it. Are we starting to go crazy! That 3% is the difference between under 20 top sprinters and worlds’ best. So this percentage has been used to validate only playing small games with kids. I have seen young athletes dramatically improve speed at all ages. Due to strength, power, range, technique, feel. Whatever.
Sure we will have players come though and the “men in suits” will be happy. And we all know chaos training and random variable training is important. But just as players who cannot kick are at a distinct disadvantage in AFL so are kids who cannot run. And one has to train the basics also.
I am sure that if an under 14 soccer player who is on the fringe of a representative side goes off and does quality strength and conditioning and speed and power work and then goes back to trial he or she will go lots closer to selection. And what I am talking about is always improving the individual. Not a funnel system
Guess what. In tennis the realization has come about that OZ players can’t move, Cant sprint. Can’t change direction. Maybe some cannot anticipate. And so on. But neglect the basics of footwork and the needs of movements and good luck.
So let’s take a deep breath. On average the top 100 tennis players are quicker than the 400 to 500. Serie A players are quicker than Serie C players. AFL players accelerate more than local players.
And can you make a slow person beat Usain Bolt. Of course not. But you can make that person a lot faster and a lot sharper with movement.
On the other hand one good take home form all this emphasis on games is that it will stop “crazy” coaches running kids into the ground with fitness and endurance activities and spend more time learning and puffing.
All a bit confusing but we need to teach kids so many skills and provide them with as broad an arsenal of movements and training to equip them for the future and maximize their individual development.
