A player who is fit is capable of play to its fullest extent. Physical and mental fitness play very important roles in your lives and people who are both, physically and mentally fit are less prone to medical conditions as well.
The myths and falsehoods associated with Coordination Training are plenty. I'll outline the 'Top 3' here:
1. Coordination is a singular element that is defined by a universal ability or lack of ability
2. Coordination cannot be trained nor taught
3. Coordination-based stimulus should be restricted to preadolescent children
This article will provide a broad-based look at each of those myths and shed some light on the realities behind coordination training as a continuum for the complete development of young athletes aged 6 – 18.
(1) The Characteristics of Coordination
Largely considered a singular facet of athletic ability, it is not uncommon to hear Coaches, Parents or Trainers suggest that a given young athlete possess 'good' or 'bad' coordination.
This generalization does not reflect the true nature of the beast, or specific features that combine to create coordination from a macro-perspective. Coordination, in fact, is comprised of several different characteristics:
• Balance – a state of bodily equilibrium in either static or dynamic planes
• Rhythm – the expression of timing
• Movement Adequacy – display of efficiency or fluidity during locomotion
• Synchronization of Movement – harmonization and organization of movement
• Kinesthetic Differentiation – the degree of force required to produce a desired result
• Spatial Awareness – ability to know where you are in space and in relation to objects
While many of these traits have great overlap and synergy, they are unmistakably separate and can, in fact, be improved in relatively isolated ways. That's not to suggest that your training programs should look to carve up the elements of coordination and work through them in a solitary manner necessarily. Just a notation intended to show that coordination as it relates to young athletes can be improved at the micro level.
(2) Teaching Young Athletes to Be Coordinated
The answer, in short, is yes.
Coordination ability is not unlike any other bio-motor – proficiencies in strength, speed, agility and even cardiovascular capacity (through mechanical intervention) can be taught, and at any age.
The interesting caveat with coordination-based work however, is that its elements are tied directly to CNS development and therefore have a natural sensitive period along a chronological spectrum. The actuality of sensitive periods tends to be a contentious topic amongst researchers and many Coaches – some of whom are not satisfied with current research and therefore not eager to believe in their existence and others who accept sensitive periods of development to be perfectly valid. It's worth pointing out that I am in no way a scientist or researcher, but have read numerous books and research reviews on the subject and feel satisfied that they do exist and can be maximized (optimized for a lifetime) through proper stimulus.
This 'optimization' issue is the true crux of the matter. Especially during the very early years of life (0 – 12 years) the CNS contains a great deal of plasticity, or ability to adapt. This plastic nature carries through the mid-adolescents, but then significantly decreases from there. Many mistake this point as an implication that the human organism cannot learn new skills in any capacity once their CNS has passed the point of being optimally plastic, but this is not true. Skill of any athletic merit can be learned at virtually any age throughout life. What the plasticity argument holds is that these skills could never be optimized if they were not introduced at a young age.
(3) Are Some Young Athletes Too Old?
Now, while there is truth to the matter that many of the sensitive periods for coordination development lay during the preadolescent phase of life, it would be shortsighted to suggest that teenage athletes should not be exposed to this type of training.
Firstly, much of the training of coordination takes the form of injury preventative. Any sort of 'balance' exercise, for example, requires proprioceptive conditioning and increases in stabilizer recruitment. With 'synchronization of movement', large ROM and mobility work is necessary. 'Kinesthetic differentiation', by definition, involves sub-maximal efforts or 'fine-touch' capacity which is a drastically different stimulus than most young athletes are used to in training settings.
Beyond that, there is the matter of motor skill linking. As much as 60% of the training done by Olympic athletes should take the form of non-direct load (i.e. non-sport-specific). To truly stimulate these rather advanced athletes however, one option, which is a standard during the warm-up phase of a training session, is to link advanced motor skills (coordination exercises) together creating a complex movement pattern.
For example:
Run Forward ---> Decelerate ---> 360 Jump ---> Forward Roll ---> Tuck Jump
Or
Scramble to Balance ---> 1-Leg Squat ---> A Skips ---> Army Crawl ---> Grab Ball/Stand/Throw to Target
In each of these patterns, we have represented:
• Spatial Awareness
• Synchronization of Movement
• Balance (dynamic and static)
• Movement Adequacy
• Kinesthetic Differentiation
• Rhythm
I have used warm-up and cool down sequences just like these with schools, collegiate and professional athletes. Some of them asked me why we are doing this? If you want to be a better athlete and play to your maximum potential you should be doing this.
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