World-class athletes must begin training before the onset of puberty or they almost certainly won’t be great

dopedgills15 wrote:

this thread is absurd and just straight up bro science. so many sports you can play after puberty....in fact...may be even preferred.

Running you absolutely do not need to train before puberty. Running distance as a 10 year old is detrimental in my opinion. You can start anywhere from 9th to 11th grade and be just fine if you have the talent. Sprints you could start in college if you were fast enough.

Football you can absolutely start playing in high school for first time. Many NFL players are like this. Football before puberty is sort of pointless.

Basketball, if you are exceedingly tall, you can put together a big game in your teens (rare though). Embiid starting playing at age 15.

Baseball you generally need to play before age 8 as there are just too many skills to learn that are foundational. Lorenzo Cain didnt start playing until high school though which blows my mind "In contrast to most professional ballplayers, Cain did not start playing baseball until his sophomore year in Florida's Madison County High School. He only did so, he said, because he was not chosen for the school basketball team. At the time, Cain didn't own a baseball glove.[1]" Sort of shows how the travel baseball cult for kids is misguided....if you have the talent it doesnt matter!

Hockey you need to be on skates as a kid, ideally before age 7.

PART 1 OF MY POST wrote:

I made this post two years ago but I think it’s pretty spot on for this topic. I totally agree with you OP, except what you say is true for slow twitch type runners but runners with a lot of natural speed won’t need what you’re saying. That’s why you see a lot of 800/1500 runners who didn’t do much training as teenagers become really good but you won’t see an all time great 5k/10k runner who didn’t play A LOT of aerobic sports during his development.

The post was an answer to someone who was talking about some « African genetic superiority » :

[1/2]

OK ? Then take a slow twitch kid, make him run 10km from and to school everyday from his early youth, put him on altitude training, and almost no intense and fast work. That's what most of the fastest ever east Africans distance runners did as youngsters (Barega, Bekele, Kipchoge etc).

Just take 10 white slow twitch kids, put them on the same thing, and if they can handle it you'll end up with some world class runners, and that's what Jakob did, and I'm sad that there are not more western kids doing the same.

If you look at the stats, the most important thing in running is by far being very active from an early age.

You have a lot of type of activities which can achieve this same goal, but you'll find being very active from an early age is the common point in 95% of world class distance runners (this does not include the 800m which rely much more on natural speed).

You can have a lot of type of activites which achieve this goal :

- Jakob, structured training program from his early days, with focus on developing his aerobic base and his running technique

- Jimmy Gressier, grew up in the streets, coming from another sport, 3 hours of football (soccer) everyday his whole life, it builds a big aerobic base (think about it, a 12 years old playing 3 hours of soccer everyday runs a way bigger weekly mileage than a typical middle school runner who runs 2 to 3 times a week for 45 min), and it even develops sprint speed as a bonus. This insane training made him good at soccer (semi finalist at the world school championship 2014), but even better at running, so he eventually choosed running when he was 17. I think Grant Fisher did the same.

- El Guerrouj type, very few peoples know it but El Guerrouj did something which can be similar to Jakob (but with way less resources obviously). He played soccer his early days, then switched to running because he used to ruin his clothes playing soccer, loved it, and ran everyday, just because it was the most logical thing for him to improve, without knowing that peoples say that you shouldn't train a lot if you're young. By the time he was 15 (freshman in highschool) he was training 13 TIMES A WEEK, if an American kid was training as much as a freshman in highschool, most of you would say burnout and other BS on letsrun. At 16 he moved to Rabat to stop school and get a structured training in the national institute with the best coach in the country. (How can you think you'll be better than this type of guys, Jakob, Hicham if you're focusing mostly on school and only rely on your natural talent to eventually be competitive at the world level, while they're running twice your mileage and literally living to become good at track.)

- The "east African" type, young slow twitch runners, running/walking a lot of miles everyday, before even reaching teenage years. A lot of aerobic base building, allowing them to handle a lot more training and improve much more when they start structured training. It might sound a little « cliché » but the fact is that Kipchoge, Barega, Bekele and a lot of others who became all time greats ran from and to school everyday.

- Henrik type, similar to Gressier, building his aerobic base without running, but by doing a lot of XC skiing (was a youth national champion in norway) He then choosed to focus entirely in running, and this big aerobic base gave him an unfair advantage over the others.

- Sebastien Coe type (not comparable to the others because he's much more gifted in natural speed, so it could make up the gap even without a huge aerobic base, but that's still interesting) Trained by his father, who didn't know much about the " holy principles" of running in Europe and America, but rather testing everything and focusing on what works with his kid, and not what is recommended by a scientist who has never run a mile in his life.

Commons points between these runners :

- They all got the most out of their natural talent.

- They all did what they wanted and thought was the best, without caring about what a so called expert said is good for long term development (the exemple of Peter Coe and Seb) Some even built a huge base WITHOUT knowing it, like Gressier, if they started running earlier with a coach, they likely would not have been world class because the coach would have regulated their training and therefore prevented the building of the huge aerobic base they got thanks to playing other sports.

- They all had an insanely active youth, I believe there's a golden age when you're young, in which your body reacts a lot more to training, and they got a "super body" thanks to being active at that age, allowing them to handle an insane load of training without being overtrained and getting injured, once they become adults.

Mikeh33 wrote:

Discus.

I think this counts for almost every sport, probably including long distance running. There are probably a few outliers who take up a sport in late puberty and still become world class. But those people are few and far between.

For the most part, you either begin training in adolescence, ideally before you start puberty, and years before you finish growing, or you won’t become a champion.

The nervous system becomes less elastic when you finish growing, and it is more difficult to learn new skills, and probably impossible to translate those skills into world-class performance.

If you see someone go from merely good to world beating in their mid 20s, probably there is some sort of PED use involved.

Disclaimer: there are a lot of great reasons for playing sports other than becoming as good as you can possibly be, so I am not criticizing anyone who takes up a sport later in life. We are talking about world class performance here.

Love to know your thoughts, agree/disagree. What implications does this have for coaching?

Mikeh33 wrote:

dopedgills15 wrote:

this thread is absurd and just straight up bro science. so many sports you can play after puberty....in fact...may be even preferred.

Running you absolutely do not need to train before puberty. Running distance as a 10 year old is detrimental in my opinion. You can start anywhere from 9th to 11th grade and be just fine if you have the talent. Sprints you could start in college if you were fast enough.

Football you can absolutely start playing in high school for first time. Many NFL players are like this. Football before puberty is sort of pointless.

Basketball, if you are exceedingly tall, you can put together a big game in your teens (rare though). Embiid starting playing at age 15.

Baseball you generally need to play before age 8 as there are just too many skills to learn that are foundational. Lorenzo Cain didnt start playing until high school though which blows my mind "In contrast to most professional ballplayers, Cain did not start playing baseball until his sophomore year in Florida's Madison County High School. He only did so, he said, because he was not chosen for the school basketball team. At the time, Cain didn't own a baseball glove.[1]" Sort of shows how the travel baseball cult for kids is misguided....if you have the talent it doesnt matter!

Hockey you need to be on skates as a kid, ideally before age 7.

I think you make good points. There are some sports that require limited technique. Long distance running, bicycling have some technique involved, but it’s not difficult for anyone to grasp. People are born, knowing how to run. And riding a bicycle is simple enough that you can pick it up and do it years after you learned as a child. People probably can begin these sports and fairly “advanced” age, maybe even beyond puberty.

But most other sports that require a lot of technique, like baseball, combat sports, swimming, gymnastics, must be ingrained in the nervous system before the onset of puberty.