ironside wrote:
I find it interesting that posters, most likely in their 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's & 60's are suggesting OP, most likely age 14, 15, 16 or 17 disobey the coach. Are there soccer, swimming or Am. football versions of letsrun? Are the posters on soccer, swimming and Am. football sites telling young soccer players, young swimmers and young Am. football players to give less than what their coaches are asking in practice?
So you propose that if your child's coach says to jump off of a roof - you just say your kid to silently obey? This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard here. I think there cannot be worse situation than a bad coach who tries to satisfy some wild inner desires or who is just plain incompetent.
As a kid who seriously overtrained in swimming in HS I can say that this may wreck your health for life if taken too far. It's not that you can throw whatever to the kids and they will survive. Yes, most of the time, they will, but in many many times they become injured and unhappy. In my case it was not coaches fault, I just wanted to be better and I just did harder than coach ever asked from me as I badly wanted to be among the better guys. Unfortunately I had no talent but I had willpower to push myself in the grey area. So instead of aerobic I went high-end, instead of high-end I went what could be called tempo and instead of tempos I did what could be called vo2max. At that time I did not understand the biomechanical consequences this was causing, I just continued to hammer. I ended up significantly overtrained as I pushed myself over for months and finally this showed up in my ECG. I still remember the sign of his facial expression the moment he saw my ECG. It was some mixture of genuine fear and worry. He immediately put me off of all training for several weeks allowing me to do only very easy swimming. Thank god my coach was very wise man and knew the stuff.
I am now in my 30s and have two kids myself and I will personally follow all the training that my kids ever do to be personally confident that they do not overdo early.