hs girls coach wrote:
lidnlnelkne wrote:No, but they're filled with women who have no hips. It's biomechanically more efficient for running. I was a relatively fast Freshman, went through puberty sophomore year, developed hips, and then got injured as my body adjusted. I bounced back Junior year to PR, and basically stayed at the same level through Senior year. But puberty was hell on my running form. Because I have hips, my center of gravity is lower and I'm a best at skiing then and now than at any other sport.
You bring up a good point here. Progress is rarely going to be perfectly linear for girls and that is fine with me as long as it trends upwards over their career. I try to be really honest with my girls that they may hit a growth spurt and need 6 months for their rest of their body to catch up to handle their old training load. We will often reduce mileage and/or intensity when we notice girls hitting a growth spurt as well and use the extra practice time for additional strength work. That keeps our injury rates pretty low. I'm far from having it all figured out though..maybe one day! In the meantime , I will push for coaches to look for ways to improve. It's painful having to watch some young runners careers enter an injury cycle and then end at age 15 because of poor coaching.
And yet it can still happen with good coaching because there are so many factors a coach can not control. For instance, no matter how much you support/coach a kid who was super good as a freshmen sometimes mentally they can not handle working through the period of time it takes for them to get back to where they once were because it's just too much work for them whereas previously it was so easy... that is just one example where good coaching doesn't magically make things better... and some outsiders might think the coach is at fault in that situation because, well,they don't know the situation