Junior athletes cont… (14 - 16 year olds)

Written By Chaos Coaching

Junior athletes (14 - 16 year olds)


At this age any Rugby League player with a desire to get on to a scholarship or more importantly an academy needs to choose a sport. The multi sport stuff has to stop and they need to show that they excel in their chosen sport in order to get noticed. By stopping all other activities not related to their sport this will free up time to practice what they need to improve skill wise, but also start engaging in a structured strength and conditioning plan to maximise their chances of success.


If at this age an athlete isn’t trying to get stronger, faster and increase muscle mass by following a structured and progressive gym plan then they are missing out on something that could potentially be the difference between success and failure. Their testosterone levels are going up an insane amount which means they will recover and adapt to whichever stimulus is added to them. You won’t find a better time for them to get strong and add quality mass. As well as the other benefits of decreased risk of injury, discipline and building healthy habits that will last a lifetime. 


If they aren’t on a scholarship it really doesn’t matter, I don’t even see scholarship as the first step, it's more like ‘having a closer look’ they can continue to grow and improve anyway. What will be missing from their program is strength training. Not just going to the gym and doing the machines with their mates, a genuine development program that will teach them key movements for improving sports performance and also prepare them for playing at a higher level. 


The job of parents at this age is to feed them well and keep an eye on their body composition, this will fluctuate due to the madness that is going on with their hormones etc. But that is no excuse to let them eat as much as they want. I heard this a lot when I was growing up ‘yea, they just burn it off’. That was probably true 30 years ago but right now childhood obesity is at an all time high, we can blame society as much as we want but who is feeding them? Their body is changing, they will have mood swings, lose motivation etc. You need to be as consistent as possible. 


So… what does a ‘structured strength and conditioning plan’ look like?


2-3 gym sessions per week working on…

  • Strength

    • Compound movements

      • Squats

      • Lunges

      • Presses

      • Rows

  • Power

    • Triple extension

      • Jumping/landing

      • Plyometrics

      • Olympic lifting derivatives


Sports specific field work

  • Speed

    • Flying 10’s

    • Tempo runs

  • Acceleration

    • First 3 steps

    • Hill sprints (not being flogged, 1 minute rest for every 10m accel)

    • Change of direction


Notice I haven’t written ‘fitness’.


Simply playing and training the sport should elicit enough stress for young athletes to increase fitness. 


!!!!STOP RUNNING YOUNG PLAYERS!!!!


If they are executing skill consistently well then feel free to add in small sided games to stress that skill further but running them is boring, it’s lazy coaching. You see them looking tired and think they need to be fitter, but how many times did they make an error? End a set poorly? Lose control at the ruck? Give away a penalty?


At that age fitness isn’t the problem, poor execution of skill is. 


Don’t just play the sport, learn it and embed yourself in it. Watch as many games as you can, listen to understand coaches (yes we can tell when you are just looking at us because we are talking, you aren’t really trying to understand) and ask questions.


Chaos Coaching
Next

Junior athletes… what happened?