A deep dive on developing athleticism from 9-12 years old
Your daughter loves soccer. She just turned 11 and she’s showing that she really wants to see how good she can be at her sport.
There’s just one problem: she’s a step too slow.
Or maybe she doesn’t have enough power behind her kicks. Or maybe she’s a bit injury prone.
Or maybe her sport is softball or basketball.
Regardless, she’s not as physically gifted as some other girls on her team.
Kids aren’t little adults. They’re not even little teenagers. You can’t take training methods designed for professional athletes, college kids, or seniors in high school and apply them to your young athlete.
If you want to help your 9-12 year old athlete get faster, stronger, more explosive, and healthier, then you need to train them in a way that matches their developmental stage.
So, before you go buy some ankle weights, parachutes, and Bosu Balls, let’s dive in.
Here’s the TL;DR version:
- Challenge the vestibular and proprioceptive systems.
- Crawl and climb.
- Skip, bound, and move in all types of new ways.
- Jump on and over things.
- Race people, chase people, and evade people.
- Hit the major strength movements.
- Train the core like an athlete.
- Isolate vulnerable/weak structures.
1) Challenge the vestibular and proprioceptive systems
The vestibular system is a sensory system in your inner ear and brain that helps you control balance, eye movements, and posture. It’s really important for telling your brain where in the world your head is, whether you’re upright, spinning, upside down, etc.
The proprioceptive system is comprised of little tiny cells inside of joints that tell your brain what position your joint is at in space and whether it’s moving or staying still.
These two, combined with vision, make up the balance system.
In everyday living, we rely heavily on visual input to keep us upright. In sports, however, we are heavily reliant on operating and staying balanced without good visual input.
With all of the spinning, chaotic movements that happen throughout the course of a game, we need a robust vestibular and proprioceptive system.
Just like muscles, the vestibular and proprioceptive systems can get detrained if they’re not used and they can get much stronger if we challenge them and force them to adapt.
To challenge the vestibular system:
- Regularly perform and learn new gymnastic movements. These can include somersaults, backwards somersaults, cartwheels, handstands, headstands, etc.
- Include some log rolls for beginners who have a low baseline of athleticism and can’t even begin to safely attempt any of the above movements.
- Spin a lot. Do vert spins where you try to jump as high as you can and spin as much as you can in the air. Once you get good at those, do them on one foot.
To challenge the proprioceptive system:
- Stand on one foot often. Do different tasks while on one foot, like throwing a ball with a partner, reaching for objects, thumb wresting.
- To up the challenge here, close your eyes and stand on one foot while doing some of the tasks above.
- Also, stand on different surfaces. Really soft cushiony surfaces, really hard surfaces, slanted surfaces, bumpy surfaces, flat surfaces, and everything in between.
2) Crawl and climb
Kids in this age range can get basically all of the upper body strengthening they need from crawling and climbing. It’s also really helpful for improving global coordination.
Crawling works great when turned into a race or an obstacle course. Some possible options include:
- Tiger stalks
- Bear crawls
- Gator walks
- Crab walks
- Wounded coyotes
- Inchworms
Climbing doesn’t need to be overcomplicated:
- Forward monkey bars
- Backwards monkey bars
- Sideways climbs
- Obstacles that they have to pull themselves up onto
- Anything that they can safely climb is great
3) Skip, bound, and move in all types of new ways
Training movement is a lot like training an artificial intelligence system. If you train it on a specific set of training data, then it’s going to get really good at operating within the context of that data. But, if you ask it to do something that is even just slightly outside that scope, then it’s going to fail miserably.
If, however, you trained that AI system on a vast array of varying data sets, then it’s going to be able to draw novel and useful conclusions when it’s faced with new, strange tasks.
Movement and athleticism are the same way.
One of the most useful things you can teach an athlete in the 9-12 year old range is to learn how to learn. Keep challenging the brain’s ability to adapt and make new neural connections. That way, when they are asked to do something new or they get into a weird position in a game, their brain can figure it out and freestyle effectively.
This means you want to do things that they suck at. Do things that they have never done before and keep it fresh.
Some examples:
- Skips. All 7 million different kinds of skips. Skip high, skip low, skip far, skip fast, skip with different rhythms, etc.
- Bound. Scissor bounds, speed bounds, same side bounds, etc. Same as above, do them high, low, far, fast, etc.
- Footwork drills. These get a bad rap because “footwork” or “speed and agility” coaches have butchered them over the years. No, ladders and hex rings aren’t going to be the answer to make your kid faster. Long drawn out, choreographed routines that you have them practice 20 times aren’t going to make him more agile. BUT, if you challenge them by doing a few new types of footwork patterns a couple days per week, it does help his brain learn how to learn.
- Ladders
- Hex rings
- Line drills
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the value of playing multiple sports here.
Multiple sports provide unique movement requirements, which force the brain to stay agile. It also helps to reduce the amount of stress placed on the same body structures over and over again.
4) Jump on and over things
Jump training at this age shouldn’t be robotic and pretty.
It should consist of a lot of them trying to jump over things (safely, like breakaway hurdles), touch things high in the sky, or something along those lines.
Jump from one foot, from two feet, from R/L, from L/R.
See how far away from a 12” hurdle they can get and still jump over it from a bunch of different positions.
See how high they can dunk a bunch of different types of balls on a low rim.
5) Race people, chase people, and evade people
The best way to get faster is to race, chase, and run away from other kids who are the same speed, slightly slower, or faster.
The second best way is to race a clock and see how fast they can go.
It’s best to use all kinds of strange starting positions so they can naturally learn how to find good acceleration angles.
Some starting positions include:
- 2-point
- 3-point
- 4-point
- Falling start
- Push-up start
- Back roll
- Seat roll
- 1/2 kneel
- Full kneel
- Tall kneel
- Vert spin
- Mini pogo
- Rolling start
- Somersault start
Have them make up a bunch of weird positions to start out of. Let them make it fun.
Play a bunch of tag games. Do this in a straight line, in an open field, in an obstacle course. Let them explore, compete, and have fun.
6) Hit the major strength movements
The major strength movements are a squat, a hinge, a press, and a row. Here are a bunch of examples of each:
Pick one from each category each time that you train.
Reps should stay high and progress in volume, not necessarily weight. Think ranges of 3-4 sets of 6-12 reps.
7) Train the core like an athlete
I’d just suggest doing one anti-extension, one anti-rotation, and one anti-lateral flexion exercises each day that they train.
You can learn more here.
8) Isolate vulnerable/weak structures
If they have areas where they’ve been injured in the past or might have more risk of injuring in the future, it’s helpful to throw in some isolation exercises.
If they have big dreams of playing baseball, then some introduction to arm care (rotator cuff, serratus anterior, low trap, etc) work is a good idea.
If they play a ton of basketball and spend a lot of time in bulky shoes, getting some foot/ankle strengthening and ankle dorsiflexion work can prevent some issues down the road.
If they play soccer, spending some time to bulletproof the hip flexors, hamstrings, and groins can keep them from spending unnecessary time injured and sidelined.
Some additional common questions…
How often should they train?
Training two times per week should be good enough. If they really love doing all of that, then three times per week would be great as well.
Isn’t lifting dangerous for kids?
A quick thought on a real world example of how athlete development plays out
Two summers ago, Erin was the 3rd highest jumper in her grade on her high school team.
This summer, Erin jumps 5″ higher than anyone else in her grade.
How’d this happen?
Two years ago, I trained Erin’s entire volleyball team for the first time. We collected data on the first session. Two people in her class jumped higher than her. She worked really hard that summer, came to every session, and managed to edge one of the other girls out in our final testing to be the second highest jumper in her grade.
But, she wanted more. She signed up for individual training after that summer. She was the only one from her grade to do that.
Since then, Erin has been unbelievably committed. She shows up 2x per week. Every single week.
During high school season? She’s in our facility 2x per week.
During club season? She’s in our facility 2x per week.
There have been no times where we’ve bumped that up and had her come in 3-4x per week to accelerate progress, but there have also been no times where she’s taken a break.
Just consistent, intense, and strategic training 2x per week for years on end.
The progress hasn’t been linear. There have been peaks and valleys. We’ve dealt with, managed, and worked through injuries. But, the long-term trajectory trends upward and results in winning.
This is my 3rd summer with this team. With most of the team, it’s the same story. They work hard for the summer and their verts increase from pre to post testing.
Then, they stop training for the rest of the year and their verts revert back to baseline (or at best, slightly above).
Three steps forward, two steps back.
Meanwhile, Erin’s just constantly moving forward. No magic bullets. No quick fixes. Just consistently showing up and putting in intense and strategic work that results in the needle moving forward.
Two years ago, Erin was getting out-jumped by 2 other girls in her own grade.
Now, she’s out-jumping the second highest jumper by 5″.
All of the same girls are still there. Erin hasn’t gotten any taller. There’s not some hidden variable making the data seem better than it is. She just worked.
If you put your head down and went to work every single week for the next 2 years, what could you accomplish?
A couple of important things…
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- Everything in these newsletters and on our website is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice for you or you athlete. Consult directly with a healthcare professional.
Thanks so much for your help in spreading the word about athlete development!
Be >,
Zach
Dr. Zach Guiser, PT, DPT, CSCS