Lesson: Don't Make Your Kids Train Too Hard Too Early

Coach Patrick

Another great series from the folks over at the Science of Sport blog. It's by no means a comprehensive review, and it's limited to CGS sports (centimeters, grams, seconds), but the review it pretty interesting and syncs well with my personal experience and belief that you can start some athletes too early.

Interesting to note that the "critical window" that separates the near-elites from elites is in the 18-21 age window, which is much later than most folks who promote a physiologial approach to development. By physiological, I mean that Tina's body is ready for sport when she's 15...the study cited here shows that starting her then would be premature.

Of course, there is the bias that maybe specfic development programs have --- as in they don't start training certain athletes at certain levels until they are college age -- but regardless I hope this is a good lesson to all those parents of 10 year old kids asking for marathon training plans!!!!

#1 - http://www.sportsscientists.com/2011/04/early-vs-late-specialization-when.html

#2 - http://www.sportsscientists.com/2011/04/specialization-training-volume-and.html

Paul Hough

I don't even have to read it because the evidence has already out there that high volume for young runners is counterproductive in the longterm. At risk of showing my age, in the late 80's the Garritson kids in SOCAL were burning up the roads. Running Times quit carrying their results because their high mileage program and over involved parents became very controversial. For example, at age 11, Carrie Garritson deceptively registered in the LA Marathon which had an age 18 min and finished in 2:49 at 14th OAF after leading through the half. James Garritson ran a 33:03 10K at age 11. I lived in SOCAL at the time and saw the kids, and the parents, in action in several races...these kids were not happy but dad was certain they were going to the Olympics. Ha, ha! Although Carrie went on to be the first High School athlete to compete in four consecutive Foot Locker XC champs, none of them did anything special later on. By college, the other kids had caught up and surpassed them. James ran a 15:15 5K in college...good, but he would have been lapped by the college big boys. That ties nicely with the critical window being 18-21, not 11-14.

An article on the kids from People Magazine in 1988 is still available at: http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20098911,00.html

A 2005 article from Running Times on youth running included a follow-up on James Garritson: http://www.runningtimes.com/Print.aspx?articleID=7364