Training Considerations for Youth
As most athletes are now into the pre-race phase of their training cycle; the question that seems to be asked of me the most is: "How should I be training my child or, how should my child be training for triathlon?" Most youth who compete in triathlon do so with little or no training. If they have some training, it is often being prescribed by a parent with little knowledge about training young triathletes. In some cases, it may even be done by a coach who has little understanding of youth coaching in this sport. Here are some of my thoughts, advice and recommendations to the above questions. First, we must understand the dynamics of youth versus adults. This is critical because children, especially our young ones under 13 or pre-pubescents, don't have the same physiological make up as an adults. Therefore, children should be trained in a different manner.
Interesting facts
Children, for the most part, seem to recover faster from intense physical exertion
than adults do in the same form of exercise. Research suggests that children can
recover quicker than adults primarily because they (children) can’t generate the
same amount of power as an adult; therefore, they have less to recover from following
an exercise.
It has also been found that children possess anaerobic (without oxygen)
power capacity lower than adults so their ability to recovery from high intensity
exercise is far superior to that of adults. Another difference between youth and
adults is the ability to go long distances. Children are naturally aerobic and are
better at burning fat than adults; which is why I suggest children’s training should
be more intense than long sessions. We want to build their ability to use the
glycolitic system (burn carbohydrates than the fatty acid system (burn fat) to improve
their overall fitness and ability to race fast. I don’t want to get too scientific
in this discussion so I will now address how I believe we should train our youth for
success now and in the future.
Endurance versus High Intensity
This has been a debate among some of the parents of the children that I have had the pleasure to work with over the years. Some parents believe, “ if my child can do a 5k, they should start to train for a 10K and if my child can win the local kid’s triathlons they should move to the longer distance adult races to keep their competitive edge.” Well, I disagree with this thought process primarily because of some of the things mention at the beginning of this article. Children should be training in a way that improves their speed and recovery; this is exactly what high intensity training does. On the other hand if a child is training to go long; essentially you are training the child to go slow. While a child is young we should focus on good technique; they should understand the “WHY” of what they are doing and then we should focus on their speed. Young athletes speed is something you want them to develop and increase as they develop into young adults. If you spend a great deal of time getting them to go long distances in their developmental years they tend to slow down to accommodate the distance and as they mature into young adults it is extremely difficult to develop the speed component that was neglected as a youth.
Recommendations for Training Youth
I would focus on general training first which includes good technique and as the young athlete develops incorporate speed and intensity into their workouts. This is more beneficial to the child than long endurance type training. If you can remember to have consistency, variability (which includes training the whole body), make the training progressive and add rest and recovery you will have a great start to a healthy form of training for the young triathlete. I always include a good warm up, drills (plyometrics and specific skills), a main set and recovery to include stretching in all of our training sessions. Plyometrics is a type of exercise training designed to produce fast, powerful movements, and improve the functions of the nervous system, generally for the purpose of improving performance in a specific sport. It is also used to increase the speed or force of muscular contractions, often with the goal of increasing the power. To build good balance, strength and stabilizer muscles incorporation plyometric training.
I wish you all the very best this season and hope to see you at the races. Train for speed.
Coach Boris is a youth elite and junior specific coach. He is the director and
head coach for T3Multisports Elite a USAT High Performance Team. He is featured
coach for Training Peaks.com and has written youth and junior specific training
plans available at www.trainingpeaks.com/coachBoris.
He can be contacted via email at:
Coach Boris