Aaron King (00:00):

Welcome back to the podcast. We are King sports. I'm Aaron King, coach Bob King. And last week we talked about youth programming, youth training, and we got to talk about that. We, we left a lot out there and so we wanted to come back and revisit some of it and expand, go maybe a little bit more past the implementation stages, but some of the pitfalls that you can find things to look out for them. So when we talk about youth development, youth training, what is the number one that comes to mind? And if you don't have it off the top of your head, but you want to list it, number one, pitfall, you gotta be careful of

Coach Bob King (00:35):

Stress is cumulative. And that's, that's the rule of training. Stress is cumulative. So more is not better. And this is all the same thing. However, you want to word it more is not better. Stress is chemo live too much is going to break you sooner or later. Just it's, it's a matter of rotating stressors, more than anything else because one of the things we run into and this is very big and there's a book that I recommend called the sports gene. And there's this I'm going to overlap a bunch of little subtopics here, like the 10,000-hour rule. Then if you don't start by the age of there are all these somewhat mythological topics out there or answers out there, the 10,000-hour rule has been looked at a lot that if you don't get 10,000 hours of playing the cello or practicing the violin or, or, you know, doing this sport, then you won't make it to that level. Yes and no, unless you're very gifted. Yes and no, unless you're very gifted. So some of them just come out and it's a boom, you pick it up. It's like what? It's just been, it's been proven in both directions. And some people need more than 10,000.  Bob King can practice the guitar for 50,000 hours. I'm going to be maybe average at best, but I love to play. So, my enthusiasm and love to play the guitar is not, you know deterred by the lack of thousands of hours,

Aaron King (02:07):

Quality of life. Like we talked about a few weeks ago, like the whole stress development enjoyment, if you like playing basketball and it gets you moving, you don't have to be an engineer.

Coach Bob King (02:15):

Go ahead. So we need to get that. That's a whole nother subject all of a sudden, but the point is the problem with the young athletes is the push is too, the push is too hard sometimes. And so what we run into and I've seen this and it's dealt with it at we talked about starting and doing things at like six, eight, nine years old. Well, what I've seen is in the 12 to 14 year age on some of the athletes that are when you say year-round everything's year-round, I mean, football has, you know, fall season, spring training, summer workouts, but it changes the stressors change in the sense, but baseball, soccer, tennis, or sports, that example that it's the sports nonstop, you practice soccer, baseball, and tennis. And so what I have seen over the years, our stress fractures in these just into the 12 to 14 year age, because they've done so much, the growth plate got sabotaged and they have a stress fracture because it's just done too much because in the, in the, whatever you call in the pursuit of excellence, they just did more than their body could handle.

Coach Bob King (03:26):

Some of that may be because they lacked the strength. You know, their conditioning is good because they're playing the sport, but the strength wasn't there to be able to handle the stressor of repetitive, repetitive, repetitive activity on the elbow, for example, baseball and tennis, the knees and hips and soccer. And so what we're saying is make sure you build in time for rest. Recovery is just a much, and I use the non-scientific phrase, absorb the training, which I'm not so sure isn't scientific because the neuromuscular system has to, to recover, but it stored what you did. The activity you've done is stored in there. Let me give you an example.

Coach Bob King (04:09):

Many moons ago in the NBA season, they had the all-star weekend and you had a three-point thing and the all-star game, but you had the legends game. And these guys the old-timers all-star game was phenomenal to watch these guys in their sixties and seventies can't run can't jump, but you would not be, you would not believe how well they could still shoot the ball because the neuromuscular pattern had been imprinted in. The keyword is imprinted. So as kids are learning their sport, the nervous system is being imprinted. The motor unit nerve patterns, the motor patterns are being learned. And so if you take a break and rest and recover, everything freshens up, the nervous system gets fresh. The muscles get fresh and you can go out and do that better. And so over time in youth sports for example, in our sovereign state of Texas where I've had baseball players and tennis players come in in the summer and, you know, coming to work out with me and do speed training.

Coach Bob King (05:11):

And I've sent them home. They come in just wilted because they've been on the court or on the field and they're just worn out. And so it's like, the best you can do is run as fast as you're already are driving in the car, coming over. So just skip it and I'll see you later because fresh is best. And so if you just keep hammering away, trying to get that whatever magic hour of training in your kid will break. And so that's something that has to be taken care of to watch for over-training, whatever you want to call it. Overtraining overuse, stress-induced. Any of those kinds of things need to be watched.

Aaron King (05:49):

There are a few pieces there. I want to extract, you know, you talk about the imprinting. I think that goes to show the importance of learning proper technique, because if you don't get in there, if you don't if you're not getting, if, if they learn bad habits, it's you look at the Tim Tebow throwing motion. And some of these guys that have things that are not right, and some basketball players that have just the ugliest shots might go in, but they could be better if they had the proper technique. The other thing that I heard there were baseball and tennis, and I think of imbalance, you know, the kids that are on the court that are on the field and they got a single-arm going their dominant hand. They come in and they look physically stronger on one side so that

Coach Bob King (06:34):

We've seen the off-arm side of the body have injuries because it couldn't fight the pool of the dominant side. That's not at all unusual. It's not common necessarily, but to have a, well, I thought you were right-handed well, my left shoulder's hurting. Well, there can be a problem there. And it's, it's not surprising if that occurs. Another thing that goes on it has to be watched for is that when you, okay, so coaches have their, their phrases and I'm just going to not go through them and give the one that's I think the most accurate, and that is practice makes permanent. So, you know, if you practice poorly, you practice wrongly, then don't, you're headed down a bad path. And I coach track and field for a long time. And so in the field events, they are technical.

Coach Bob King (07:23):

You know, it's not just a matter of being the fastest strongest person because you know, in, in the, say the throws, the shot and disc is you have to have speed in the ring, not just, you know, big, raw strength. So the biggest bench press is not going to throw the shot, put, or disk is the furthest you had, Oh, no, not at all speed in the ring. And so I have sent, you know, throwers home. I said, okay, we're done. You know, we might be out there 30 minutes. Well, coach, I need no, you're fine. Don't worry about it. We're not looking very good. So we're going to live to fight another day. And so we can go do other training. We have, you know, speed work and so forth. But if you are practicing poorly, shut it down. It's not like we're going to do this until you get it right. There's a good chance. That's not going to happen.

Aaron King (08:09):

You know, I don't want to throw in here real quick. Cause you said, shut it down rest. We talked about sleep a lot. But there's a study about mice that were doing amazing and the part of the brain that was stimulated while doing the maze. That same part was it was performing the same function in their sleep at something like 10 X, a hundred. I don't know what the number was, but a lot. So that's what we do. It's why you come back the next day, say you're playing the guitar. And all of a sudden that song that you were trying to get, it's easier the next day that with the snappers that I, that I've trained, they come back and they, they build upon the day before. And so I think that's a really important part. I want to emphasize and hear you emphasize on or in your own way, do not force the bad technique. Let's, let's shut it down, or let's make sure we're ending on a note that when you go to sleep when you go to rest, you're processing the right information,

Coach Bob King (09:08):

You can't underemphasize visualization, and it's been looked at a million different ways. Let me, I have an example that I think is very important. Doesn't matter. I believe it was a study at LSU in 1983. There was a study on powerlifters versus weightlifters. Now let me define all that powerlifters. Do the bench, press squat and deadlift weightlifters are the guys in the Olympics, the power clean and the snatch and clean and jerk. And so powerlifting is really what the Olympics are because you had to have a lot of power to do that. So that's all verbiage. What they did is they studied the antics. And so the powerlifters, if you ever go into a powerlifting meet, they're yelling at the bar that you yelling at the weight, they're yelling in each ear of the lifter, and they're just going berserk.

Coach Bob King (10:00):

You watch the Olympics or any Olympic competition. You see that guy or woman standing over the bar and they're like, are you there? You gotta, you gotta lift this weight while they're almost tranced. And so what they're doing is they're centering, they're calming. And they found that with the powerlifters, they of course had a spike in blood pressure, spike and spike in heart rate, and probably not any greater chance of success to live on the Olympic lifters. They had a drop in heart rate, a drop in blood pressure and just as equal, if the not better chance of success in their lift, because, they channeled their energy into what they were doing. They were seeing the lift, being the lift, whatever you want to call it, but they were, are being technically correct in their mental preparation. And so there's a lot to be said about as far as training young athletes are teaching them how to, okay.

Coach Bob King (10:51):

Now relax, just see the follow through on your shot, see the follow through on your stroke. Just, you know, see the ball come off the pitcher's hand, that kind of thing. And so it's not abstract. It's not the whole of your program, but it is of significant  importance in your program. How you approach coaching and living them, see that, you know, it's, it's in your mind because I tell people all the time, the distance from the ear to the brain, to the part of the body I'm working with as far as movement, as far as running and arm and leg is a long, long way. And so we have to find ways to crack that distance code or whatever, to make sure that the technique is imprinted, that the technique is made permanent and the technique is made. Correct.

Aaron King (11:40):

It's funny you say  that, that long-distance, and you think of even at the pro level, when let's, let's say Steph Curry's ankles off, or someone who is a finesse shooter, who has that muscle memory and that, that, you know, the imprinted, you know, stroke, whatever, if there's a, if there's something off, then whatever you have, that's imprinted that you've done a thousand times, that subtle thing, that quad that might be off the ankle that might be throwing you off. It's a whole thing you have to adjust to. And when you start dealing with over-training and not rest and recovery, you're putting the body in a position where it's not able to imprint the right motion you're having with snappers. We would always say, it's a set of one, you know, cause if you, if you go rip off 30 snaps and they're all over the place and I'm like, well, what are you actually memorizing here? So let's reset each time and memorize the proper thing, do it over and over again. So I think that's an interesting point about the distance it has to travel your body being physical, right. And then getting the right, right.

Coach Bob King (12:42):

Yes. And it's all about preparation. And so when it comes time to that moment and you got to make the play, the hit the shot, it's all about that preparation. So, you know, you hear it a lot in athletes. It's like, I've, I've trained my whole life for this moment. Well, that's it it's that moment. And so all the plays or whatever moves you made up to that spot or up to that moment or based on the preparation that was proper to make sure that practice became permanent.

Speaker 3 (13:15):

Renelle liquid. We're about to wrap, okay, I got my game. I wasn't gonna make it.

Coach Bob King (13:25):

So just, you know, being a smart athlete, you know, you can be an individual who's in the driveway taking shots or free throws, just be smart enough to know when to call it. You know, there's a degree and we'll get to this maybe some other time, but there's a degree of truth to like, you know, practice or do it when you're tired. So you can execute when you're tired, but I'm not, if you're learning a skill, I don't think so. Practice is with a team that might be the time and place, but when you're working on a specific skill, maybe not so much, yeah.

Aaron King (13:59):

I've never been a fan of practicing pressure as I like to call it. You know, my whole philosophy there is practice, perfect. Build a bubble around that and then take that into the pressure environment. Don't practice pressure, don't practice, anxiety. You have to learn. It's kind of like those Zen, the kind of what you see in mixed martial arts, taking this, this piece into situations, that's that you're able to calm your heart rate, even in a war where we're shooting in hunting, you have to try to keep the heart rate down and to be able to be on target. So that's another, another thing I think folks get wrong is, you know when you're in the backyard, five seconds left, just practice hitting the shot every time. Yeah.

Coach Bob King (14:42):

Just make that, that just make that you, you don't care what, what the situation is because what happens is when you get to a certain level, you just, you take yourself

Aaron King (14:52):

Out of that. Everything ran, you slow down, you can't prepare for everything. No, there was a game where we played at Marshall and I was not prepared for the Facebook stalking that some of the fans in the student section did on us. You can't prepare for everything. There are things that are going to come up that are, that are frightening. That is hilarious. So you can't practice for every situation. So practice Zen practice. You're perfect. You for you. That's let's do that. That'll be enough. All right. Well, that's all we got today talking about some of the pitfalls in youth training, check out our last few podcasts. It's been a good series of stress development and things like that. And if you're not already@kingsportstraining.com, visit us there. We have training programs. Everything that we do in the gym is online. Our mission and goal here is to make sure professional sports training is available to everyone worldwide, whether it's our free programs or just a cost-effective approach to putting all of this training online. So everyone, at least we're trying to make sure everyone has access to it there. And so if you want social media content, coach Kings at coach Bob King we're putting a lot out on Instagram and YouTube. And then same for me  @DeepSnap, I have a very different type of content that I'm putting out, but that's where we're at. And we'll talk to you next time.