Training young athletes part 3: Paul Gamble, Simon Worsnop

If you want to get to an Olympics, or compete at the highest level, you need an early start on activity and all round athletic development. This week’s guest blogs by Frank Dick, Vern Gambetta and Roy Headey have given an insight into Training Young Athletes. Today, 2 more guest authors. 

Simon Worsnop is the national fitness adviser for the England Rugby Football Union and author of Rugby Games and Drills

“Train to be an all round athlete. Unless you are in an early specialisation sport this means participating in a number of activities.

Strength: this can be achieved through various forms of appropriate age specific resistance training, but other modalities such as gymnastics, wrestling, judo and climbing are all very useful.

If you want to build stamina via running or biking, then do them outside then you will also be working on balance and core stability.

If you are a team games player DO NOT just play your own sport; instead play a variety of racquet and invasion games. 

If you are talented, dedicated and lucky and do become a performance/professional player this will be when you at least 16; so until then try lots of activities, it will give you better life balance, potential interests for later in life AND you might discover you are better at or enjoy one of these more than your original preferred sport!!”

Dr Paul Gamble is the author of “Strength and conditioning for team sports” and is currently based in New Zealand.

‘Be mindful when you train. Training is preparation for competition, and this includes attention and concentration aspects: if you are sloppy and unfocussed when you train you will be prone to the same lapses when you compete.’ 

 If you wish to have an easy to follow guide to training young athletes, then click on the book cover to the right. I wrote this standing on the shoulders of giants.