Ages 7 to 8: One or two practices per week of about 30 minutes each, usually during the summer, focusing on enjoying swimming and working on basic techniques such as breathing and balance in the water.The mother of a young member of a triathlon team comes up to one of the coaches and says, “Why are you training her to play soccer? I want her to be an Olympic triathlete!” The coach, who is an expert in adolescent physiology, responds, “You’re right. If your child is going to be an Olympian, she will never have to kick a soccer ball during a race or learn the skill of stopping the ball on her chest to avoid touching it with her hands. But, she is learning how to respond quickly at the age when it is easily developed. Imagine your child is in the final qualifying race for the next Olympic Games. She is on the bike, and her rival from another country forcibly nudges her from the side. Because she learned to balance while moving and controlling a soccer ball at age 6, her body will remember that at age 24.”
Developing young triathletes is about more than teaching children to swim, bike, and run. Most athletes who are successful professionals as adults were not specialists in their sport from an early age. At 10 years old, Matt Chrabot was not on a developmental triathlon team. Instead, he was playing hockey with his friends and delivering papers once a week in suburban Chicago (Chrabot, 2011). In fact, after he was done with his paper route, he would grab his hockey stick and his rollerblades and pedal over to his friend’s house. At the time, he was far more interested in building forts, playing video games, and being outside. Matt’s family eventually moved to the east coast and while Matt was swimming on the high school swim team, he was also finding time for surfing. The first hint of specialization came during Matt’s senior year. The team had a new coach that year who was tough and demanded the best from his swimmers. After swim practice the swim coach had the young athletes running two to three miles. This means that not until 17 years old was Matt becoming a triathlete. Before that, he was a kid who loved sports with parents who encouraged him to be athletic, which frequently turns out is a winning combination in the world of professional athletics.
In this chapter, we examine how to develop young triathletes in the order of practical importance to their growth as humans. First, children must be children. Then, they can become athletes. Last, they can specialize in a sport. We also call on current triathletes to reflect on their early development, revealing the foundation on which their successes stand.
Today, with the typically overprogrammed lives that youths lead, it is easy to lose sight of what it means to be a child first and an athlete or musician or actor second. What is fascinating about young people is a natural drive to play and compete that is often lost on adults. Being outside and playing with friends in an unstructured environment gives children the opportunities to develop skills on their own and be reinforced for those talents they may naturally possess while uncovering unforeseen ones. Let’s take Olympian Sarah Haskins as an example. Before Sarah had chosen triathlon as her sport, she would constantly seek out competition (Haskins, 2011). She recalls when she was 8 years old, she would challenge her high-school-age cousin to a race around the neighborhood. She would be able to keep close to him up to the finish line, where she would start throwing elbows to ensure the win. They do not allow that sort of behavior at the Olympics, but the competitiveness that was fostered when she was young in those races around the neighborhood, when she challenged her siblings to a race to the car at the grocery store, or when she started a game of tag at the bus stop all shaped the athlete she is today.
A simple game of tag that children learn to play at a very young age will develop an aerobic foundation, anaerobic strength, speed, agility, and coordination as well as or possibly better than any organized training activity even the best coaches could produce. Why is this? Because the game of tag introduces real-world unpredictability and competition. The children are left with two choices: (1) get tagged or (2) avoid being tagged by being faster and more agile than the child who is it. The game is simple, with rules that are easy to follow, and the objective is clear. Of course, a coach or other adult supervisor is vital to ensure the safety of the competitors. Nonetheless, with very young athletes, the focus should be on enjoying being active. In fact, before the developmental age of about 7, a prudent coach will expose athletes to a broad range of athletic, skill-based, and tactics-based activities from soccer to swimming and from bowling to chess.
Athletes who train through their adolescent development will go through three very broad stages as they progress toward high performance. Exercise physiologists have special names for each of these stages, but they are fairly easy to understand. Each stage corresponds to different age ranges in each sport, but the principles remain the same.
At this stage, young people are having fun being active and exploring all sports. Children will find the sports that are reinforcing to them through healthy competition in play. Here, they will learn general athletic movements that will lay the foundation for progress by setting up optimal biomechanics and energy pathways.
Once young people begin to get involved in more organized sports such as soccer clubs, swim teams, tennis leagues, and baseball leagues, they will begin to learn skills that are specific to each sport. These skills will go beyond generalized athletic movements to more specialized techniques that prepare them to get stronger, faster, and more agile once they decide on the sport or sports they would like to pursue further. As young people progress through this stage, each sport will get more and more competitive. Additionally, this stage for most sports occurs during puberty, which means that athletes will be maturing at different rates throughout the specialization stage. It is important for young people to specialize in a sport or sports while they are in a good environment for healthy competition and proper development.
This is the final stage in the development of an adolescent athlete. This is where we see athletes reach the highest levels of sport. However, athletes will be able to perform at the highest level of the sport only if they have progressed through the former stages by being an active child, then being an athletic adolescent, and then choosing a sport at which to excel. All the techniques and skills the athlete learned as a young person will be utilized.
It is important to keep in mind that not every young person who is in sports will one day become an elite athlete. However, it is also important to understand that athletics are wonderful tools to teach young people about the importance of lifelong fitness, enjoyment of an active lifestyle, and the reality of competition in everyday life. That level of maturity will carry over into all aspects of a young person’s life including school, family, relationships, and other extracurricular activities.
As each child progresses to a stage of early specialization, many parents who understand athletics will begin to put their children in programs such as soccer leagues, karate dojos, and swim teams. These are wonderful places for young athletes to foster great skills. As youth triathlon becomes more popular, there will be an increased demand for programs for these athletes. Soon, these triathlon programs will likely be part of the aforementioned sampling of popular sports for young people. This means there will be increased opportunity for young people to have access to our sport and gain the skills it provides. With knowledgeable and practical coaches, young athletes will be able to join a triathlon team at an early age and progress to any athletic activity they choose. Finding a good coach at this stage is critical. Good coaches will know how to appropriately develop young people to participate and excel in any sport. Great coaches will know how to appropriately develop young people to excel outside of sport as well.
All dreams and aspirations of athletic glory aside, all young triathletes must be able to swim, even in the most basic sense, and be comfortable in the water. Of course, this chapter is about more than making sure little Johnny and Sally can swim to the other side of the pool, but the discussion would be incomplete without mentioning what basic aquatic skills are necessary to prevent drowning. From an early age, children need to be exposed to water and should be able to safely play and enjoy being in and around it. This means children should attend swim lessons as soon as they are able (typically when they are potty trained). Swim lessons not only give the child and parents the confidence to be around water but also give the child another medium in which to play with friends, encouraging fun and competition.
According to Bob Seebohar, one of the foremost experts on childhood development in triathlon, practicing swimming can begin as early as age 7 in both males and females. From this time, athletes can be learning the skills and drills that lay the foundation for competitive swimming. Most professional triathletes today will tell you that knowing how to swim well at a young age is crucial. In fact, most age-group triathletes would probably agree that learning how to swim at an early age is critical for becoming a successful triathlete. Not learning swimming technique when young can be a real pain when trying to learn at 45. For those age-groupers who are reading this, know that it “happens to the best of us,” however. It is actually fairly common to see world-class runners come to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs to train with the resident triathletes in hopes of success in triathlon. They assume they can just pick up the swim in a few months or a year and be competitive. In spite of their often phenomenal athletic abilities, these athletes typically find that because they did not establish swimming technique early, the boundaries to learning it after they are fully developed are immense and many times insurmountable.
Of the three sports, swimming is the one that needs to be mastered first, but it offers huge benefits for the budding athlete. While swimming, children lay a foundation for a powerful aerobic engine. A good coach will center short practices on technique so that later in the athlete’s development, the aerobic engine will not be too powerful for the body. To draw on a metaphor, if Ferrari were to put all its research and monies into a great engine, but did not bother to spend any resources on a solidly built frame and chassis, then the car would fall apart before the engine even put out any high power. Young athletes need to establish great stroke mechanics from an early age to prepare for when their bodies are ready to be fast.
As athletes get older, training and practicing shift closer and closer to specialization. Although it is ultimately the coach’s decision how to structure his team, generally speaking, young swimmers are typically grouped by a careful combination of chronological age (time since birth) and developmental age (physiological maturity). According to the USA Triathlon youth and junior coaching manual, youth athletes (ages 7 to 15) are grouped in four age groups (USA Triathlon, 2011). Each age group has a specific focus:
Ages 7 to 8: One or two practices per week of about 30 minutes each, usually during the summer, focusing on enjoying swimming and working on basic techniques such as breathing and balance in the water.
Ages 9 to 10: Two or three practices per week of about 30 minutes each, usually during the summer, focusing on enjoying swimming, mastering basic techniques, and adding more advanced techniques such as diving.
Ages 11 to 12: Two or three practices per week of about 30 to 45 minutes each, usually year-round, where sets can get a bit longer while still focusing on technique development and mastery.
Ages 13 to 15: Three or four practices per week of about 45 to 60 minutes each, year-round, focusing on technique and energy system development.
With all categories, but especially with the 13- to 15-year-olds, having a good coach to guide the learning of each athlete is very important. During the 13 to 15 age range, athletes are experiencing the height of pubertal changes. This is also where critical development takes place, and having a coaching professional who is knowledgeable about athlete development is vital to the future success of the athletes.
It is practically required that all children learn to ride a bicycle, even to simply play in the neighborhood. It is also nearly a given that children will participate in an informal bicycle race “to the end of the street” or “back home from the park” not long after learning to ride a bike. However, it is rare that a child obtains the necessary skill set to be able to stay upright in a pack of 20 other riders when the rider next to him swerves to avoid a pothole. And this is not solely for draft-legal triathlon racing. Many nondrafting racers, who may have had no one around them, have crashed because of improper bike-handling skills that were not obtained as a young athlete. Before specialization can begin in the sport of cycling, proper techniques and confidence in abilities must be learned. Generally these skills include, but are not limited to, the following:
Grasping and drinking from a water bottle while riding in a straight line
Shifting gears
Riding around and through obstacles
Cornering (making sharp turns)
One-hand riding
Riding in different hand positions (hoods versus drops on a road bike; hoods versus aerobars on a time-trial bike)
Cycling is a relatively late-specialization sport. This means athletes will not see much benefit and may even see negative consequences from specializing too early. According to Tudor Bompa, who wrote Total Training for Young Champions (Bompa, 1999), among other influential books in modern exercise physiology literature, athletes should not begin practicing cycling until the age of 12. In most cases, children will know how to ride a bike long before they turn 12 and will likely experiment with many of the previously listed skills. Although these are practical abilities that riders of any level would benefit from having, many adult athletes have trouble with them. Therefore, as young people join triathlon clubs, going beyond simply racing with their friends, they will certainly develop fitness but will also have the skills to ride fast and safely as they race more and more. This way, they reach a point where they can begin to specialize by age 16 and reach their performance peaks after age 18 or when puberty is completed.
Imagine yourself at 8 years old. Think about what you were doing. Think about the games you were playing and the activities in which you were participating. What did you love to do? What did you love to do with your friends? If I were to guess, I would imagine the answer was not “I was out with my training partners doing a 3-hour run; we were practicing our nutrition, and we were having a great time going slow and completing the distance we needed to finish our upcoming marathons in under 4 hours.”
In fact, I do not even need to guess because I know the answer to those questions in a very general sense. At 8, there is still recess at school, and you were likely out playing on the jungle gym, you may have been playing tag, and your parents may have put you in an after-school soccer league. While playing in the after-school soccer league, you and the rest of your team chased the soccer ball around the field like a swarm of pushy reporters around a movie star. But what happened when you misbehaved while at practice? More likely than not, your coach had you run laps for punishment. And if you were instructed to run those laps, it’s not likely the coach required you to do intervals or anything interesting while you ran. Fortunately, this sort of punishment is changing as coaches understand more about adolescent psychology, but there is still a prevailing idea that running is associated with punishment. Ask any adult who is not active (and even some who are) how they feel about distance running or maybe even running in general. At least some of those people will tell you it “sounds like torture.”
To get young people to embrace running as an enjoyable activity, it must actually be enjoyable. Again, this does not mean every running training session must be filled with fun and games, but there should be a healthy balance between fun, competition, skill development, and learning so that as many young athletes as possible are reinforced for running performance.
It is vital that parents and coaches see a young athlete not as a current high-performance competitor but as a “26-year-old in the making” according to internationally renowned running expert Bobby McGee (McGee, 2011). McGee cites the constant possibility of burnout from running too hard, too much, and for too long without positive outcomes. For these and for many other physiological reasons that are beyond the scope of this chapter, running has the latest specialization time frame of the three disciplines. In fact, according to Tudor Bompa, athletes should not even start practicing the sport of running until about age 13 (Bompa, 1999). This means they will not start specializing in the sport until about age 16, while high performance is not expected until at least age 22.
“I thought it was the coolest thing in the world that I got my name in the paper,” said two-time Olympian Hunter Kemper (Kemper, 2011). He won his first IronKids race in 1986 and was thrilled to see his name highlighted in the local paper in Orlando, Florida. Getting that kind of recognition is what let him see he was really good at what he was doing. Does this mean it should be the objective of all parents to see that their child gets her name in the paper for every little thing? Absolutely not. That level of recognition needs to be earned, according to Hunter. He recounted the story of the first racing bicycle his father bought him. He remembers knowing his father would need a guarantee that Hunter would be putting in the time and the effort to make his investment worthwhile. “This was no cheap bike,” Hunter recalled, “and I wanted to make my parents proud.” The value of hard work was not lost on Hunter, and that is something his parents instilled in him from a young age. Hunter’s father wanted Hunter to understand that if he was going to do something, he had better do it 100 percent. That early familiarization with what success means has helped make Hunter Kemper the world-class triathlete he is today.
Success plays a tremendous role in the development of any person, but the point that is often lost in today’s society is that success still must be earned. It is not enough to simply reward young athletes for every effort made if the objective is to improve and not be complacent with current performance. That interpretation of positive reinforcement is unfortunately oversimplified. It is correct to say that positive reinforcement for a success, however it is measured, will elicit an increased frequency in the behavior or behaviors that led to the success (Luiselli & Reed, 2011). Let’s take a look at what Hunter was saying. First, Hunter was put in a variety of sport programs that let him explore at which activities he could excel. He had met a fair bit of success being a swimmer and even playing soccer. But when his name was published in the paper, he realized something: “Hey, I’m pretty good at this.” This, he said “bred his excitement” for doing triathlons. Young athletes will find what is reinforcing to them, whether it’s because they are good at the sport, or they enjoy it because that’s what all their friends are doing, or because there is something intrinsic about the sport that is reinforcing to them.
Here is where development comes in. It may be up to coaches and parents, along with their young athletes, to answer some tough questions. For instance, let’s assume you know a child, let’s call him James. James is 12 years old and is swimming on a local swim team, is playing soccer for his middle school, and has great grades in his academic classes. On the swim team, he regularly performs in the top 10 percent of the events in which he is entered and has won a heat in the last two meets in which he swam. Let’s also say his coach is good, but she has a very large team, which makes it quite challenging to focus on individual athletes. His middle school soccer team, on the other hand, is ranked about halfway down the list in the district. James’s coach is always applauding him for being the best player on the team because he is a great runner and is always trying to get better. However, his teammates lack the same dedication, and because of recent tax shortcomings in the county, the school is cutting back on funding for the soccer team. James often gets frustrated with how the team performs because he knows they could do better. Additionally, he’s an A student, but there are quite a few other students who outperform him on some tests in the classroom. His teacher gives more attention to those who get perfect scores than to those, like James, who usually miss just one or two questions.
Now you know some basic facts about the environment in which James is spending some of his formative years. It’s hard to predict which direction James will eventually pursue with the most vigor. He performs well at all these disciplines but is not the best at any one of them.
Now let’s continue the story a little bit. One day James comes home from school and tells his mother he beat his best friend in a neighborhood bike race even though his best friend is really fast. Seeing how excited he is, his mother suggests that James enter the youth triathlon that’s taking place in a few weeks near their home. James, however, is reluctant. He says he doesn’t have any friends to do it with. He would rather keep playing for his soccer team because that’s what all his good friends are doing. He is reinforced for being with his teammates because even though they are not the best, they have a great time together.
Consider for a moment the effect the environment has on a young athlete. Think back to yourself at age 12. Try to remember the aspects of your life that you enjoyed, the ones that motivated you. Think also about aspects you did not enjoy or that made you uncomfortable. What is important for the development of James and any young person is the environment of which they are a part. Once you have identified what was enjoyable or motivating and what was not enjoyable, think about why those qualities were attributed to those aspects of your life. Now, put yourself in James’s shoes.
There are countless possibilities for how he and his family will proceed. He could continue to be the best on a mediocre soccer team and may never get the chance to play in high school or any further because his team is not one that many would notice. He may do very well on a few math tests and in a competition, and his teacher gives him more attention. He could also do the youth triathlon, win, and then be completely sold on becoming a triathlete. Any of these possibilities could be true, as could countless others. The takeaway message is that young people will respond to what is around them. They will shy away from what they do not enjoy and will gravitate toward what they do enjoy. Yes, it is ultimately up to the young person which activities to pursue, but those decisions come from experiences within her environment. It is up to parents, teachers, coaches, friends, siblings, or anyone else in the life of a young person to set up the best environment for the development of a child, then an athletic young person, and then an athlete.
Physiologically, young people are generalists before they are specialists. Building a great athletic foundation is critical for eventual success as an athlete at any level. Allowing each child to love being athletic is the best way to solidify success when he eventually does choose his athletic specialization. No matter what role you play in a child’s life, especially as it pertains to athletics, the basic ideas are the same: Provide and foster the best environment possible. Elite-level athletics requires the same dedication, passion, and attention to detail that are valued highly in society for achievement in any field. Those values, if instilled from an early age, will give any child the tools for success in whichever pursuit he or she chooses.