The Risks to Early Developers in Sport

I get contacted by a lot of parents of young athletes that are experiencing a decline in their performances now that they are in their late teens. Most of the time, these players fall into one or both of the following categories:

- early physical developers that excelled when they were younger and found it easy to dominate their sports
- 'natural' talents that have developed technical skills far faster than any of their peers

Early physical and technical development are huge advantages in youth sport, but there are risks to a young person who has natural advantages. Such as:

1. Not learning to put 100% effort into their physical development because they are already bigger, faster, more agile and stronger than their peers.
2. Never needing to develop technical skills due to their physical advantages
3. Their technical ability means they can always work smart and not hard
4. Being rewarded for outcomes such as scoring and winning without looking at the process
5. Creating a sole identity as an exceptional athlete at a young age

In my experience, these potential hurdles can be overcome by:

1. Playing multiple sports (get a prop forward on the squash court)
2. Bio-banding (get early physical developers to compete against athletes of a similar size, build, speed, strength etc)
3. Reflect - am I doing everything I can to improve? or am I doing just enough to be better than my peers and opponents?
4. Creating match-ups in training that pits the best talents or most physical against each other
5. Reward the process, effort and intention based on that individuals capability
6. Support young athletes as people and involve them in diverse enriching experiences outside of their sport

Side note:
In my personal experience as a young athlete, I was an early physical developer and I felt that this stopped me from developing skills as a rugby player in my formative years of playing the sport (I just ran it straight until players were big enough to tackle me). However, I was a far better Waterpolo player and played men's Waterpolo from 15 years old which made a massive impact on the skills I developed.

Supporting young talent needs to be intentional and intelligent. There are far too many young people that talk about what could have been because their coaches, parents and they themselves didn't know how to maximise what they had*.

*There are hundreds of coaches and parents I have spoken to that know exactly what they are doing and are absolutely incredible at developing and supporting young people.