Super Athletes. Can they be developed?

I found a very interesting 8 page article today in the New York Times. The link is here:

http://tinyurl.com/2z9vcg
[Open in new window]

I have not read the whole article yet but I have read much of it. I have read a summary about it and the article basically discusses how Tennis athletes are developed in Russia, specifically Moscow. The author actually went to visit the Spartak Tennis Academy and see for himself how the athletes are trained. The title is “How to Grow a Super Athlete”.

Brian Grasso, the founder of the IYCA or International Youth Conditioning Association sent an e-mail today discussing this very article. Here is an excerpt from Grasso’s critique:

“Although I understand that many people feel as though the apparent
cultural differences between Russia and the United States in terms of adopting a ‘skill-based’ developmental structure to youth sports, is what accounts for our inability to create such a worthwhile system, but to me, it has less to do with societal factors and much more to do with coaching talent.

European coaches (especially in places like Russia) are vastly superior to U.S. coaches in terms of understanding nervous system plasticity, talent identification, multilateral development and pedagogical science.

More over, the best and most talented coaches in North America, almost 100% of the time, work with our more elite athletes – this leaves volunteer Moms and Dads to work with our most precious athletic commodity: children.”

Head on over to the New York Times article to read for yourself about how youn g athletes are trained in other countries and how we can learn from them. This is in fact the way we train our young athletes and non-athletes in the IYCA and “Youth in Fitness”.

http://tinyurl.com/2z9vcg
[Open in new window

Have a great day!.

Todd

Advertisement