The need to teach a developmental age child the importance of reading and writing or the importance of basic addition and subtraction skills has never come into question. In fact the exact opposite is true, if we were to deny a developmental age child these things it would be considered detrimental to the child’s development. We can take this out of the educational realm and apply it to sports.
It is not thought of as excessive to take a development age baseball player and give them considerable amounts of lessons on batting, fielding or throwing. In fact if these things are not done it is considered detrimental to the child’s development as a baseball player.
It is along this thought process that I question why it is considered excessive or not necessary to teach a developmental age athlete the proper biomechanics of movement. With a basic understanding of how their bodies move and operate you can greatly increase an athletes over all athletic ability. Proper movement has shapes, angles, force application and rules that can be followed and learned. Movement ie Speed is a skill that can be taught and can be improved by said developmental aged athlete. It does however take a coach that understands the shapes, angles, force applications and the rules to be able to teach them to the athletes. Just like in an educational setting an athlete can learn from a teacher/coach that knows how to teach them.
When a developmental aged athlete is taught the proper fundamentals or has the proper foundation laid it will carry over into all of their athlete endeavors as they age and progress in their athletic career. At JASAT, we take our role as the provider of these foundations very seriously and work to ensure that all athletes that enter our doors leave more capable of a higher level of athletic performance than before they entered.
Speed is a learned skill.
Jaxson
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