Young Athlete Training

Young Athlete Training Our expert coaches and specialist facility provide a pathway for children to improve their strength,

26/08/2026

A skater squat is just a squat variation.

But what a young athlete can demonstrate through an exercise like this can tell us a lot about their physical capabilities.

Strength, stability, balance, co-ordination and mobility/ good range of motion.

These are all qualities we want to develop in young athletes, not simply so they can perform an impressive exercise, but because they underpin how effectively they can produce, control, and tolerate forces during sport.

And we don’t start with the end result.

We can begin with double-leg squat variations to develop basic strength, control and movement competency.

From there, we can progressively introduce single-leg exercises, challenging athletes in different positions and directions to develop greater unilateral strength and stability.

Balance challenges can add another layer.

Then jumping, landing and “sticking” landings can teach young athletes to control the braking forces effectively — taking those physical qualities into faster, more dynamic movements.

The important part is that there is a progression.

Your young athlete can start at an appropriate level and gradually work towards more challenging movements as their strength and competency improve.

And these are improvements they can actually see.

Better balance, stability, strength and co-ordination which l is only going to have knock on effects for their confidence in how they move.

All of these qualities can contribute to improved athletic performance and help build the physical capacity required to tolerate the demands of sport.

But none of this happens from doing a few exercises occasionally.

Your young athlete need progressive, consistent training that is appropriate for their ability and, importantly, something they actually enjoy.

Because when your young athlete wants to train rather than feeling like they have to train, consistency becomes much easier.

And consistent training over time is where your young athlete will make real meaningful improvements in their sport and confidence.

12/08/2026

Does your child look like they’re running “flat-footed” or sinking into every stride?

It might not have anything to do with having flat feet.

One potential reason is a lack of lower-limb stiffness, a physical quality that has been identified as one of the determinants of sprint performance in young athletes.

Think of lower-limb stiffness as the body’s ability to behave like a spring.

When we run, the muscles and tendons of the lower body need to absorb force, store elastic energy and rapidly return that energy to help propel us into the next stride. This is part of what we call the stretch-shortening cycle.

When a young athlete lacks this quality, they may spend longer on the ground with each step. Rather than looking quick and reactive, they can appear to “sink” into the ground before pushing themselves into their next stride.

Visually, this can look a lot like flat-footed running.

The important thing for parents to understand is that lower-limb stiffness is trainable.

Age-appropriate plyometrics, strength training, games and jumping challenges can all help develop the physical qualities that underpin this spring-like action.

Plyometric activities can help young athletes become more reactive, improving qualities such as pre-tension and the effective use of the stretch-shortening cycle, while also developing the muscle-tendon system involved in storing and returning energy.

Strength training complements this by building the capacity of the muscles and wider musculoskeletal system to produce, absorb and transmit force.

So, if your child looks heavy-footed or appears to sink into every stride, simply telling them to “run on their toes” might not address the problem.

Sometimes, we need to develop the physical qualities that allow them to run differently in the first place.

11/08/2026

This young athlete has been with us for over a year. What she’s achieved in that time is genuinely remarkable.

When she first started, her movement assessments told us everything we needed to know to make sure trying was aligned to her ability level.

We also set baseline physical performance scores across power, strength and endurance, which we could then track her progress every 6 weeks.

Two sessions weekly which She followed along to at home with each session implementing games and challenges to drive engagement and intensity with a progressions built to continually challenge her at the right level.

Over the past year, here’s what changed.

Her standing long jump improved by 53 centimetres, a 40% increase, at a time when most children without structured training improve by just 6–10cm.

Her single leg wall sit went from baseline to almost two and a half minutes, telling us her strength, endurance, and strength-to-weight ratio have all improved significantly.

Her bent arm hold from the top of a pull-up position improved by 27 seconds from baseline.

And perhaps most importantly, her movement quality transformed completely. You can see it in the overhead squat. You can see it in the lunge. She moves like a different athlete.

Your young athlete can begin to see such changes from training, they just need a powerfully engaging approach that gets them hooked on training so they want to keep showing up and get the consistency needed to see meaningful change.

With the right training you’ll be amazed at how quickly you’ll start to see changes in your young athletes movement skills, co-ordination, strength and the knock on effects that’ll have in their sport too!

If you want to start this journey with your young athlete, drop me a message with the word “Youth” and we can start a conversation from there. 🙌

06/08/2026

Despite some of the common misconceptions, sprint speed is trainable in children and teenagers, and strength training can play a huge role in improving it.

When we break sprint speed down simply, it comes down to two key factors: stride length and stride frequency.

Stride length is how far a child covers with each stride, while stride frequency is how quickly they can turn their legs over.

Strength training helps by increasing the amount of force a young athlete can produce and how quickly they can produce it (their rate of force development). This allows them to apply more force into the ground in less time, helping improve sprint performance. Some training methods, such as plyometrics, can also help improve stride frequency.

This is one of the key reasons strength training has such a positive effect on sprint speed in young athletes, and it’s something we’ve seen consistently demonstrated throughout the research.

That doesn’t mean training has to be boring.

It doesn’t need to look like scaled-down adult training or military-style drills. The same physical adaptations can be developed through games, challenges, problem-solving, friendly competitions, and tracking progress in ways that children genuinely enjoy.

That’s exactly how we approach training with the young athletes we work with.

When children enjoy the process, they’re far more likely to stay consistent. And consistency is what leads to long-term progress.

So yes, we’re developing the physical qualities that improve sprint speed—but how we develop them matters just as much. We don’t need early specialisation or over-professionalised training environments. Young athletes can build speed, strength, and athleticism while sampling lots of different activities, enjoying the process, and developing the movement foundations they’ll benefit from for years to come.

Done well, strength training can help young athletes become faster, more confident, more resilient to injury, and better prepared for the demands of their sport.

05/08/2026

One of the biggest myths around youth strength training is that it “stunts growth.”

So let’s look at what the research actually says.

Elite gymnasts provide one of the best populations to study because they experience some of the highest training volumes and impact forces of any young athletes. If training was going to permanently stunt growth, we’d expect to see it here.

But that’s not what the evidence shows.

Longitudinal research has found no convincing evidence that gymnastics itself reduces genetically determined adult height.

In fact, many elite gymnasts were already shorter before intensive training began. This is known as selection bias—the sport naturally favours athletes with a smaller body size because it offers biomechanical advantages for rotation, balance and control.

So why do some studies report slower growth during adolescence?

The evidence suggests this is not primarily caused by the forces acting on the skeleton. Instead, it’s more likely explained by:
• Extremely high training volumes (often 20–30+ hours per week)
• Low energy availability (not eating enough to support both growth and training)
• Delayed biological maturation

Importantly, this isn’t unique to gymnastics. Across youth sport, low energy availability is recognised as one of the biggest risk factors for delayed growth and pubertal development.

In other words, the issue is inadequate fuel for a growing body, not appropriately supervised training itself.

This is why comparing elite gymnastics with a youth strength programme doesn’t make sense. Most children complete just 1–2 supervised sessions per week, focusing on movement quality, balance, coordination, bodyweight strength and progressive loading, not the extreme demands seen in elite sport.

The takeaway?

The best available evidence does not support the claim that appropriately supervised youth strength training stunts growth. Instead, when combined with good coaching and adequate nutrition, it can help children build stronger bones, muscles and movement skills that benefit them both now and later in life.
📚 References are in the pinned comment.

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