COACHES' CORNER:MOST OF our leading sport stars have a few things in common, write Dr Liam Hennessy and Jim Kilty.
Firstly they retain the passion for sport they were born with throughout their lives. Secondly, they are hard-working. However, they also played or practised a variety of movement skills either through participating in several sports or just playing recreationally when children.
Play years ago contributed to the movement and skills development in our leading sports stars.
As a boy, Pádraig Harrington played hurling, football and basketball and thereby learned how to move fast. Those pursuits prepared him to become one of the world's top golfers.
Learning to move:Learning involves several factors and one of these is practice.
With time and practice a skill will become ingrained or learned.
Previously it was thought athletes and players learned by remembering responses and movement patterns and simply selected these responses to execute the movement patterns over and over again.
This is not actually what happens when we learn a new skill.
Engram:The brain stores key pieces of information from each practice or training session and then it creates a set of rules or schemes for reusing them in the future. Each time the athlete repeats the skill, the brain will call upon the stored programme that was shaped from previous practices and apply them to the activity. The more varied the sports and activities in which a young athlete engages the more programmes of movement and skill he or she will store. These memorised motor patterns are what scientists call "engrams".
Engrams are stored in the brain and the nerves feeding muscles and joints. When you learned how to ride a bicycle "a cycle engram" was stored that could be called upon later in life to ensure you balanced on the bike.
This is why it is so important for children to take part in various sports and activities as they move from early childhood (two to five years) through to late childhood and on to the teenage years.
If children have not learned key movement skills before the age of 11 for females and 12 for males they may have difficulty in picking up these skills later in life.
The earlier children learn fundamental movements like running, swimming and gymnastics and other movement skills that involve kicking, throwing, balancing, the better they will be at executing a specific sport skill later in their teenage and adult years. These basic skills are called the Fundamental Movement Skills.
If children have good exposure to these skills they can refine them between the ages of eight and 12.
During these years the young athletes or players can become more skilled at their sport. This is because they will already have the foundation or fundamental movements that will equip them to be better at their individual sports.
Windows of Opportunityduring childhood and the early teenage years can be used to make young athletes and players more skilled. Most skills should be learned before the growth spurt.
If this occurs the youngsters will have stored the engrams in their brains for future use.
The type of sport and activity suitable for young athletes and players is as follows:
Age 6-10 for males and females - flexibility and suppleness:Gymnastics, dance, stretching, small games that involve falling, rolling, reaching.
Age 7-9 (males) and 5-8 ( females) - speed:As above, with relays and small games that have scope for running and swerving and changing direction and chasing. Jump exercises are great at this stage, and sprinting, jumping and throwing are ideal.
Age 9-12 (males) and 8-11 (females) - sport skills:Key skills such as kicking, throwing, striking a ball with a racquet, hurley or bat.
These notes are contributed by Dr Liam Hennessy and Jim Kilty of Setanta College, the Institute of Strength and Conditioning Studies (www.setantacollege.com)
