Dr Death and lost athletic potential

Many years ago I sat in a classroom in the kinesiology building at the UofC and heard the infamous "Dr Death" deliver a lecture that I still remember to this day.

And who was "Dr Death" you may ask?  His real name was Dave Smith and he spent many years advising and writing programs for many of the National Teams that trained at the Olympic Oval.

It was said that Smith's training programs were so hard that many retired athletes were more proud of the fact that they were able to finish his brutal programs than winning an Olympic medal. 

Hence the awesome nickname of Dr Death.

Smith was brilliant.  He delivered his sermons lectures with a BBC British accent and unlike many other professors spoke in a pragmatic and simple way that students could understand.

And while he was a good professor, Smith was at his finest when going off script.

We would hear many tales of his athletes' trials and tribulations.  He would speak about key insights that would later become foundational principles. Those principles would guide all his coaching decisions during his career.

It was during that particular lecture in question I remember him discussing the training of the youth athlete.

He started with the usual discussed points of the importance of early development of aerobic endurance and the standard precautions against certain exercises.

But then things got interesting.

Smith, being a great showman, knew how to use pauses in speech to create anticipation in his audience.  That is why I remember what he said so clearly all these decades later.

He told us that his most important contribution to our education as coaches was going to be in the following lecture (I'll paraphrase as this was more than 2 decades ago).

"Sports science's greatest and most important contribution is in the explanation of "sensitive ages" for development of movement abilities (endurance, speed, strength, flexibility) and what exercises to use for developing these abilities at any given age.

Now the existence of sensitive ages is related to sex differences and the need to develop separate exercise programs of exercises for girls and boys from the onset of puberty.

It is perhaps "politically correct" to have girls and boys exercise together, but it is certainly harmful to them to do the same program.  The exercises that fully develop the potential of a 12-year old girl will harm a 12 year old boy.

Exercises that are good for the boy are less challenging for the girl and thus hold her back.  The consequence of not doing just the right kind of exercises at just the right age is reduced fitness and athletic potential lost forever. In the case of girls it is easier to inflict lasting damage because their sensitive ages are shorter than boys."

Now that's a hell of a realization.

And it's true from my experience as an athlete and a coach over 20 years.

This is why our program is different and better than other places.

I understand that, for example, that a girl's most sensitive age for increasing endurance is between the ages of 9 and 12.  If you miss that critical window, that athletic potential is lost forever. For boys the range is more broad, 8-14.

What about speed?

Researchers from Russia and Poland have both found that the most sensitive ages for developing speed of locomotion for both sexes are between 7-9 years old with girls getting another short spurt at age 11 and boys from 14.5-15.5.

There are many other sensitive ages that cover all the motor qualities of strength, reaction time, speed of locomotion, speed strength, static strength endurance, dynamic strength endurance, anaerobic endurance, absolute static strength and the like.

Our programming is based on this biological reality.

This is why programming is dependent on our kids' age of development.

It's also why, when viewing our training session, it looks a bit chaotic. This is because everyone is doing something different based on sensitive ages.

And that’s the way it should be.

Dedicated to your athletes success