Why are younger athletes burning out of sports?

There are many reasons to sign your kids up for sports teams. They’ll build strong muscles and bones by being active, make friends and learn how to get along with others, and become more confident as they improve on the field. But many kids burn out and quit playing before they graduate from high school. Why?

“Parents and coaches need to remember that the primary goals of playing sports when younger are to improve motor skills while learning how to be a part of a team,” says Mark Salandra. A certified strength and conditioning coach who works with many student athletes as the founder of StrengthCondition.com (a Physiquality partner vendor), Mark often sees parents (and coaches) that emphasize competition over fun.

These parents will see that a child has a talent for baseball or tennis and start encouraging the child to sign up for multiple leagues for the same sport. Or the coaches will suggest that Noah or Ashley won’t be able to get an athletic scholarship if he or she doesn’t start practicing the same sport year round. Mark explains that this constant practice and competition can cause two types of burnout: physical and mental.

Jeff Rothstein, an exercise physiologist and the Director of Sports Enhancement at the PT Center for Sports Medicine in Akron, Ohio, equates physical burnout with increased risk of injury. Jeff encourages parents to think about the repetitive motion many sports require — repeated kicks of a soccer ball with one leg, the constant swinging of a bat in baseball, or the motion required to serve in tennis. If athletes have off seasons or play multiple sports throughout the year, he says, they will strengthen multiple muscle groups and let other muscles recuperate. But add up two to three leagues a year in one sport and the athlete’s muscles never get a chance to recover, leading to overuse injuries.

Mark and Jeff agree that mental burnout can be just as detrimental. Ask any eight-year-old what his favorite color or cartoon character is, and he won’t hesitate to answer. But if you ask him again a week later, his answer may be completely different. So why should he choose which sport to do at such a young age? In reality, Jeff says, by the time that boy reaches high school, the sport he loved as an eight-year-old has become a chore. Weekend fun with friends is passed over for tournaments played out of state. Holiday breaks are spent refining techniques with specialized coaches. Athletes who burn out like this may quit playing all sports, leading to a sedentary lifestyle and the health risks that come into play when one is overweight.

The irony in all of this is that kids (and the parents who encourage them) who specialize at such a young age usually think that this will help them to succeed in the sport, leading to scholarships or even a professional career. But Jeff points out that many of our most revered professional athletes excelled in multiple sports. Basketball star LeBron James was an all-state receiver on his high school football team. Tom Brady was drafted by the Montreal Expos baseball team before playing football at the University of Michigan and for the New England Patriots. And this goes for successful collegiate teams as well: At Ohio State University, 42 of the 47 football players on the team that won the 2015 college football national championship were multi-sport athletes.

Aside from reducing the risk of overuse injuries and mental burnout, these multi-sport players gain more athleticism. The skills gained in one sport can enhance those for another. And best of all, each sport feels fresher on the field when not played every week, and the athlete can enjoy the sport for what it is — a game.

Lessons From Exercising in the Heat

Use your head when exercising in the heat. That is the overt message of a series of recent studies showing that cooling the neck before exercise in hot, humid conditions can improve athletic performance. But the research also raises this provocative issue: Even if you can exercise harder in the heat, is it really a good idea to do so?

The experiments in question began several years ago, when researchers at Roehampton University in London found that healthy young men could cover significantly more distance during a timed run on treadmills in a hot laboratory if they supplemented their workout gear with an ice-cold strap-on neck collar. The collar, lined with flexible artificial-ice packs, noticeably lowered the skin temperature on the men’s necks. But the collars did not lower their body temperatures over all. So how and why, wondered the researchers, did starting an exercise session with a cool neck — not a body part normally associated with running ability — affect the men’s performance?

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To find out, they recruited a new batch of volunteers and had them run in a humid laboratory heated to a stifling 87 degrees. This time, they ran until they were exhausted, much longer than in the initial trial. (I leave the olfactory conditions in that enclosed space to your imagination.) The results, published this year in The Journal of Athletic Training, showed that the volunteers ran farther when they wore the collars, and when their legs finally gave out, their core temperatures were significantly higher.

It is widely accepted in sports science that while an elevated core body temperature can be dangerous, leading to heatstroke and worse if it gets too high, it is simultaneously protective during exercise in the heat. It seems to be the signal that tells the brain to shut down the muscles before disaster occurs. In study after study, when the core body temperature of someone who is exercising nears a critical point, usually above 104 degrees, that person’s ability to continue abruptly ends. You feel absolutely exhausted and stop, before heatstroke sets in. (Sometimes this fail-safe function doesn’t work, obviously, since people do develop heat illness, but the incidence is highest in sports like football, where players are often expected, if not required, to continue exercising no matter how they feel.)

In this experiment, even though the runners’ bodies grew warmer when they wore the collars, their minds weren’t registering that fact, and they reported feeling no hotter than without the collars. Cooling the neck, the authors concluded, had allowed the runners to continue exercising as their core temperatures rose, improving their time to exhaustion “by dampening the perceived levels of thermal strain.”

Just how the collars had achieved that neat trick couldn’t be determined by this particular experiment, said Christopher James Tyler, a lecturer in sport and exercise physiology at Roehampton University and lead author of the study. But, he continued, it is likely that the collars cooled the blood in the neck’s carotid artery, which then flowed to the brain to produce a “subsequent lowering of cerebral temperature” and convince the brain that the body was cooler than it really was.

But is subverting your brain wise? Should those of us who will be running, cycling or otherwise exercising outside in the coming months buy a cooling collar — available on the Internet and at many sporting goods stores — or create a D.I.Y. version by freezing a bandanna or towel and draping it around our shoulders before we head outside?

The answer, as is so often the case in sports medicine, depends on your exercise goals. “I don’t think everyday recreational athletes should be worrying too much about performance” in the heat, said Douglas Casa, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut and an expert on heat illness. We should instead “concentrate on staying healthy,” he continued, beginning with acclimating slowly to soaring temperatures over the course of a week or so. (You can find a wealth of information about acclimating and otherwise avoiding heat illness at the Web site of the University of Connecticut’s estimable new Korey Stringer Institute, which was founded by the widow of Mr. Stringer, a football player, after his death from heatstroke.)

If, however, you are fit, competitive and ferociously intent on outdoing your training partners, then, said Dr. Tyler, the data suggest that “the use of a cooling collar can improve performance and capacity.” But he continued, “The user needs to be aware that this could lead to overexertion” if your brain disastrously misreads your body. Check your heart rate throughout the exercise session, he advised. Runners’ heart rates were not affected by cold necks during his experiments; they rose as would be expected. So, he said, if you find that while wearing a collar, “you’re exercising at 15 beats per minute more than normal, you might want to slow down.”

Accept, too, that a collar is likely to have at least one additional drawback. To be effective, Dr. Tyler said, it must be quite frigid to start with, and that cold slap to the neck has been known to cause an ice-cream headache.

Technology in Baseball

The game of baseball is slowly catching up to the technology world with the expanded use of replays. Prior to the 2014 MLB season the only time the league would use replays was on disputed home run calls such as if the ball went foul or if the ball hit off something behind the fence.

This all changed this season as the expanded use of replays have been added that also allows the manager of each team one challenge a game. If the challenge is overturned the team will be awarded one additional challenge for the rest of the game. The umpires are also able to review these calls from the start of the seventh inning till the end of the game.

The plays challengeable under the new replay system includes plays at first base, at the plate and on the base path. Other plays include foul balls, trap catches, fan interference, ground rule doubles, whether or not a run scored prior to the final out of an inning as well as score keeping issues. Home runs are only reviewable by the umpires under the previous instant replay rules.

Technology, including high definition television feeds and dvr systems helped put the instant replay into baseball. The question many have asked is will there ever be a technology system that can help call balls and strikes?

In the end the idea is great, but that would take out the entire human element of error and we don't expect the umpire's union to agree to this. One advancement that could be added would be a gps tracking chip in every baseball that could exactly tell you where the ball landed. This could include distance on home runs as well as where exactly a 

Technology in Sports

The world of sport is continually changing over the years, and the use of technology is just one of those areas that has made an impact on many sports in the modern day. See the annual sports technology awards for the latest technology ideas in the world of sport.

One criticism of the use of technology is that it can slow down the speed of the game, but on the other hand for many people it makes watching it more enjoyable to see the correct decisions being made.

Assisting the Umpires / Referees

Most professional sports in the United States have long used instant replay and other high-tech aids to help referees make the right call. Gridiron has used video replay systems to check referees' calls for many years. Basketball referees use replay systems to make sure players are shooting within the time allotted by the shot clock. In international cricket, the third umpire has been used, one sitting off the ground with access to TV replays of certain situations (such as disputed catches and boundaries) to advise the central umpires. The umpires out on the field are in communication via wireless technology with the other umpire. The third umpire is also asked to adjudicate on run out decisions, which he makes without consultation with the two central umpires. One sport that has resisted the use of high-tech assistance until very recently is soccer/football. Replays could be used to decide off-side decisions, whether a ball passes over the goal line, and clarify penalty decisions.

Hawk-Eye Technology

Hawk-eye is the name of a computer and camera system which traces a ball's trajectory. It is being used in international cricket and tennis, and many other sports are also looking at making use of this technology. The system is also being trialed in soccer as part of the goal line assessment. The Premier League of Football in the UK has agreed to the introduction of goal-line sensors after being given approval by football's rule-makers. The system being developed by the UK company Hawk-Eye, would give a definitive decision on whether the ball had crossed the line. The Hawk Eye uses a camera taking 600 frames a second on the goal-line, with the information is analyzed by computer and sent to the referee's headset or a device on his wrist. In 2015, Hawkeye technology was also used by rugby officials at the 2015 Rugby World Cup, to improve decision-making by the television match official (TMO) and also assist with player safety. In this case it is enhanced video review, rather than the ball tracking technology as used in other sports.

Sport Specific

• Tennis - it is now standard at the major tennis tournaments for a line review system to be in place, with players given power to review contentious line calls. It is powered by the Hawk-Eye ball tracking system. See more about Hawk Eye for Tennis
• Soccer / Football - Soccer is looking at joining the 21st century, looking at various technologies for the goal line to determine if the pass passes over the line or not. See more about Football/Soccer Technology
• Basketball - the NBA uses replay vision to review 'last touch' decisions in the final two minutes of games, and also to determine whether players release the ball before the shot clock expires.
• Cricket - technology in cricket has been driven by advances in the TV coverage. Things that were once extra information provided by the TV networks are now being incorporated into the decision referral system (DRS), such as hawk-eye and hot spot, and maybe even the old favorite snicko. See more about Cricket Technology.
• Aussie Rules Football - umpire review system has also been implemented in AFL, with an off field umpire in certain circumstances adjudicating on whether the ball passes over the goal line or is touched, using video evidence via multiple camera angles. See more about Technology in AFL.
• Baseball - In 2014 a challenge system was put in place for the MLB to use replays to challenge certain umpiring decisions. See more about Technology in Baseball.
• Rugby Union - In 2015, Hawkeye technology was used by rugby officials at the 2015 Rugby World Cup. The video review technology with synchronised camera views was used to improve decision-making by the television match official (TMO) and also used by medical staff to assist with player safety by identifying possible concussion instances and behind play incidents.
• Rugby League - The NRL was an early implementer of using the video referee to help adjudicate questionable tries.

Fat Loss

The formula for fat loss is simple.

But then how comes it feels damn near impossible to shred bodyfat?

A caloric deficit through exercise, a sound diet, and healthy hormone levels should incinerate fat off your body to have you looking like a Greek God carved out of stone.

But ask anyone who’s tried to get shredded: it’s brutally hard work.

Problems can arise if an optimal training protocol isn’t in place. Your hard earned muscle can be stripped away, and you can be left with body fat. You could end up thinner, weaker and depleted, rather than athletic and shredded.

Fortunately, there are better options than plodding on the hamster wheel and “toning” your muscles with endless cardio and high rep weight training.

I Call it Blended Training for Fat Loss.

By placing an emphasis on heavy strength training with carefully planned density training, you’ll preserve your muscle while incinerating body fat to get absolutely shredded. 

The Importance of Training During Fat Loss

The major driver for fat loss is a diet that places you at a caloric deficit.

I’d say your diet is 80% of your fat loss plan.

The sad truth is it doesn’t really matter how hard you’re training if you’re shoving twinkies down your gullet and slamming Vodka red bull all weekend.

All the fist pumping and interval sprints won’t undue that damage. Sorry.

Operating under the assumption that you’re in a caloric deficit and fist pumping is occurring (sans Vodka-Redbulls), time to focus on training for optimal fat loss.

Using advanced math, we assume that if diet is 80% of the recipe to get shredded, training makes up the other 20%.

“Dude, then why don’t we just focus on diet, the 80%?”

Valid question.
We’re here to kick mediocrity in the teeth. Let’s maximize every component to get you shredded, and that means maximizing your training and diet.

This means we’ll strategically train to preserve lean mass and keep your metabolism running on full-blast to incinerate fat.

Let’s dive into each of these components a little deeper.

Preserve Your Metabolism during a Diet:

I’m sure we can all agree that endless cardio and dieting without and any resistance training is a sure-fire way to end up scrawny without any appreciable muscle mass.

All other things being equal, the more lean muscle you have, the higher your metabolism. That means it’s going to be in your best interest to preserve muscle and thus metabolism to avoid plateaus and maximize fat loss.

By challenging your muscles against resistance, you’ll stimulate greater levels of protein synthesis and muscular damage. As a result, you’ll be directing more of the calories towards muscle repair, further pushing you towards a caloric deficit.

Support a Healthy Testosterone

For simplicity sake, good ole Mr. T is a steroid hormone that stimulates muscle building, fat loss, and sex drive.

Problem is, harsh dieting leads to decreased testosterone levels…unless you do something about it.

By focusing on heavy multi-joint lifts like chin ups, squats, presses, and deadlifts you’ll stimulate the release of testosterone. As we all know, strength training has been proven to induce the release of testosterone, boosting total body anabolism and stimulating muscle retention (Craig et al).

As a result, your resistance training protocols will hold onto muscle and stimulate fat loss simultaneously for maximum results.

Training to Stimulate Growth Hormone Release: 

I hate to break it to you, but fat loss gets increasingly difficult as you age. Coupled with massive caffeine intake, alcohol, and our overstimulated high-stress environment, the natural aging process delivers us all a gut punch and naturally decreases  growth hormone release as we age.

Obviously, this sucks when trying to stay lean and maximize performance, so we have to take aggressive action to fight back.

Luckily, with proper training will spike that stubborn S.O.B. back up to help you shred fat with specific training protocols. 

Metabolic Stress

Metabolic stress is the result of working at a high intensity in training when your body switches to anaerobic metabolism for the delivery in ATP. Basically, those burning reps that make your body feel like it’s ready to explode and your heart is pulsating through your shirt is a sign of metabolic stress.

When you reach this intensity, the breakdown of stored  energy releases a dollop of metabolic by-products of energy synthesis and muscle contractions that in turn, causes more stress to your whole body.

While this sounds complicated, it means you should keep rest short and intensity high to the point where you can’t have a conversation without breaking up your words due to a lack of oxygen when training. All these by-products trigger the release of GH and further stimulate fat loss.

Blended Training for Fat Loss

Training strength first at least once per week stimulates fast-twitch muscle fibers to preserve muscle, charges the nervous system, and supports healthy anabolic hormone levels when you’re in a caloric deficit.

This offsets the catabolism of muscle tissue and keeps your muscle, rather than withering your hard-earned physique away during your cut. 

The Best Rep Schemes for Fat Loss

Weight training for fat loss is predicated on maximizing muscle retention, anabolic hormone levels, and metabolism. High training density triggers greater caloric expenditure and stimulates the release of growth hormone for greater fat loss.

Next: how it all ties together.

Lift Heavy:

Once per week I recommend working in a pure strength weight with major, compound movements.

As previously mentioned, heavy strength training is a huge tool to preserve testosterone and muscle mass when dieting down. 

Straight Sets:

Pick one upper and one lower body lift from the following during fat-loss training and make them a focus first thing in 1-2 workouts per week. Rep schemes like 4×4, 5×5, and 6×3 work best.

Upper Body: Overhead press, chin-up, bench press, dip, row

Lower Body: Clean, squat, deadlift, lunge

Ramping up to 2,3,4 5rm (75-95% 1-RM):

Start with a moderate training load for the prescribed number of reps and build your way up (ascending loading) to the heaviest set with the reps.

As you increase the load you “charge” the nervous system with consistently heavier loads.

Start with a moderate load and increase load by 5-10% each set, aiming to reach your heaviest set in 4-6 sets. Ramping sets work better for advanced lifters as straight sets with heavier loads provide tons of cumulative fatigue.

Density Circuits: 

Density circuits combine compound movement patterns in succession with short rest periods for high intensity, challenge based workouts.

By combining a variety of major movement patterns, all muscles of the body are trained within a short period of time for increased work capacity and rapid fat loss.

1a. [Vertical Pull] Chin Up 4×8 Rest =0

1b. [Vertical Push] DB Push Press 4×10 Rest =0

1c. [Single leg] DB Goblet Lunge 4×6/leg Rest =60-90

2a. [Horizontal Pull] One Arm Dumbbell Row 3×8/arm Rest =60-90

2b.[Horizontal Push] Feet Elevated Push Up 3×15 Rest =0

2c. [Hip Dominant Lower] DB or BB RDL 3×15 Rest =0

2d. [Core] Plank 3×45 seconds Rest =0

One difficulty of note is programming these exercises to avoid cumulative fatigue. You’ll note one-rm rows and RDL’s in the second density circuit. In this case, use wraps and switch grips to minimize grip issues.

Body Building

I’ll be the first to admit it: I hate single leg exercises. Lunges, split squats, step-ups, they’re all torture as far as I’m concerned. But I hate them a lot less – and value them a lot more – after a year-plus of working at Cressey Sports Performance and understanding their importance in any training program.

In fact, by simply adding a few sets of single leg work into my workouts, I’ve significantly reduced the hip discomfort that used to plague me after heavy squats and deadlifts. Much like 1-arm rowing and pressing does for the shoulders, getting the hips to work independently works wonders for mobility and longevity in the iron game.

Single leg work poses a big problem, however, if you’re training for hypertrophy. If you just want to grow your wheels as big as humanly possible, the logistics of trying to balance on one leg while using moderate-to-heavy loads and focusing on muscular tension can be a literal and figurative pain in the ass. It’s pretty hard to focus on your quad contracting if you’re falling on your face. 

This installment of Right Link/Wrong Link explains a few simple tweaks you can use to dramatically improve your ability to add muscle to your legs using single leg exercises.

WRONG LINK: THE BALANCE COMPONENT

If you’re an athlete and you want to train hip stability and balance, then by all means pick the most challenging single leg variations you can find. But if you want to blow out the legs in your jeans, the balance component fails the Right Link/Wrong Link test: you’re making the exercise hard for the wrong reason.

Our athletes display some impressive feats of single leg strength at CSP, which has tremendous athletic carryover, but I’d argue that there are more efficient ways to add size to your legs.

For most single leg exercises, your technique will break down before your target muscles reach concentric failure. This is a problem, because we know approaching muscular failure is key for muscle growth. We need to adjust some aspect of the exercise to shift the difficulty from the balance component to the contraction of the target muscle(s).

RIGHT LINK: USE HAND SUPPORT

I’ve had success with myself and clients by simply using hand support to remove the balance component of single leg exercises. Holding onto a power rack with one or both hands is my favorite way to do this.

Bulgarian Split Squat with Rack Support

I love to hate Bulgarian split squats and they blow up the quads better than just about any exercise. I stole this variation from John Meadows and it takes the exercise from a flailing balancing act to a direct leg destroyer.

Safety Bar Split Squat with Rack Support

And if you’re lucky enough to have a safety squat bar, you can load split squats nice and heavy without crushing your back toe or losing your balance. The hand-supported split squat has quickly become one of my favorite single leg exercises for hypertrophy.

WRONG LINK: YOU CAN’T LOAD THEM HEAVY ENOUGH

There are two primary ways to make a muscle grow: mechanical stress (i.e. heavy weights) and metabolic stress (i.e. the “pump”). It’s pretty hard to get either of these with single leg exercises, but it’s especially challenging to use heavy loads on one leg at a time. There’s often a fine line between what’s useable (and too light) and what makes your form go to crap.

RIGHT LINK: OVERLOAD THE ECCENTRIC PHASE

One of my favorite tricks is to take advantage of the eccentric component (i.e. the “lowering” phase) of the exercise. We’re stronger during the eccentric portion than the concentric, so bylifting with two legs and lowering with one, we can overload one leg at a time.

This is most easily done on machines with exercises like leg extensions and leg curls. Lift with two legs, lower down with one for concentrated one-leg misery. But if you don’t have access to machines (or you’re worried the functional police will catch you), here are a few other options:

Slideboard Leg Curl with 1-leg Eccentric

I snagged this one from Kevin Neeld at Endeavor Sports Performance. Slideboard leg curls are often too easy to load in a hypertrophy rep range (i.e. it’s hard to make the muscle “fail” between 8-12 reps), but it’s also tough to keep good form on one leg at a time. The solution? Curl with both legs, lower with one. (Pro tip: If you don’t have a slideboard, try these on a stability ball).

Barbell Romanian Deadlift with 1-leg Eccentric

This next one I stole from Ben Bruno, whose exercise creativity is unmatched. Single-leg RDLs smoke the glutes and hamstrings, and by lifting with both legs and lowering with one, you can use way more weight than normal.

The options are endless, and if you don’t have access to machines, these are a few of your best bets.

SMARTER TRAINING, BIGGER LEGS

Single leg exercises may never be fun, but they have a place in any training program, whether you want to squat 500 pounds, run faster or grow massive quads. The catch, however, is adjusting your exercise technique based on your goal. If your objective is bigger legs, removing the balance component and overloading the eccentric portion can negate many of the drawbacks of single leg movements.