Welcome to Sustainable Fitness

Sustainable Fitness is a website for young athletes and Coaches to develop their  knowledge  and understanding  of Strength and Conditioning to improve physical development and performance.

The information provided on this website will give you an insight on how young athletes should approach strength and conditioning. The Website provides factual information on how to keep young athletes functionally fit and conditioned to become more athletic. From a coaches perspective, this website will highlight the importance of safe training and promotes injury prevention for their athletes.

Please enjoy the articles, forums and videos on this website.

Should young athletes aged 13-16 be doing weight training at low level clubs?

Being brought up playing rugby, we had an ex marine as a coach and with his philosophy our aim as a team was to out-strength our opposition instead of beating them by having a better skill set. At the age of fourteen we were encouraged to lifts weights regularly and did a lot of conditioning during training. Due to the coaches, our parents and ourselves being ill informed about the science behind growth and maturation of an adolescent athlete, we didn’t know whether we were doing more harm to our body then good.

I’m not saying that young athletes shouldn’t be doing any conditioning as the benefits of exercise at a young age is good for our physical and mental health. However lifting heavy weights at a young age doesn’t seem to be the correct manor of getting adolescent athletes more fitter, faster and stronger.

A study published in the “Journal of Australian strength and conditioning showed teenage rugby players under sixteens and under eighteens in preseason were put under a resistance training programme throughout pre-season to make the players more stronger for the physical and professional development and injury prevention. The results showed for the under sixteens players actually showed average overall improvements in their bench, squat and pull-ups by 17%, 34% and 45% respectively. Overlooking this journal entry it seems that with under sixteen athletes actually had a positive impact with their strength performance throughout their pre season training, however all of this are based on small short term achievements. The were no long term assessments and the athletes were not under any mobility programmes set up for these athletes to help their recovery and prevent injuries.

An Article in the “Athletic Therapy Today” about resistance training for adolescent athletes and promoted the risk and concerns of weight training such as damaging the growth cartilage or epiphyseal plate which is caused by poor lifting technique or heavy overhead lifts. Another risk for adolescent athletes are the repetitive-use of soft tissue injuries which is again caused by heavy lifts and poor programming from training. Reviewing this article, Their are positives within weight training but with poor coaching from grassroots coaches with no experience with strength and conditioning coaching with a team i personally believe that the risk outweigh the potential positives for adolescent athlete to partake in weight training at low level sports clubs.

let me know your opinions about this subject.

Early Sport Specialization: is this good or bad for athletes?

In a generation where young athletes schedules are filled with a wide variety of sporting activities either at lunch time and after school clubs or within the local community. On the other end of the spectrum, there are coaches and parents all wanting their athlete or child to excel within an individual sport, especially with talent scouts across the globe looking for the potential world class athletes. The main decision for our coaches, parents and mainly our young athletes is it better to be a Unisport athlete or a Multisport athlete?

Most professional athletes, and virtually all world-class athletes, are proficient (good at) just the one sport; for example “Tiger Woods” is a professional golfer, not an all-round athlete. Unisport Talent is an athlete that only competes in the on sport and has taken their chosen sport to a high level, such as professional level.

The Positives of being a Unisport athletes is being dedicated to a certain specific skill set to the be developed over a long period of time to aim to be the best football, rugby, basketball player the athlete can possibly become. However the negative side affect of this one dimensional approach to be the best at one sport could be whats limiting the player from achieving more but based on their athletic profile, for example in an interview with England Rugby and Maro Itoje where he expressed how rugby was a sport that others used to play and how he used to play football basketball and athletics. That was until he went to secondary school where he was advised to give rugby a go and twelve years later he became a British and Irish Lions Players which is the biggest achievement in rugby for any British Rugby Player.

The Maro Itoje type of athletes is called a multisport athlete which is someone that can play just about any sport at the highest level. Many coaches believe such athletes should be encouraged to play as many sports as they can before finally deciding to specialize in one sport. Unfortunately, multisport athletes are becoming unheard of, due to the high standards and commitments needed nowadays to play at the top level of a certain sport. The Multisport athletes however can adopt certain physical attributes or skills in one sport and transfer them into another so for example a Centre in basketball could easily transfer into a second row in rugby based on physical attributes.

What is your Opinion? Should coaches or parents direct their own athlete or child into one sport or should they allow the athlete to explore every sport for the best outcome?

 

Preventing poor movement dysfunctions and injuries in elite youth rugby players

The current situation in amateur youth rugby
Across the United Kingdom and Ireland, the youth teams which parents and local volunteers are aiming to provide the best coaching possible for their local rugby clubs. However, with limited knowledge of the coaches sports conditioning(fitness) and injury prevention methods there are a lot of kids who are growing up with poor mobility and poor posture that will affects the players functional movements. The past experiences which I experienced as a young rugby player was that the sport has a military disciplined approach of doing a lot of press ups and sit ups to strengthen the core and upper body area of each individual player and a lot of running to train the cardiovascular systems. The problem with that approach is that the rugby players are required to be able to produce power quickly so when doing a lot of cardiovascular training and push ups are not sufficient for producing power. Secondly doing a lot of press up is not beneficial for a rugby player to perform for functional reasons. This is due to the forming an upper extremity movement impairment syndrome, that can be developed by a pattern overload by performing repetitive motions such as press ups. This can also be developed by sitting down for extended periods of time, for example the young rugby players who are at school sit for prolonged periods of time in a class room will also inhabit the syndrome. The Upper extremity movement impairment syndrome will develop rounded shoulders, forward neck posture, improper scapulothoracic (movement linked to shoulder use such as raising and lowering your arm) and glenohumeral kinematics (rotator cuff fatigue). These impairments are caused by weak rhomboids (inner back muscles), tight pectorals due to the over usage of press ups, Underactive LFT and overactive UFT (neck muscles which force forward neck posture) and poor functioning of the rotator cuffs (shoulder joint).

How Pilates could help young rugby players can avoid injuries
(Robinson, et al., 2000) composed a book for a wide audience of sport and health enthusiast called “The Official Body Control Pilates Manual” which claims the Pilates can help Relaxation, Coordination, Concentration, Alignment, Breathing, Centring and Stamina. Any rugby player could use this as a great foundation to build their training routine upon. In their book they have specific pages for most individual sports, including rugby that indulge into the common problems rugby players have and why their body progressively over time start to develop these dysfunctions
Rugby Players has a contrast of physiques which are required for various positions, so some rugby players might have different muscular imbalances and movement dysfunctions due to the nature of their position. For example, a front row prop physique will encounter different muscular imbalances and poor movement dysfunction in relation to a winger. The Front row forward especially have more shoulder and neck problems due to the pressure of scrums and the all round physical nature of their jobs. Whereas a Winger would more likely have lower limbs dysfunction due to changing speeds and directions quickly.
The Most Common problem for rugby players are:
• Over Developed shoulder and neck muscles (Mainly front row)
• Tighter upper trapezius to support the neck
• Overworking Levator Scapulae (Border of Scapula)
• Poor Pelvic Stability due to weak tranversus abdominis, pelvic floor and multifidus
• Tight dominating adductors
• Weak Gluteus Maximus
• Tight hip flexors
• Overworked Hamstrings
• Arched Tight lower backs
• Overdeveloped Pectorals

Foam Rolling After Sessions for Increasing Mobility, Flexibility and reducing injuries
The Foam Roller is a beneficial tool that can help recover your muscles after a workout, increase your mobility and can improve your flexibility. However, this beneficial and easy using tool can be neglected or underused when helping rugby players. The Foam Roller is used to break down the collagen around the muscles fibres to allow the athletes muscles to help boost naturally recovery. When weight training or playing a heavy physical sport (such as rugby) the athletes body goes under great stressed and muscles fibres tears. When the muscles fibres tear the natural recovery of the body will try to repair themselves by using collagen to in theory glue the muscles back together and help the muscle recover. However, the body natural recovery isn’t always going to glue the muscles fibres back together perfectly and that’s how knots in the body muscles are made. The Foam Roller is used to remove the knots by rebreaking the muscle fibres which hasn’t recovered properly and to allow the muscle fibres to gradually recover back to its near natural state.
Here is a typical upper body Foam Roller routine:

How to get your athletes to “buy-in” to recovery sessions
I can 99% guarantee you that most young rugby athletes would put their recovery at the bottom of the list when you ask them what they do most or what they prefer doing out of strength training, rugby training, conditioning training, etcetera. The biggest problem which does occur with the young rugby athletes is to get them to “buy-in” to their recovery sessions with the same approach as their strength training sessions.
(Estes, 2017) gave a great analogy on how to get your athletes to buy into their recovery sessions by saying that “your body is like a bank” meaning that your body takes ‘money out of the bank’ by training and the more taxing the sessions such as heavy loaded strength training or a tough conditioning session the more ‘money you would withdraw out of the bank’. However, the athlete’s recovery session is there to help ‘pay back the bank’ for those hard sessions. The Coach needs to address to their athletes that not every session needs to be the hardest ever session and that in the long term building the foundations to set your body up for the gruelling conditioning sessions or for the heavy loaded sessions are very important for the athletic career.