Youth Physical Development

Over the past few years I have found myself working with more and more younger clients, so much so that a large section of my client base are under the age of 18. I’ve greatly enjoyed working with these youngsters and now I have dedicated much more of my time to specialising in youth physical development.

I coach a wide range of backgrounds and abilities, from national level athletes, to weight and health management, to preparation for a future in the military, and anything in between. I use a variety of exercise types to do so, including resistance training. There’s often a stigma that goes with resistance or ‘gym training’ for adolescents, which if performed poorly I can see why.

However, in more recent years there has been much research that suggests; when carried out correctly and safely there are many positives that can be achieved, such as; bone health, injury prevention, increased motor skills, body composition, etc, etc. If you’d like any more information on what mode(s) of training your child would benefit from feel free to ask.

For my young athletes I base training plans around the Youth Physical Development Model, it is a much more modern approach to youth training than previously seen. It has identified the areas of training which take the most importance throughout an adolescence development. I spent a lot of time learning about YPDM from those who designed it as part of my degree, in my opinion it’s the most logical method of approaching youth development within a sporting setting. I’m pleased to say using it as a basis for my coaching has proved very successful to date!

These days it’s well documented how health issues related to a lack of physical activity and poor nutrition during adolescence can have a negative knock on effect later in life, both physically and mentally. To combat that physically is fairly straight forward on paper, the difficult part is to make it mentally engaging enough to keep young minds entertained! So… When training those from a health perspective my main objective is – get moving and enjoy it!