It’s you.

We need to look in the mirror and take inventory of what we are doing, or not doing, for our kids. As a father of three young athletes all under the age of 10, I am on the front lines of the issue. Additionally, as a college strength coach, I am the recipient of the adult versions of these kids.

Parents, we need to have a talk. I’ve been involved in athletics for over 30 years now, and have noticed over the last few years that we have a very big problem.

It’s you.

We need to look in the mirror and take inventory of what we are doing, or not doing, for our kids. As a father of three young athletes all under the age of 10, I am on the front lines of the issue. Additionally, as a college strength coach, I am the recipient of the adult versions of these kids.

What we as parents are doing to our children is a crime. Consider this the official line in the sand.

Cool It With the Advice

On behalf of my coaching peers at all levels, let’s make a couple things perfectly clear.

The good folks who step up to coach your kids do so for two reasons. First, they love the sport. They either played it themselves or have loved the game for their lifetime and simply want to be a part of it. They do it because of passion. They want to give your kids an experience so they can know that same love themselves.

The second reason is because they love kids. Working with young people can be one of the best experiences you can have. The ones who show up ready to work, who are fired up about being part of the team and would do anything to win—they are the reason we do it.

If you think anyone gets into coaching for the money, you are completely lost. Professional sport coaches and head coaches at upper echelon universities are making big dollars; everyone else is barely making a living. The life of a coach is an absolute grind.

Dealing with the multitude of personalities, being a surrogate parent to dozens of kids, and managing a scope of skill levels and attention spans is enough to make a person crazy.

You know those tough mornings you have with your one or two kids, or that evening you can’t get little Timmy to clean his room? Imagine 25 just like him, and you are asking them to focus on a very simple task. Keep your eye on the ball, get your glove down, use your legs, shoot your arms through, and get ready, among an infinite number of other things.

That same kid you can’t get to clean his room, he and two dozen of his buddies are standing in front of some poor coach who isn’t making a cent, but is working her ass off to get them to do the simplest of tasks as a team.

Yes, many youth coaches have limited experience. But they have some experience, which likely puts them leaps and bounds ahead of you.

As your child gets older, that experience for the coaches goes up dramatically. Don’t kid yourself for a second that a high school coach or college coach is hired because they are a nice person. Athletic directors at all levels have one job, and that is to see their teams win. Period.

So before you reach for your phone or keyboard to give a coach at those levels advice, take a deep breath, put your phone down, and shut your computer off. Chances are, you are in no way in their league when it comes to how to coach.

Stick to the Recipe

How many of you have baked a cake before? Made breakfast for your family? Attempted your mom’s legendary meatloaf? You followed a recipe, yes? You decided that you were going to make X, got in the car, and drove to the store. You filled your cart with the necessary items, stood in some God-forsaken checkout line, bagged up your goodies, and headed home.

You then systematically approached the recipe as it was written. You didn’t whimsically mix this with that, put it in a cold oven, remove it, turn the oven on, add two eggs, and then serve it to your family. You followed a procedure that has been proven in the past to work.

Do you think the coaches of your kids are any different? They are following a recipe to get your children in proper playing form.

There is not a coach in America who enters their respective season without a solid plan for how they are going to give the athletes on their team the experience they intend on giving them.

The entire body of coaches who prep for a season in any sport have winning at the top of their priority list, or a very close second. They have tons of evidence with prior seasons that their formula works, and for folks like myself, decades of successes to back up my approach.

From teaching a seven-year-old how to hold a baseball, all the way to winning the World Series, there is a systematic approach to ensure success at every turn. We call them fundamentals in my business. Regardless of the sport, there is a list of things that every athlete needs to own if they want to have any kind of upward trajectory.

When you throw your two cents in, you are asking that coach to violate their meatloaf recipe.

I’m not saying don’t play catch with your daughter. I’m not saying don’t play around the world with your son to help him get extra shots. But don’t do anything that doesn’t vibe with your kid’s coach’s philosophy.

Don’t start giving them advice about things they are not going to encounter anytime soon, like showing your 6-year-old how to throw a change-up when he’s on a machine pitch team.

I appreciate how ridiculous this might sound to many of you. My response is to go sign up to be a little league coach, and soon you’ll know what I’m talking about.

If you want to be any kind of help, attend your kid’s practice, listen to what the coaches are saying, and then repeat as much of that as possible when you are working with your child. No rogue coaching that is going to derail what this poor coach is trying to accomplish.

Your Kid Isn’t the Second Coming

I hate to burst your bubble, but your kid isn’t the angel you think he is. And your daughter, she’s pretty much a pain in the ass. When I’ve volunteered to coach one of the many teams my kids were on, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said, “This kid’s parents really dropped the ball.”

Jimmy can’t sit still for three seconds, Brian can’t help but play in the dirt, Sara just comes here to hug other kids, and Steven has no business on this team at all, because he’s made it perfectly clear he doesn’t want to be here. Yet, we coaches put our best foot forward and try to mold them into something that resembles a contributing member of the team.

Instead of defending them every minute, how about teaching them the lessons at home that will make them effective teammates on the field?

If your child acts like an ass at home, it takes a lot of nerve to pawn them off to a coach to try and fix them. “It isn’t fair that Billy doesn’t get to pitch.” You know what isn’t fair? Forcing some unpaid mom or dad to get your kid’s act together.

Help us by teaching them how to listen. Help us by showing them how to be respectful to adults and other kids. Help us by insisting on things like order, hustle, and effort.

If your kid lays around your house all day after school with some device in his hand, what makes you think they are going to understand or relate to their coach when they are barked at to pick up the pace?

There’s a Good Reason They’re Yelling

Which leads me to the crux of this article. How someone coaches is none of your damn business. This is the previous three sections rolled up into one uncomfortable climax. Get used to the idea that coaching comes with yelling. Coaching comes with insisting that things be done a certain way, with no wiggle room.

To put it bluntly, the coach’s philosophy is more important than yours. We don’t progress kids to step B until they own step A. If they can’t focus long enough to get good at A, expect frustration, changes of tone, and perhaps—just perhaps—some shouting.

If there is, rest assured that that angel of yours has earned the “strong tone.” Before you immediately jump to their rescue, ponder the notion that this coach is not some rage-aholic. Sure, one in every million coaches might have some issues with their temper, but the other 999,999 coaches are simply trying to be heard.

My wife is a volleyball coach. She’s the head coach at the private high school in town and a 7th and 8th graders club team. She’s amazing at her job.

She knows volleyball at a level that I can’t begin to fathom. She is one of the sickest athletes I have ever been around, and can coach circles around most every coach I’ve ever encountered, regardless of sport. Truly gifted, this one.

Her policy is to never scold because of physical limitations. She won’t get on her kids for things that they simply cannot do. But she absolutely prohibits crappy effort, lack of enthusiasm, and an unwillingness to listen.

She’s made it very clear to her kids that she isn’t in the business of getting on them for things they can’t control, but effort, caring, and give-a-shit are all non-negotiables.

A couple weeks ago, a parent reached out to her via email. The team had returned from a weekend tournament where they finished somewhere in the middle of the pack.

As is my wife’s style, the second the kids began to show a wane in effort, her tone changed and she’d call a timeout and bark at them. She also praised the pants off of them between points, and when they were doing things well.

Anyhow, in 11 paragraphs, this mother went on a thesis about how my wife’s yelling is killing the spirit of the team, how the only communication she should use is positive reinforcement, and basically “atta-girl” at every moment. She’s worried that any other approach is going to ruin the experience for her daughter and rob her of her love of the game.

In short, a parent who has never participated in organized sports wrote my wife, one of the most talented coaches around, a fantasy-laced field manual on what she’s doing wrong and how to correct it. Unacceptable.

How to Become a Better Sports Parent

In closing, I want to leave you with some parenting tips, from a parent who also happens to be a coach:

• Let your kids fail. Let them experience losing. I can tell you as a coach who works with college kids, we have created a community of people who don’t know how to deal with losing. Our need to pounce and protect has created a culture of ill-equipped adults. What’s the scariest is since they haven’t “lost” in youth sports, they have no emotional relationship with it once they get to me. They are like lobotomized robots, and it’s not a good thing.
• Short of a coach getting physical with your child or calling them a fucking idiot to their face in front of others, let the coach yell. Allow them rattle your kids by coaching their faces off. Let them be demanding with your kids. Athletics build leaders. Leaders aren’t built with hugs and kisses. They’re forged in hard times, during conditioning sessions where they would rather be dead than run one more step, when the clock is ticking and we have to score or all is for nothing. Let them be coached hard.
• Never, ever, call, text or email a coach with anything that isn’t dire. Don’t contact them to talk about playing time, your kid’s feelings, or your ideas on what they should do. I promise you, you do more harm to your child than good. The vast majority of coaches are very protective of their methods, so when you impose your ideas on them, they likely will take it out on your kid, even if they aren’t doing it consciously.
• One of the most important things you can do for your child in the pursuit of developing a responsible adult is to back their coaches as they play. Taking your kid’s side on everything does nothing for them but keep them immature. Back the coach. Never badmouth the coach in front of your kids. Let the coach be the authority figure, and do your part in enforcing their rules for the team as acceptable and something to support. That level of backing will pay off for the kid later in life.
• When you are in the stands, you are a cheerleader. That’s it. Don’t yell at the coaches, the refs, and especially the other kids. You make your child look bad, and yourself look ridiculous.
• If you don’t have any experience in the sport your child is playing, don’t try and coach them on the sport. Instead, coach them on sportsmanship, hustle, being aggressive, and being a great teammate. I know nothing about baseball, but have been an assistant coach for my son’s baseball team for five seasons now. I am the hustle coach. They know with me, I’m going to make them run off the field, give their best effort, clean the dugout after games, and demand they make eye contact when our head coach is talking. I don’t need to be a baseball coach to provide value to the team. Neither do you.

If this article has upset you, good. It was probably you who it was intended for. You are in the way if you become the opposition to your child’s coach.

This is not a negotiable thing. Help all of the coaches in this country develop our kids. It’s those individuals who are helping mold our sons and daughters in to the men and women we hope them to become.

The post Parents: Get Out of the Way and Let the Coaches Coach appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

But the sport is not without a unique level of risk. Recent research on the effects of concussions and the tragic consequences of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) cannot be ignored. Symptoms range from memory loss, to anger, intense depression, and even suicidal ideation. Football greats like Dave Duerson and Junior Seau took their own lives in a manner meant to preserve their brains for research. This terrible disease, caused by repeated head collisions, has manifested as early as age 18, in the case of one deceased multi-sport athlete. These findings, while not the end of the story, should give us pause.

The football concussion debate has grown increasingly divisive. As in our political climate, both camps are heavily entrenched with no sign of anyone budging. For progress and clarity on the issue, we have to be willing to approach this discussion with an acknowledgement of the truth on both sides. The issue is far from black and white, but we owe it to our children to make a thoughtful decision based on all available data.

The Two Sides of the Debate

Before we begin, we must assume a baseline understanding that some risk is inherent in sport and in life. If you are of the opinion that any risk is unacceptable, and thus sports are not good for society, then we’ll have to agree to disagree. Perhaps your time would be better spent reading about Volvo’s new safety features or practicing your bongos.

This piece is specifically about youth football, which I’ll define as prior to age 14. Relevant to the discussion is the cumulative effect of youth, high school, and collegiate football, compared to those who do not begin football until high school.

When it comes to youth tackle football, there are two main factions. Both sides are, to some degree, warranted in their beliefs.

• One camp claims that the idea of eliminating youth tackle football is rooted in our intensely over-protective, “helicopter mom” culture. Whether you fall in this camp or not, the underlying concerns stem from a real societal problem. It is a rational reaction for people to hesitate to be even more protective in a society that’s already gone far too far in that direction.

• The opposing camp claims that the majority of those in favor of tackle football for six-year-olds will ignore any negative health consequences in their almost religious love for the violence and toughness of the sport. They’ll say that no matter what evidence is presented, this group will be totally dismissive of the very real issue of head trauma, particularly in regards to the developing brain.

Why Do We Need Football?

We must frame this debate with an understanding of our natural human inclinations and evolutionary predispositions. Despite the unparalleled safety and comfort of the modern era, our people face physical limitations and mental health disorders in record numbers. Sebastian Junger postulates in his book, Tribe, that the foremost challenge of modern society is that the “individualized lifestyles that (technologies) spawn seem to be deeply brutalizing to the human spirit.” He gives overwhelming evidence of the positive mental health benefits of disaster situations. From the war in Bosnia, to the Battle of Britain, to the true results of Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters, chaos creates a kind of solidarity that is deeply therapeutic. Depression and anxiety are nearly universally cured when people are thrust into situations that eliminate our social status and require us to depend on collective efforts toward the common good. We thrive when given purpose, tight bonds, and a reason to care about more than ourselves.

What the hell does all this have to do with football? It is one way we recreate the benefits of survival situations without having to be thrust into the violence and tragedy of war and chaos. For millennia, males defined themselves by their ability to protect and provide. Within this construct, they were inclined to sacrifice for the common good and act with valor and courage that satisfied their need for purpose. In this way, football seems a good antidote for some very real societal concerns.

Football promotes a team orientation to an unrivalled degree. It is one of the few sports where cuts are rare, and where almost every body type can find a way to be successful. The best running back is useless without great blocking, and the best linebackers are useless behind a flimsy defensive line. The intensely cerebral nature of the game means even those without athletic gifts can be tremendously valuable in roles on the scout team, in film sessions, and in supporting teammates through years of difficult workouts. Success cannot be had without the discipline, self-sacrifice, toughness, and common vision of all.

At What Cost?

The value football offers to our young men must be weighed against the cost of playing, particularly the effects of concussions. For many, that value is life-altering, perhaps life-saving. Still, by no means is football the only answer for creating solidarity, meritocracy, and a form of the male rite of passage. These can be creatively brought into existence in dozens of ways that carry less risk of brain damage.

There is considerable debate and some animosity over this issue, even amongst former NFL players. Many current and former NFL athletes have come out and said they don’t want their children to play football. Jets linebacker Bart Scott said bluntly that his kids won’t play. Super Bowl MVP Kurt Warner announced that he didn’t want his sons to play football, and was met with vicious reprisal from former NFL athletes Amani Toomer and Merril Hoge. Hoge, interestingly, won a $1.55 million lawsuit against a former Chicago Bears team physician for not warning him of the severity of his concussions, which forced his early retirement. Hoge has told the story of how one vicious hit left him with memory loss and having to relearn how to write his name.

While all sports carry some inherent risk of head injuries, contact sports like boxing, wrestling, and hockey have far higher risk, and football is head and shoulders above the rest. This is most noteworthy because the brain, unlike most organs, cannot cure or repair itself following all injuries. Furthermore, CTE is shown to be a cumulative disorder. A study of former NFL players¹ who began playing football before the age of 12 found that they faced a higher risk of later-life cognitive impairment than those who picked up the sport at a later age.

CTE is the result of repeated head strikes, and there is an increasing number of examples of the risks of getting hit so often, and so early. In January 2016, a 25-year-old former college football player was posthumously diagnosed with CTE. He began playing at 6 years old. It’s reasonable to assume that the early years of head injuries contributed to this very young man’s diagnosis.

How high any one person’s risks are is impossible to say. Many thousands of people play football from age 5 through 18 or older, and experience no apparent cognitive deficiencies or side effects. These personal experiences make it difficult for people to acknowledge any real risk in the youth football game that they found so profoundly influential.

Often, the argument given by proponents of youth tackle football is that younger kids are really too small to hit anyone hard enough to do any sort of damage. They point out that they, personally, played and are fine. While this may be their experience, it does not negate the growing body of evidence that suggests playing at a younger age poses more risk. The brain and body are far from developed. There are some very hard-hitting eight-year-olds these days, and the ground can be unforgiving.

Risks With Marginal Benefits

For people who love the game of football, but are interested in mitigating the risks of CTE, starting later to ensure fewer years of play may be a good alternative. This may be the best course of action even in exclusion of head trauma risks. In fact, the reason I won’t want a son of mine to play before 8th grade has much more to do with football not fulfilling my desires for an early athletic endeavor. The same things that make football so inclusive and team oriented, make it an unappealing avenue for athletic development for the pre-high school population. Many of the high school football coaches I respect feel similarly.

Kids of a certain build are forced to play on the offensive line, where their movement development is significantly limited. They do not get to run with the ball, throw, catch, play defense in space, or participate in the manner that young athletes need and want. I don’t think struggling to remember plays or being put into a role where they have to block a person on every play is a very good experience for someone under 12. In the absence of engaging and stimulating play, they become far more interested in the treat at the end of the game and how cool they look in their uniform.

A lot of kids are only out there to please their parents. I remember that many of my friends who began playing tackle football very young were burnt out by high school, and quit after their freshman year. For many kids, the pressure to play is great and the fervor and over-analysis by parents and youth coaches borders on religious fanaticism. Driven purely by the joy of the kids’ experience and absent of parental pressures, flag football might be the only option in demand for kids under 12. Football is a great sport for high-schoolers, but flag football is far better for early athletic development and enjoyment.

There is growing evidence that you can begin playing tackle football late and have great success. The Manning brothers and Tom Brady didn’t play tackle football until junior high and high school, respectively. They all played flag football, and seem to have turned into pretty decent players. Jerome Bettis credits flag football with providing him the deceptive elusiveness that is so rare for a big running back. Bryan Hinkle, a 12 year NFL veteran of the Pittsburg Steelers, did not start tackle football until high school, and he plans to do the same with his 7-year-old son. Even I didn’t play tackle until 7th grade, and became a regionally renowned player with scholarship offers. This is all anecdotal, but if you wish to position your child for athletic success, tackle football at a young age doesn’t seem to be necessary. And given the risks, it may even be detrimental to their long-term success and fulfillment.

Remember the Bigger Picture

Football, while inherently risky, has had an undeniably positive influence on many lives. It can be argued that the trends of sedentarism, learned helplessness, and social media addiction are a far greater threat to the minds and bodies of our youth than tackle football.

But your duty as a parent includes more than creating a great football player. Your first job is to create an autonomous, values-driven, passionate citizen with the inclination to live a full life.

So what should you do? That’s really not for me to say. There are those on both sides of the debate who’d admonish you for even contemplating one side or the other. Parents must look beyond the inflammatory rhetoric and look at the honest risks and benefits. We must find a balance between becoming overprotective, promoting health, and allowing boyish rough-housing.

It seems apparent that the risks are greater with cumulative hits over a longer career, especially if that career starts early. It also seems that starting athletes in tackle football as late as high school is not a real barrier to their ability to compete. Whatever you choose, please remember that the real purpose of youth athletics is to create healthy adults.

Reference:

1. Stamm, Julie M., Alexandra P. Bourlas, Christine M. Baugh, Nathan G. Fritts, Daniel H. Daneshvar, Brett M. Martin, Michael D. McClean, Yorghos Tripodis, and Robert A. Stern. “Age of first exposure to football and later-life cognitive impairment in former NFL players.” Neurology 84, no. 11 (2015): 1114-1120.

The post Should You Let Your Kids Go Full Contact in Football? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Youth sports and academics across the country are experiencing an epidemic that is systematically lowering the bar of expected performance. Parents, teachers, and coaches have always been berated with lines like “that’s not fair, its too hard”, or “that isn’t fair, (enter name here) gets to do it.” All good leaders in the classroom and on the field put long-term benefits over a child’s immediate desires. They ignore the urge to “be cool” and instead opt to foster discipline and willpower.

Unfortunately, that is no longer the norm. An increasing number of school districts, sports organizations, and parents have forgotten their role to lead, and instead have focused their attention on making life as fair as humanly possible. The motivation behind this is noble enough: empathy for others, showing no favoritism and seeking to treat everyone equally.

But trying to eliminate every possible imbalance can do far more harm than good for the “emphathizee.” What’s concerning about this trend is the insidious effect of training a generation to search for inequality behind every function, group, or tradition. It leads youth to overestimate their disadvantages and underestimate their ability to influence and control their own life. Nothing is more debilitating to future success and happiness.

Calling everybody the MVP removes the value from sports altogether.

When Everybody’s a Winner, Nobody Wins

We’ve all witnessed the new cultural staple, where every team in a league is awarded the same trophy at the end of the year. One adolescent-level basketball league gave every player an MVP award. Apparently they were all THE most valuable player. I’m sure the majority of these medals are in the trash, which is where they belong.

This trend towards fake equality only serves to instill a sense of entitlement. Rather than reinforcing the truth that the experience is the reward, and stimulating a desire to compete and work towards a bigger goal, treating everyone the same teaches the falsehood that hard work and growth don’t matter.

And it’s not just the little leagues. Today’s high school coaches can expect a handful of very upset emails and parent meetings every year over playing time. A lack of playing time for their kid just isn’t fair. The kids themselves are shocked to find that they don’t get to play in every game, or don’t have as large of a roll as they’d like. They’ll fume up and down the sideline. They just can’t understand why they don’t get as much time in the game as they did in 4th grade.

Apathy in the Classroom

Inside school walls, teachers are overwhelmed with the task of accommodating each student’s individual needs. Our factory, one-size-fits-all approach to education is bad enough, but it’s made worse by students who are convinced that the content must be spoon-fed to them in just the right way.

A friend who teaches a couple cities away explained to me that their district has a policy prohibiting teachers from failing a student without first speaking to their parent. Teacher-parent communication is a great thing, but in this case, parents habitually cancelled phone lines and dodged teacher calls, creating a recipe for student apathy. Another local school no longer recognizes National Honor Society students at graduation. Apparently it was unfair to those unwilling or unable to achieve that level and work that many hours of community service.

Teachers enter their profession to make a difference, and most will go out of their way to make a connection. They’d be infinitely more successful if students came to them with an understanding that success or failure was ultimately up to each student; that obstacles exist for everyone, and they must take ownership of their own life, work, and future.

The Consequences of Manufactured Fairness

What is so wrong with this growing culture of “fair-seekers”? Fair fails to teach any of the life lessons dictated by the laws of nature, the biggest of which is that life is not fair. Trying to make everything fair leads to an expectation that the world will fix your problems for you. When everything is handed to you and the world goes out of its way to make your life fair, your wits will dim and you’ll become dependent on those forces to keep catching you when you fall. In the end, there is no way the world can continue to right all of life’s challenges for you.

What has happened is a systematic lowering of the bar, and that’s bad for everybody. The bar is truly the greatest thing. Standards. Expectations. Accountability. All are necessary for any great team in sports or in life. And yet these are the first casualties of fair-seeking behavior. As the bar is lowered for the few, it will be lowered for all. The system becomes rigged for mediocrity, or worse. The concept of fairness has become perverted to excuse every misstep, lower standards, and discredit the efforts of the exceptional.

Do we want to challenge people and help them reach their greatest potential? Do we want to help others discover they are stronger than they ever knew; that they have the power to overcome any challenge? Or do we want to coddle them? Should we make everyone comfortable and allow our youth to believe life will persist in this manner forever?

Expecting fairness is a recipe for victimhood, self-pity, and the unhappiness that always follows.

This is not an attack on fairness as a concept, but on the deified status it has achieved amongst many policymakers. Legendary Texas high school football coach Steve Lineweaver told me about an old coach who was responding to a comment about how kids aren’t like they used to be. The coach responded, “Kids haven’t changed over the decades. We the supervising adults are the ones who have changed.” We need to restore the wisdom of old.

Challenges Aren’t Unfair, They Are Opportunities

What’s needed is a new default mindset. Ryan Holliday calls the mindset of seeing problems and challenges as opportunities, “a formula for optimism.” All youth institutions should unify behind this message of opportunism and strength in personal ownership.

Raising kids in a bubble only makes them weaker:

Protect Your Kids From the Danger of Taking No Risks

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