Elite Sport Training Programs

More and more now in today's youth sports, parents are turning to "elite training" for their children. Parents are placing children in these academies that put children through intense work-out regimines and drilling them to encourage early specialization in a certain skill or sport. We discussed this new trend in class on February 16.

The article describes the vigourous training the children go through everyday to become elite athletes in their respective sports. It also discusses how long the athletes will be doing this training, and whether or not the specified time is safe for them or not. One important thing discussed in the article are the signs of overtraining some students will endure such as: getting tired more easily, irritability and unwillingness to work with other teammates, lack of motivation to practice, decreased ability to achieve training goals, and slower times in certain drills. Children often become very stressed and overworked in these types of environments, which has forced many people into comparing it with child labor laws.
http://www.sportssafety.org/articles/how-much-training/


In Coakley's text, he discusses these new elite programs on pages 131-132. Coakley talks about how the "Children in high-performance training programs work at their sports for long hours week after week and year after year." This is one of the same concepts discussed in the article, as well as in class. Coakley also discusses the issue of the training infringing on child labor law issues. In the text on page 132, there is even a line that says it borders on child abuse.

The video link below is a clip of the elite gymnastics training that is the main focus of most of the new academies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqRKc5vChw0