This is very big issue as the FFA National Curriculum and Development plans roll out across the nation through every community based junior football club in the nation. The point of agreement is clear - the more quality training you do at a young age, the more likely you are to reach higher levels of performance in the game in later years. Well, you could say that about anything in life. Quality learning environment and large amounts of time dedicated to achieving excellence. Easy to say, not easy to do and for parents, bloody costly!
Easy to forget these young players are just that - young. When the "fun" goes, so does the desire to play the beautiful game. And not every young player is good enough to get to the top at age or later in open competition, but this is hard for some parents to accept, but I guess that's another story, but examples of it are on display every weekend at every playing field at every club in season.
Football, like the other big participation sports, with a professional playing opportunity and national profile seek to claim our children for the best part of a calender year. After all, that's how you get closer to the magic 10,000 hours. When you see a young Japanese or Korean team play, you are struck by their superb technical competence. How did they get to be so good is the usual question. Well, they train a lot is the response - lots and lots. There are certainly other cultural and economic imperatives, but there is no argument about the fact that the amount of quality training they do each year when young ensure that all those wonderful football habits are established as preferential behaviour, the sort of good football habits you revert to when under pressure during competition.
Those young players that get tot he top have something else that for the rest of us is not present in our football endeavors (except in spirit of course) - they are driven young people, determined to make all sacrifices that will be demanded of them in order to become a player of high ability. This could be said of any sort of high performance. But the fact is, not that many have it in football and plenty that do when they are young, loose their enthusiasm / drive to achieve, or simply change their interests in life. No problem. Too often, they stop playing and that is a tragedy. AS they say - easier to pass through the eye of a needle etc. Worth keeping in mind.
One coach shared these wonderful thoughts with me several weeks ago as we watched a Kanga Cup final (I just stood and nodded and thought that this coach had absolutely nailed it, so here it is):
"there is no substitute for a lot of good training, but it has to be quality and it has to run over the entire year at a pace and intensity that the children can cope with and still smile, but every parent has to work out for themselves what is best for the child and I do mean the child, not the parent. Good coaches manage the young players and help develop them as a person not just as a footballer. Football is more than a game or getting into rep teams or making lots of money. Its more than the Socceroos or Matildas. None of us know for sure what our children will be good at or what it is in this life that will capture their heart. Hope its football, but I am happy if football just stays a part of their life, they keep playing at any level and they remember it with pleasure, make friendships that last, know what it is like to commit to a Club for the long term and see it through the good and bad seasons, just like the rest of life, coach others and manage teams or do other volunteer work at the Club, so that they take their children to football when the time comes. We build football and we build community. Now how much of that is about whether you train 10,000 hours?"
Then I remind myself, that the best Football I have attended this season has been in the Capital Football Womens and Mens Premier Leagues - specifically, the Mens games, my Club's first round Woden Valley FC and Canberra FC , and the clashes between Canberra FC and Canberra Olympic. They were better than anything the Socceroos have turned out in 2011. On the Womens game, you can do no better then the clashes, all of them, between Belconnen United FC and Woden Valley FC, and they have been sensational. Now, a lot of these players have done a lot more development training since they started playing than most and it shows. There we are again - a higher level of training is necessary to deliver higher level performances. These players are now coached well and continue to develop. All this at the Club community football level. This is Football!
Is My Child Training Too Much?
There is more than one school of thought about how often and for how long young players should train.
Some coaches clearly subscribe to Malcolm Gladwell's theory that virtually anyone can succeed at virtually anything if they put in at least 10,000 hours of practice.
These coaches are the ones that ask their players to attend three or even four coaching session every week.
But can this model really be applied to youth soccer coaching?
Mr Gladwell cites pop band The Beatles as "proof" that his theory is correct. Between 1960 and 1962, before they became famous, The Beatles went to Hamburg to play in the local clubs.
They played eight hours a night, seven days a week, they weren't very good and the audiences were largely unappreciative. So what did The Beatles get out of the Hamburg experience? They got non-stop hours of playing time and were forced to get better. They had to to improvise, learn new material quickly, play all types of music, etc., just to keep their audience engaged.
By 1962, The Beatles were playing eight hours per night, seven nights per week. By 1964, the year they burst on to the international scene, The Beatles had played more than 1,200 concerts together. That's well over 10,000 hours of practice.
Mr Gladwell – and maybe your son / daughter's coach – believe that repetition and hard work is the difference between success and non-success, genius and mediocrity.
But it's not enough to make youngsters train three or four times a week for hours at a time. A youth soccer team is a group of children, not The Beatles.
Children's coaching has to be of high quality and appropriate to their age. Young bodies that are put through hours and hours of physical exercise will, eventually, break down. And there aren't many coaches skilful enough to teach soccer properly for long periods. If you pluck the wrong string on a violin for 10,000 hours you won't get any better. You'll just annoy the neighbors.
There is no "right" amount of training time for 11 to 13-year-olds but you will know when your daughter trains too much. She will get bored with soccer, lose her enthusiasm and start complaining of aches and pains.
But don't wait until that happens. Discuss the issue with the coach and tell him that you're worried about the possible damage that training for too long will cause.
If he persists in "over-training", I suggest you find another team for your daughter before she suffers physical damage and loses her passion for the game.