Future Olympians

I was at the American Swim Coaches Association convention in
Las Vegas last week. Obviously everyone was quite euphoric over our swim team’s
performance. As usual I have to throw some water on the fire. Let’s not spend
too much time patting ourselves on the back for the 2008 performances. Let’s
not let typical American naivete pervade our thinking again.  Let’s take a realistic look at today in order
to predict the future. Our kids are less active, have poor or few movement
skills, is this a base for future high level Olympic performance? Mark Schubert,
National Team Head Coach and General Manager,  gave a presentation that sounded like a cheer leading report of our team’s performance. There was very little objective
analysis of why things went well and nothing on what went wrong, very little in
terms of recommendations for the future. What lesson did we learn? We can bury
our heads in the sand and revel in Michael Phelps performances or we can
objectively analyze what we need to do to get better. Schubert stated that the
world is not catching up to us. I do not know what planet he is on, but
they are right at our heels. We need to recognize that our 2016 Olympians’ in
all sports are twelve years old today! Go out and look at today’s twelve year olds. How can we project those overweight inactive youngsters into future
Olympians, they are physically illiterate, they lack fundamental movement skills.
Who is going to address their movement deficiencies? You can’t wait until they
reach the elite level, it is too late then, the window of adaptation is closed.
We need to get physical education that is both physical and educational. There is
time but the window is small. We need to get our sport leaders like Schubert to
open their eyes and ears and be aware of the reality of the future. Remember it
takes ten years and ten thousand hours to produce a high level performer in any
discipline. The future is now with our twelve year olds – wake up!