What to take into account when training juniors:
- Make it fun
- Keep a variety
- Keep it simple
- Let them decide
- Don’t live your life through them
Make it fun
We have become a society with structured sport and sport training.
This is quite alright for creating skills for netball, football, tennis, and then game play. However when it comes to training in the gym, this is a different space.
As much as they need to be mindful of safety, workouts in the gym can be fun and most importantly short durations.
Juniors don’t normally have the ability to stay focused for too long, so make it short workouts, but effective.
Explain the connection of gaining strength to improve the sport or encourage self esteem.
Keep a variety
Each workout can work different body parts, some workouts can go by the clock, be a pyramid style of reps, or can be a tabata workout.
Making them different is always a good way to keep the juniors interested and engaged.
Changing it up also helps them find their strength in endurance or speed as well.
Keep it simple
Don’t make workouts complicated, keep to a couple of different exercises rotating between two is enough. If you try to add too many things in, it becomes confusing, frustrating and dangerous as they do not remember the technique because they are trying to remember the exercise itself.
It can be two leg exercises or legs then arms – remember variety is good as well.
Don’t go heavy on the weights until the technique is correct.
Let them decide
When it comes to training and exercise in general, allow your junior to choose what they’d like to try. Stop making them do exercises they do not enjoy.
This makes it a ‘chore’ for them and that can lead to a bad relationship with exercise and wellbeing.
We need the juniors to keep moving (we all saw what COVID-19 did to them when everything shut down – many juniors shut down).
Exercise is in line with Mental Health – so always be aware to encourage not force!
Don’t live your life through them
Just because you like to run, or go to the gym, or you love football – does not give you the right to make your child do the same.
Pigeonholing your child into what you like to do, does not allow them to explore what they would like to try and find their niche!
I find juniors start to categorise certain achievements to equal being fit – eg you run all the time or a certain distance makes you fit. This is not something juniors should be measuring as a ‘fitness level’.
Juniors that do not like to run feel defeated and hopeless and discourage them to try.
We now need to broaden our minds and encourage juniors to see that lifting weights makes them strong, that their bodies are amazing at what they can achieve.
By utilizing skills like reaction times or mobility is also a great way to see your body is competent in what it can do.
By just relating what you do as your method of exercise and movement, does not mean that it is theirs.
Dancing, singing, swinging, jogging, jumping, racquet sports, hand to eye connection, yoga, mediation, weight lifting, karate – all of these are excellent ways to keep juniors moving, and to help encourage their self esteem through different abilities, techniques and beliefs.
I’m all for improvement and best and fairests to help some juniors understand you need to train hard to receive accolades, and there are times that winning isn’t everything – that’s when you can bring it in within the gym to concentrate on ‘self improvement’ and being fit without all the running.
I absolutely love working with juniors with their high energy and noise.
To expose them to new exercises and workouts, to see them make new friends and their comradery.
If you’d like to join in or have your junior come along I have ongoing junior sessions throughout school terms and school holidays – contact me for more info or check out the link.
I also work with juniors 1:1 or 2:1 if they’d like new ideas, if it’s new beginnings, or coaching for sport conditioning.
