Introducing Youth to Endurance Sports

Many of us have young children, siblings, or friends that we would like to see enjoy the sport we love. What better way to give back to the sport than to share with a young person the life changing, euphoric nature of endurance athletics?

I get the opportunity to share my passion with young people every day with Endorphin Fitness’ youth program. Every week, team members run, road bike, swim, and/or mountain bike to new levels of fitness and enjoyment, and I receive all the joys that come with this.

I encourage you to share your sport with a young person as you have the opportunity to truly impact his or her life. With this opportunity though comes a great responsibility to make this a fulfilling experience that sets the child up for years of growth physically and mentally. To ensure this, we prioritize three principles at Endorphin Fitness that I encourage you to also implement.

1. Prioritize Technique – Proper technique raises the bar of that which the athlete can achieve in regards to all endurance sports, be it swimming, cycling, mountain biking, running, or another endurance sport. Furthermore, it sets the young athlete up to prevent injury and develop properly for years to come. With every movement, we develop neural patterns that become engrained within our mind and muscles. As you know, bad habits are hard to change and often lead to injury as well as an inability to attain a certain fitness level. Therefore, it is essential that young athletes practice technique and reinforce this technique daily. You do not need to have perfect technique to teach it. If you do not know what perfect technique is though, I encourage you to find a coach that can share this with your young athlete. Much of technique for a youth athlete is coordination – simply finding balance and coordination in movement. Technique sessions should therefore be less structured around specific instructions but rather movements and drills that elicit proper technique without the child knowing it. Mountain biking therefore is a great skill to teach cycling technique simply because it demands that the rider learn to maneuver bike and body in a coordination movement while pedaling a smooth pedal stroke to navigate a trail successfully.

2. Appropriate Distance & Intensity – Youth are not adults nor should they train like adults. We all want our kids to be our training partner, but the truth is, we are limiting how many years we will be able to train with them by setting them up for injury down the road. Let kids develop slowly and enjoy success at distances and intensities at which they can succeed instead of pushing them too far forcing their technique to fail. Instead of asking the young athlete to join you for your 2 hour mountain bike ride, instead do 1.5 hours hard and then ride easy with him or her for the final 30 minutes. With time and consistency, he or she will be able to do more and more. There are 2 ways to determine appropriate youth volume and intensity. The first is to watch the athlete’s technique and stop or slow down when it begins to break down, but more importantly, watch his or her focus. If he or she is able to maintain focus and is enjoying every moment, you are probably at the right volume and intensity. If the child is getting bored or tired by the end, continuing may cause burn out and lack of desire to continue long-term. When in doubt, always err on the lower intensity and volume to have the youth athlete beg for more.

3. Above All Else, FUN – Nothing else matters if it is not fun. It does not matter how much potential a young athlete has, he or she will not succeed unless they are having fun. Never sacrifice this simple principle and constantly find ways to make it fun. Specifically to cycling/mountain biking, ride the roads, ride the trails, ride different roads and trails, play tag while on the bike, see how long you can ride a trail without putting your foot down, enter a race, share ride stories, etc. There are so many ways to add variety to endurance sports – don’t forget why we all do it in the first place.

Michael Harlow is the founder and head coach of Endorphin Fitness (www.endorphinfitness.com) where expert coaches get some to their first finish line and others to their finish line first. You can contact him at michael@endorphinfitness.com.