Are We Putting the Cart Before the Horse in Youth Sports Training?

In today’s youth sports world, there’s a growing trend of pushing young athletes to specialize and perfect their skills early. But what if focusing on sport-specific skills too soon is actually harming their long-term development? This is exactly what I discovered during my years of training young athletes.

At one point, I worked with a group of promising young athletes who were physically dominant in their sport. At first glance, they had all the qualities you’d expect: tall, strong, and seemingly capable of outmatching their peers. But when we started the dynamic warm-up, I quickly noticed something unexpected—many of them struggled to perform basic exercises correctly.

These were athletes who looked powerful on the field, but when it came to simple movements requiring core strength and body control, they were clearly lacking. Their size and physical presence were masking a deeper problem: they didn’t have the foundational strength needed for many of the exercises critical for long-term athletic development, especially in sports requiring explosive movements.

This made me think of the old saying, “putting the cart before the horse.” I was tasked with improving their speed and agility, but how could we expect progress if they lacked the strength to support these improvements? The long-term benefits would be far greater if we focused first on building their core and overall strength, before diving into the more advanced skills.

Today, many youth sports programs are making a similar mistake—focusing heavily on sport-specific skills without first building the fundamental physical abilities needed to support those skills.

This is happening at a time when headlines point to a disturbing trend: children today are 30% weaker than they were 20 years ago. A generation of physically weaker kids is entering youth sports programs that demand increasingly high levels of performance. It’s no surprise that we’re seeing more overuse injuries and burnout among young athletes than ever before.

It’s time we change this mindset. Instead of rushing to see immediate results, we need to prioritize developing a solid physical foundation for young athletes. This means integrating physical conditioning into their programs from the start.

Breaking old habits isn’t easy. But as coaches, parents, and mentors, we owe it to young athletes to take the long view. It’s not about how many games they win in their youth—it’s about setting them up for sustained success and a healthy, injury-free athletic career.

Only then can the cart—and the horse—move forward in the right direction.

-Igor Macner, author of the books "Formula for Success in Sports 1&2"