Are We Missing the Bigger Picture in Youth Speed, Strength and Conditioning Training?

30 Oct Are We Missing the Bigger Picture in Youth Speed, Strength and Conditioning Training?

Posted at 15:36h in Blog, Female Athletes, Uncategorized by erica 0 Comments

I’ve been training youth female athletes for 14 years in speed, strength, and conditioning – starting off in Baltimore, MD for several years, then coming down to Tampa, Florida to impact a new group of young girls.

I started my coaching journey in Baltimore, Maryland, worked with hundreds of girls soccer players and field-based athletes for several years at a big performance facility, then moved to Tampa, Florida in 2021 to continue to do speed, agility and strength training with this impactful population in a smaller, more private studio.

Truthfully, I love working with youth and have never wanted to pursue working at a professional club. Training kids has always been my passion because I love leaving an impact on them young, as well as seeing them truly develop, and most critically, to help them see what they’re capable of.

Over the years, I’ve been so incredibly grateful to see my young female athletes blossom and achieve amazing things in their sports careers. From girls playing at the highest college levels, getting scholarships, and eventually going pro, I couldn’t be more proud of their hard work and athletic success. Seeing their commitment pay off and taking it all the way to the top has been extremely fulfilling.

However, I wouldn’t say these sport successes have been the most exciting part of what I do. While it’s amazing to see my girls get D1 scholarships and pro contracts, the most rewarding thing for me to see is girls love strength training for a lifetime.

I still follow many of my early athletes, who I started working with when they were 12-years-old. Now, they’re all out of college. From time to time, I’ll see what they’re up to on Instagram and I see them still strength training, getting to the gym, crushing deadlifts, eating healthy, prepping meals, and being passionate about health and wellness.

For me, this is the biggest win of being a performance coach to young girls who are now older, and who can do this stuff all on their own now, having daily, healthy habits.

Are We Missing the This BIGGER Picture?

Look, I’m all about improving speed times, getting athletes faster, improving agility, increasing strength, and numbers. You know, the x’s and o’s of my profession.

But oftentimes, I think we all get too caught up in the performance focused, tangible, numbers side of this profession. And sports parents, too, get caught up in performance, the I-need-to-get-my-kid-faster, the my-kid-needs-a-scholarship mindset, ignoring what else this type of training does for their daughter long-term.

I had one athlete a while back who had improved her speed for herself and from her own baseline, but her baseline was slower than others her age (her first day we clocked her at a 1.6 10m fly, which is just slow). Genetically, she will never be the fastest girl out there, and even with training, I can’t get her to be a 1.09 10m fly. It just is what it is. Her mom is hyper-worried about her speed and pressuring her to perform, but the funniest part of all this is, the girl is not too hung up on it LOL. She recognizes she has improved for herself and has improved since day 1 of training. From her 1.6 sec baseline, she’s now in the 1.4s!

But most critically, she LOVES coming into the gym, and enjoys the workouts because it’s an escape from the stressors in her life. She loves deadlifting, pull-ups, push-ups, split squats, learning new strength movements. Will she go D1? Probably not. But does she love working out and lifting weights? Yes. Does she SMILE every time she comes in the gym? Yes. These are huge wins. Why are parents forgetting this bigger picture?? Why is her mom more worried about performance than her? Why is her mom not recognizing she loves working out and exercising!

Speed, strength and conditioning training is more so about healthy habits and lessons of consistency and resiliency for a lifetime.

Strength training teaches so much about life. It’s the ultimate challenge because the only way to get strong is to get uncomfortable, maybe fail at times, but then level up. Girls won’t know what they’re capable of until they come face-to-face with adversity and learn to overcome it, to find a way to push through.

A girl working toward her first pull-up, for example, is no easy feat.

It requires consistency and persistence to achieve it. This is what girls need to learn for life: that nothing comes easy; it is earned.

So yes, performance and numbers and speed improvements, but also, the valuable life lessons that are taught in strength and conditioning programs.

Maybe we should focus back on this bigger picture. Because when girls are older, retire from sport one day, they need to learn to take care of their bodies and implement healthy habits for life.

They should never stop training, working out, and becoming strong, and if we can get them into good habits young, teach them the power of consistency in the gym, and the power of persistence when they fail, who cares if they don’t go D1 or pro? There are other wins that come out of this, far more valuable.

Awesome if they do go D1 and highly commendable, but I’ll always be more excited when my athletes stick with healthy habits for a lifetime!

I LOVE when girls train even after sports end. And all my girls have. This is what I’m most proud of.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Erica Mulholland is a former college 3x All-American soccer player and now Hall of Famer from Johns Hopkins University. She holds a Master of Science in Exercise Science and is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach, who has been helping female athletes of all sports with speed, agility, strength, power, and conditioning for 14 years. She works with youth female athletes who want to become stronger and faster, as well as ACL rehab for female athletes in the later stages (over 3 month mark post-surgery) who want to return to sport better than they were prior to injury.

Work with Erica in Tampa and Lutz Florida for speed, agility, and strength training, OR late stage ACL rehab (must be at minimum 3 months into physical therapy and post-surgery): BOOK ASSESSMENT HERE

Need more personalized help from Erica? BOOK A CONSULT HERE