The suitability of elite practice at the lower level

Over the past month or so, I have seen articles, messages board posts, blogs, and tweets (yes I said that word) mentioning what the top football / soccer teams are doing, and how this can be applied to lower levels of the sport. Whenever the practice of a professional team or player is mentioned, coaches and parents start to salivate at the thought of training their players / kids like Lionel Messi or Christiano Ronaldo.

Crazy as it seems, though, the U11 girls soccer team your daughter is on is not FC Barcelona, and the high school team you coach is not made up with the best of the best natural selection has to offer! I would even argue that the high amateur, and lower professional levels, are a far cry from the elite in many respects.

Yes that includes top NCAA and USL teams in the United States, and the premier academy and League 1 teams back in the homeland.

Sometimes practices at the top level are justified by success - even if it is wrong in so many other regards when the context/level is changed.

Just because Didier Drogba can be as strong as an ox without "real" weight training, does not mean that the young academy scholar can.

The Korean national team may be able to get all the physical overload AND technical and tactical training it needs solely from ball-related drills, but the tactically and physically immature high-school freshman may not.

New is also not always better. In this sport, there are some really outdated practices that deserve to be superseded - and this is being proven (more and more each day) by science. Other aspects of physical preparation, however, are being ditched or disregarded due to fashionable trends or marketing masquerading as science (science, I might add, playing on "common sense" assumptions).

The world of elite sport is a very different world from what the average coach, or strength and conditioning coach works in. My old boss Kunle Odetoyinbo said in best, "these athletes are different animals". 

Certainly we can learn from the best - and some of the mistakes that have happened (and will continue to happen) at the top level along the way. I am (personally) a massive believer in ball-related conditioning and on-field periodization, and this is my primary area of study for my PhD, however blindly applying it across the board may well detract from its positives. Other practices may also not be optimal for athletic development at the lower level, and/or might be flat out dangerous!

More on this topic in the future...