Tiger Woods press conference- or Junior athletes?

Posted On Friday, 19th February 2010 at 16:16

With all the hoopla surrounding the Tiger Woods press conference today, it is easy to forget what really matters with sport in this country. Young golfers have often been asked to think WWTD? 

What would Tiger do?  Well, now that has become a bit of a joke.  Yesterday I had the privilege of working with about 50 young athletes from many different sports in the south west.  Trying to plan fitness for: judo, boxing, equestrian riders, hockey, netball, fencing, table tennis, rugby, basketball and athletics as well as male and female, children and adults was challenging.

Brian Ellicott was doing some work epxerience with me and his observations from the outside were:

"Main points I picked up on:

    * Young female athletes are generally more flexible than their male
      counterparts.
    * Nearly all young athletes lack a solid and robust foundation for
      everyday movement, let alone anything sports specific.
    * Lower back problems seem to be worryingly common among young
      athletes of both sexes and nearly always is caused by bad posture,
      inflexibility in the spine and being coached into the ground when
      they do have a problem.
    * Some equestrian riders seem be more agile than a lot of athletes
      who play team sports, such as Rugby and Football, even though it
      is not as important to them as it is the team sport players. Makes
      you question what the team sports’ coaches are actually doing when
      they train their athletes.
    * A great synergy between coaches and therapists produces the best
      results by far.
    * The young athletes who we worked with had either zero or next to
      no appreciation of the quality of the services, knowledge and
      skill that was being made available to them – for free!"