Many people who follow professional baseball refer to the last decade and a half as the "steroid era." Those same people may lovingly reminisce about a simpler time, when a performance-enhancing substance was a bowl of Wheaties™, a glass or orange juice, or a sirloin steak. Although a great deal has been said and written of late about athletes using performance-enhancing drugs, there often can be no explanation for the success or failure of an entire team. No one has been able to define, isolate, and reproduce the chemistry that a winning professional sports team has for all or part of the season.
Momentum plays a huge role in physics, but what role does it play in professional sports? Witness for example, the 2008 Boston Celtics. The Celtics had great basketball teams in the 1960's and 70's, but they have fallen on very hard times since then. The 2007 Celtics were a good team, but were never considered a great team. With virtually the same personnel, how do you explain the Celtics winning 28 of their first 31 games of the 2008 season? That's a winning percentage greater than 90% -- an unbelievable winning percentage in any professional sport.
The same can be said about the 2007 Colorado Rockies. The Rockies franchise had never won a National League pennant. They spent most of the 2007 baseball season struggling in the standings. Then, for some inexplicable reason, they won their last 18 of 19 games to propel the team into the World Series for the first time in franchise history. Conversely, the New York Mets -- at the same time -- were staging the worst collapse in Major League baseball history, losing a 7.5 game lead with barely two weeks to go in the regular season. In 2006, nearly everyone had counted the Pittsburgh Steelers out of the running for the Super Bowl. They barely made the playoffs, having done so as a wild card team. Yet the Steelers, playing on the road for every playoff game, were able to win the Super Bowl. They did so by beating the team with a far superior record, the Indianapolis Colts, in the playoffs and then the Seattle Seahawks. Why, then, does one team reach such an ascent, while another team reaches such depths?
The desire to succeed in sports has trickled down from professional sports to the amateur level. It used to be that high school sports were considered the epitome of amateur sports, but many doubt that is still true today. It is commonplace today for high school athletes to be scouted not only by Colleges with massive intercollegiate sports programs, but also by professional baseball, basketball, and Olympic teams. Most of the successful gymnasts in the Olympics are in their early teens, as are most of the successful figure skaters. With the demands being placed on young athletes still rising, one has to ask if young athletes are risking future injury by focusing on becoming more competitive at a very early age?
What You Should be Doing
Strength training for pre-teens has become a "hot button" issue of late. It's important that any program involving strength training involve the use of very little weight. The goal should be to improve overall fitness and flexibility. Young muscles are subject to the same stresses as more mature athletes. Although an athlete is young, it does not prevent the athlete from injury. What's important to remember before any training regimen is this:
