ATHLETIC S COACH
AUTHORS Anthony Blazevich is a Professor of Biomechanics at Edith Cowan University
Sebastien Ratel is the Head Lecturer of Exercise Physiology at the Universite Clermont Auvergne
YES, YOUR KIDS CAN RU N A LL DAY TH E Y ’ V E G OT M US CLE S LI K E EN D U R A N CE ATH LE TE S
A recent study by Birat et al. (2018) demonstrated that prepubertal children were metabolically comparable to well-trained adult endurance athletes. This article, originally published by The Conversation summarises their findings. We will go on to discuss the coaching implications and how this should affect the way coaches approach training young athletes.
Most of us know children who can run and play for hours and hours, taking only short rests. As a parent or carer, it can be exhausting. For scientists, why this is the case has long been the source of debate – is it due to fitness? Or something else? Our study published today looked at performance and recovery of children and adults doing strenuous cycling. It shows children not only out-perform most adults, but can perform as well as highly-trained adult endurance athletes, and then recover even faster afterwards.
Children’s Muscles are Different Repeated experiments have shown that the muscles of children tend to fatigue more slowly than adults (Lexell et al., 1992).
These results seem to fly in the face of what science would predict. For example, children have shorter limbs, so they have to take more steps and should therefore theoretically use more energy. Children are also less able to make use of tendon energy return systems – that is, they store less energy in their tendons so they can’t reuse this energy to propel themselves during movement (Waugh, Korff & Blazevich, 2017).
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And children show greater activity in muscles that oppose or control movement, a reflection of the fact that typically they are less skillful, and therefore use more energy (Frost et al., 1997). So how do their muscles stay fresh?
