When things click, it’s a great feeling.
One of the presenters at the Perform Better Summit 2016 this past weekend was Greg Rose (currently with TPI), who spoke about methods for building power in athletes. Part of a much larger conversation, Rose briefly mentioned early windows of opportunity for athletic development. The first is the early speed window, roughly between 7 and 9 years old, where children can benefit from neural adaptations from maximal outputs. He has his golfers of this age focus on driving for distance, without any regard to accuracy. He also encourages the use of all forms of power training, including jumping, sprinting, striking, kicking, swinging, etc, especially training ambidextrously. He stated that this window is crucial to eventually success in power sports.
Last night, I was reading The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, shown below. Coyle notes a trend by which younger siblings tend to be significantly faster than older siblings, and even goes on to identify the last ten 100m sprint record holders as being later in their family birth order. Coyle attributes this to a need for younger siblings to hustle in order to keep up with their older siblings.
Sounds like the early speed window to me!
Bare Strength 