Anonymous wrote:The National Athletic Trainers’ Association issued some new guidelines on sports training which has a basic idea of one hour training per week per year of age. An 8 year old can have 8 hours of sports, a 13 year old can have 13 hours, etc.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/health/children-sports-injuries.html
Also calls for at least two days off a week and for no more than 8 months a year in a sport.
https://www.nata.org/press-release/101619/national-athletic-trainers-association-releases-official-statement
Anyone over the one hour per age year guideline? I think a DA program guideline is 4 x 90 minutes + a 90 minute game + maybe an hour of warmups so that wouldn't likely be too much (unless the kid is doing their own thing on the side too).
Not really new, these have been around a couple of years. If you read into the details of about what specifically is recommended, they are focusing on structured environments and direct instruction. A structured ‘program’ is not necessarily a structured environment. If the kids have freedom to play during the ‘training’ time, that does not really fit the definition of what the recommendations were targeting. If your kids practice sessions have a coach dictating every moment, maybe take these things to heart and look for more balance. Most programs only have 2/3 to 3/4 of the time focused on direct instruction with the balance to free play. In these cases, you’re not likely to run afoul of the recommendations. If your kid is playing multiple sports at one time, you may want to reconsider the free time v. fun time balance.