I quit my Full Time Job this Year Because…
I got tired of trying to put out fires that had no business being lit. If I had to guess, I’d say 80% of the injuries that walked into my Athletic Training Room at the high school weren’t actually injuries. That doesn’t mean they were all soft and needed to be tougher (though there are always one or two each year like that). Rather, their bodies were unprepared for the demands of the sport, and they were paying the price.
It’s really an unfortunate cycle. Students come in freshman year and want to try a new sport. I love that, and really buy into sports leading to all kinds of development beyond the surface layer. The students whose bodies weren’t prepared for a sport inevitably would end up with some type of nagging issue. Shin splints, knee pain, hip pain, low back pain, shoulder pain. Baseball throwers get elbow pain, girls soccer players get tendon pain on their knees, swimmers get shoulder pain. I found myself the last three years saying “nothing is broken or torn, you just need to be stronger” pretty much on the hour. Every hour.
As parents, I fully believe the goal is to give your child the best shot at success. Most parents I had interactions with truly wanted their son or daughter to have a healthy and productive season. When an issue would arise, the concern for their child was real, as was the relief of hearing no lasting damage. Being told their athlete needed to be stronger left many of them confused. Wasn’t the sport participation enough? One such parent texted me, frustrated, “why does my daughter keep getting hurt?” My explanation that her sport was actually breaking down her body rather than building it back up seemed like novel information. As I type this, that specific athlete is two months into strength training with a performance coach and has already felt a difference on the court. She actually started liking her sport again simply because her body isn’t hurting anymore while she plays. It took three years of high school sports for this realization to occur for her and her family.
To me, that’s too late.
It’s clear to me that the majority of these athletes leaving middle school and considering sports in high school haven’t been guided through the simplest of general fitness regimens to prepare them for an organized sport. After years of treating symptoms rather than preventing them, I started to wonder if there was a better way to approach these concerns. I knew the problem was actually that their body hadn’t been conditioned to perform at the level required for high school sports. Whose job should it be to ensure the correct growth and development was happening as middle schoolers progressed through their 2-3 years? I realized that this hole I was experiencing wasn’t unique to me or Kennedy HS. Young athletes need better development as they prepare for high school. It needs to be foundational, and it needs to fit in conveniently alongside the club sport team practice that has our country in a chokehold.
Working at the Division 1 level through grad school showed me what a successful athlete looks like. Dropping down to the high school level exposed me to the problems that arise for athletes who are unprepared. Together, my experiences put me in a unique position to be able to “see the future” for these athletes I want to help. Since I’ve already treated their future selves, I can build effective programming that targets the areas I know will be vulnerable when they get to their high school sports, and beyond.
It was that realization that really launched me into preparation for leaving my work at the school to focus on working with younger athletes. I’m now on a mission to build up programs for middle school students and younger who aspire to be high school athletes. Many of them have already begun specializing in a sport, which can often lead to injury in itself. This approach will be pretty much the opposite. No specific sport, no specialization. Simple, foundational training that builds the athlete, not a sport, and allows for the participant to walk into their first high school practice with some athletic skillset.
Ironically, it’s highly likely that I won’t know what “fires” I prevent. There won’t be a phone call from some Athletic Trainer at a surrounding high school who acknowledges the number of athletes who didn’t get hurtin the years after I started this. Not ironically, the ones who train through my programs will have the best chance at lighting the fires they’ve been dreaming of since they were little. After all, when it comes to athletic careers, it’s not always the best that make it far. It’s the ones who don’t get hurt who go the farthest.
