An Interview With Bill Hartman

Bill Hartman is one of the most well-versed and intelligent members of the sport training world. He is a Physical Therapist and Golf Fitness Expert.

BG: What's your background in youth sports and athletics? Have you worked with young athletes?

BH: While it may not seem important from the outset, I started in organized sports through the boys clubs when I was 7 years old. Does that contribute to my ability as a trainer? Not directly, but I can look back at that time and make some comparisons to what is being done with young athletes these days and see how valuable my own experience was. Throughout the last 13 years as a physical therapist, I've worked with athletes as young as 8 years old up through the high school ranks. In the last couple of years, although not recently, I've done some coaching through the local Dad's club here in my home town. I also currently work with a few teenage golfers through my sports training company PR Performance.

BG: There are a lot of coaches, parents and even trainers who treat young athletes as if they were 'little adults'. What I mean by that is they will take the training routine of a superstar athlete and use it as a guide when working with youngsters. Why, if at all, should we warn against that kind of training?

BH: Want to know the fastest way to destroy a kid's athletic potential? Put him on a high volume, high intensity, sport specific program. Nothing could be more wrong. Developing young athletes is like constructing a pyramid. The peak represents the athletes ultimate level of performance. The higher you want the peak to be the broader the foundation must be. That foundation is an athlete's early physical preparation. By providing a young athlete as diverse an athletic and movement experience as possible, you widen the base of the pyramid and increase his or her potential to adapt to higher physical, mental, and emotional stress levels associated with more intense training later in their careers. Young athletes need to develop their nervous systems and energy systems with as many different influences as are available to them.

Let me give you an example using a set of pre-teen twins who both gravitate toward becoming tennis players due some early success. Twin number one spends day after day on the tennis court working on serves, forehands, backhands, and game strategies, but avoids other activities to prevent injuries or distractions that may prevent her from training for tennis. Twin number two works on her tennis game as well, but she also plays softball, basketball, climbs trees, plays hopscotch, skateboards, swims, and works-out with Dad's dumbbells under his supervision. Twin number one quickly shows improved sports skills and even begins to win tournaments in her early teens. Twin number two also continues to improve but at a slower pace, but also develops a great deal of all around athleticism outside of tennis. By their early high school years, both twins devote most of their time developing tennis related skills and Twin number two soon equals Twin number one's skill level. By the time they reach the end of their high school tennis careers, Twin number two is now the top player and continues to improve as a tennis player at higher levels of play. Twin number one may continue to play but her performance never quite reaches previous levels of performance after her early peak. She may even develop career ending injuries from overuse of tennis specific patterns of movement.

Science and experiences from the Eastern-bloc and Chinese "sports schools" tell us that the best way to develop an athlete is delay intense, highly organized, specific forms of training to very specific ages, usually the mid to late teens. In such cases of what's called multi-lateral development, athletes achieve much higher levels of performance, and they are capable of much longer sporting careers.

Let kids be kids. Let them play, and let them grow and develop many talents. Then when they are ready, they can pursue greatness.

BG: The age old debate is 'How old should an athlete be before they begin lifting weights'. What's your view on that controversial topic?

BH: In my mind there is no controversy just misinformation and misunderstanding. Kids lift weights from day one of life. When little Johnny is born he has a head that is so heavy he can't even lift it, but eventually, he does. He is so weak that he can't even stand, but eventually, he does. Have you ever seen a 10 month old pull himself to stand on a piece of furniture? That's a serious one rep maximum squat and chin-up all in one. That's weight lifting!

Well, then you hear, "What about the damage to their growth plates from weight lifting?" This has to be one of the biggest myths of all-time. Running, jumping, and kid's games produce larger and more uneven forces through kids' joints than any properly supervised, well-designed strength training program.

I think the confusion lies in the limited understanding of doctors, parents, and the general public. They see these gigantic strongmen, bodybuilders, and weightlifters on TV and assume that that is what kids would be doing. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A properly designed strength training program will improve a young athlete's coordination, strength, balance, speed, and ability to produce force. All these qualities are integral parts of proper athletic development.

BG: Using your ideals, could you define 'functional conditioning' for us?

BH: The word functional has been so overused in fitness and sports training, and frankly, I'm a bit tired of it. In athletic development it is impossible to call one exercise functional and another non-functional. It all depends on the context in which the exercise is used. The goal of the entire program should be to improve function or in the case of athletes, improve performance. Otherwise, why are you doing it? You may use many different methods and means of training to achieve the goal of improved function. Those means certainly don't have to simulate any specific activity or even contain an element of the sport in question to actually improve function.

However, knowing what we know about training younger athletes, functional conditioning takes on a much different perspective. In this case, you have a nervous system that is like a sponge ready to soak up as much information and stimulus as it can devour. So feed it. You have amazing potential to develop a broad spectrum of energy systems. So train them. That means variety. The best way to provide variety is to have younger athletes control their posture, their own bodyweight, and controlled loads in as many possible scenarios as you can. Squat, stand, push, pull, run, hop, jump, start, stop, cut, and throw on a variety of surfaces in multiple dimensions. Play games and compete with winning and losing to develop strategic thought and sportsmanship. Functional conditioning for younger athletes is dependent on variety.

BG: If you were training a healthy ten-year-old athlete, what would a session with you look like? Length? Exercises?

BH: Play, play, play. If you're not restricted by time, you're going to be dealing with attention span and energy levels. Remember when you were 10? Energy was boundless as long as you remained excited and interested.

Let me use an example of a rehab program that I developed for a 10 year old who just had a cast removed after an elbow fracture. He has two primary issues: decreased elbow range of motion and decreased arm strength. Now if he was an adult, we would have just put him on a treatment table and stretch the soft-tissues of the elbow and work on strength with typical strength training exercises. You can't do that with a kid. It hurts and it's boring, so you end up with a lousy outcome.

Here's what we did.

To increase elbow range of motion and shoulder stability we played tug-o-war and had bear and crab crawl races. We did overhead medicine ball throws and did wheelbarrow walks where he would walk on his hands while I supported his feet. He played army man and slithered across the floor like a snake to force him to bend his elbow. We even worked on some PNF diagonals by having nerf sword fights. The entire time he was busy and interested in what he was doing. He thought we were playing, yet we accomplished his goals of normal range of motion and strength in just a couple of weeks.

When you're developing young athletes, take the same approach. If you want to develop energy systems, have a relay race. You get an automatic work rest ratio. Upper body strength can be developed with climbing activities, crawling activities, and controlled weightlifting variations that kids love because they can do things like the "big kids". Agility improves with simple games of tag. Hip and lower extremity flexibility can be developed with running, squatting, lunging, and jumping activities. You're only limited by your imagination as long as the kid are playing, they'll remain compliant and improve their athletic skills.

BG: Is there a particular criteria or path that you follow when developing young athletes over a long period of time? For example, at what age is it best to develop flexibility? Power? Coordination?

BH: Each young athlete presents with a different package, but I think some skills and abilities can be developed effectively earlier on. Flexibility tends to be something that can be very well developed at early ages, but again, I would work on it in the form of play. Balance and coordination can show some significant progress early on with games like hopscotch and walking on balance beams or playing on swiss balls. Power and strength come naturally a bit later mainly because they will require some level of stability and intermuscular coordination to demonstrate them at higher levels. That's not to say that it's totally avoided as younger athletes can develop significant strength levels just from learning to control their own body weight.

BG: Should athletes specialize in a particular sport at a young age or participate in a number of different sports? Why?

BH: We kind of hit on this earlier. When people try to give examples of athletes like the Williams sisters or Tiger Woods became great through specialization early on, I always use Todd Marinovic as an example of what not to do. Todd was a football player from California. His dad was a football coach who determined very early that Todd would become the greatest NFL quarterback who ever lived. He found the best quarterback coaches he could find to work with Todd. They put him on a very specialize physical training program. He ate a very specifically designed meals all geared to turn Todd into the next great NFL star. Todd quickly became one of the top high school quarterbacks in California football history. He had modest success in college and left school early to join the NFL ranks. What happened? His football career was a total bust. He played a couple of years mostly watching from the bench ending up burned-out, beat-up, in trouble and out of football.

Great athletes who specialized early yet had long, successful careers are exceptions to the rule. Unfortunately, in the United States the "gotta win early, gotta win now" mentality seems to rule even with an infinite amount of evidence to the contrary.

If you want your kid to be "The Next Great Whatever", provide them with the most diverse athletic experience you can in their early years.

I'd like to thank you for your interest in my work and for the opportunity to share my thoughts, beliefs, and opinions in your newsletter.

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