Grouping youth sports by age alone is holding back athletes
Calls to group children by their 'biological maturity' instead
As Wiltshire and Hampshire schools return after the summer break, boys and girls will be excitedly looking forward to participating in football and rugby.
But experts think traditional structures for youth sports could be holding children back, across all levels of ability.
By organising sports teams by year group or age, 'late bloomers' are being put up against children who are far more biologically developed than them, while stronger and physically larger aren’t being challenged or tested to their fullest ability.
A study, led by the University of Bath has found ‘bio-banding’ could solves these problems.
Bournemouth and Southampton rolling out system
The concept, being pioneered by Dr Sean Cumming, is starting to be rolled out within Premier League clubs such as Southampton and Bournemouth as well as US Soccer, British Gymnastics and the Royal Ballet School.
Professor Cumming has been involved as a leading researchers and consultant with these organisations.
Bio-banding has already shown to reduce growth related injuries in academy footballers, help identify talent, and provide more optimal challenges for both early and late developers.
While it is currently being used in elite academies and development organisations, it also has the potential to revolutionise school sports.
Professor Cumming said:
“The process of bio-banding has enabled the academies to better identify and accommodate for differences in growth and maturation among players, and ensure that both early and late developers are optimally challenged.
"Using the systems that we have helped put in place, the academies are now better able to identify when players enter phases of development, such as the growth spurt, where they are at greater risk for injury or experiencing temporary dips in performance.
“By prescribing more developmentally appropriate training and competition loads, academies or schools can now help players transition through these developmental phases more effectively and injury free.
"Much of the credit for this work should go to the Premier League for initiating their league wide growth and maturity screening programme and the clubs for driving the innovation and practice in this field.”
Helps eliminate biases
Another benefit of bio-banding is that it can help to eliminate biases, as sports coaches currently tend to prioritise physical attributes such as speed, strength and height.
These are primarily out of an athlete’s control, as the speed of a child’s development is predominantly decided by genetics. Therefore, those who mature earlier are identified as talents much sooner, and those who develop later are being left behind.
Through bio-banding, every child is given a more equitable playing field, while coaches and scouts are less likely to miss out on identifying talented youngsters.
Professor Cumming and Dr Sean Williams have recently been awarded a grant from Podium Analytics to help develop systems that will enable schools better monitor and accommodate for differences in growth and maturity among their young athletes.