3 Athletic Skills Most of Us Stop Using as We Age

Even if you were never an “athlete” in a formal sense of the word, I’d bet that you used to run, sprint after your friends or siblings, climb trees, ride bikes, jump down from trees, and throw rocks as far as you could. We used to move in an endless variety of ways during unstructured play as a child and, for many of us, as we aged and informal play became either formal sports training or nothing, we lost the ability to do anything besides what we were training for.

As you may have seen if you follow closely on instagram, a buddy from highschool talked me into playing in a Sunday night basketball league. I agreed knowing full well that I haven't played basketball anywhere close to full-speed, or with defenders since intramurals in college, about 8-9 years ago. We had our first game last week and as I went up for a shot in the middle of the lane a defender bumped me (not a single body foul called all game, unfortunately, even though this was definitely one of them 😡) and I rolled my ankle. I didn't think it was too bad and was able to play the rest of the game. 

With 2 minutes left in the game, a teammate lunged after a ball and quickly went down to the ground clutching his ankle, I figured he did the same but worse, only to find out after he went to the ER post-game that he had ruptured his achilles right off the heel bone 🫣. These two injuries (his significantly worse than mine) got me thinking, what is it that causes so many weekend warriors to get injuries like this that wouldn't have occurred in high school unless a major fluke or trauma occurred? The answer, in part, is that we simply don't train or use the athletic skills that we used to as children or athletes. Below ⬇️ are 3 of the things we all had at one point or another that we don't anymore, which could greatly contribute to our injury rate as we age, and ESPECIALLY if we jump into a sport we are no longer conditioned for (@me).

Decelerate

Deceleration is the skill of slowing yourself down quickly 📉, and it is likely one of the largest causes of injuries both in athletes and weekend warriors alike. Deceleration happens when we begin to slow from a run (many torn hamstrings happen here) or jump off a surface and land on our feet. Our hamstrings, calves and achilles need to have enough flexibility to stretch quickly and not rip or tear (unfortunately for my teammate this was not the case) and enough control, coordination, and strength to make us not fall. My favorite way to train deceleration is by doing controlled landings off of a box, stack of plates, or a stair on both feet, and one at a time, increasing the height and therefore load as you begin to get better at this skill. You can also mix in some of the other skills listed below for more advanced training like jumping laterally on a single foot (something that may have helped me not roll my ankle) but only after you've become proficient at dropping straight down. HERE is a great example of what deceleration training can look like with “depth drops” from any height, relearning to cushion the drop with proper landing mechanics, and increasing the tissues pliability over time when stopping quickly.

Explode

Another thing many of us don't do much anymore is doing things as quickly and explosively as possible. If you do workout in a bootcamp or CrossFit setting you may still incorporate some of this with things like olympic lifting, box jumps, and wall-balls, but for those at other gyms or working out at home this could be more rare. Explosive or ballistic work can be applied to any weightlifting movement but that doesn't necessarily mean that it should! It is usually kept in low rep ranges because your first few reps are the most explosive and you begin to lose power quickly. Explosiveness as a kid used to look like taking off out of a chair on a dead sprint after your friend, jumping as hard as you could to ensure you got across the creek, or skipping a rock as far as possible. My favorite way to train explosive power is to throw a medicine ball (although you have to be selective of which kind and where because many gyms and owners don't want you blowing out seams on a leather med ball or putting a hole in drywall). Throw it as high as possible, throw it as far as possible overhead/side to side/two-handed baseball throw, just make sure that you are sufficiently warmed up in your muscles, joints, and tendons before exerting your explosive power. HERE is an example of an absolute specimen 😳 💪🏼 I randomly found on YouTube doing some medicine ball throws! 

* Interesting note – the combination of explosive movement and deceleration is what prevents elderly populations 👴🏽 from having catastrophic falls that can lead to a rapid decrease in functioning and quality of life. If you trip on something you need to be explosive enough to move your legs or arms back under your trunk, and have enough coordination and tissue pliability to decelerate! Training these things can quite literally be lifesaving!

Move Laterally/Rotate

The last athletic skill we commonly don’t practice with time is rotational 🔄 or lateral ↔️ movements. Most of our day to day skills and activities take place in what is called the “sagittal plane” or the front to back plane of movement, walking, most weightlifting movement and exercises, taking the stairs, riding a bike, only accounts or our joints to be moving in a forward and backward orientation. We rarely throw a ball, lunge laterally, or shuffle side to side anymore and when we have to it can be a jarring experience if we aren't trained up a bit. By taking common movements we perform in the gym and staggering our stance or altering the exercise slightly we can easily begin to work in some lateral and rotational capacity into our workouts. HERE was a video I posted regarding the need to get out of the sagittal plane and some simple exercise tweaks to do so!

So there it is, three of the most common athletic movement types that we lose as we age, how they can be detrimental, and how you can begin working them back into your training to be better prepared for ANYTHING! As always feel free to respond directly back to this email with any questions!