The Marvel Movie Avengers: End Game smashed all box office records when it was released five years ago. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) which started with Iron Man in 2008 and has encompassed 21 previous movies was wrapped up in this three-hour epic. Multiple plot lines, dozens of characters, cameos and references to past movies were included. Nothing like this had ever been done before. Eleven years beforehand no one predicted this.
Yet, if we look back at the lead-up to End Game, it seems ordered and sequential.
Start small with individual movies and add little post-credit scenes that act as a teaser for the next film. Slowly add more characters and finish in a big epic four years later: Avengers Assemble.
Phew, that was exciting.
Now dig deeper into the Marvel Canon, take a risk on the lesser-known Guardians of the Galaxy, build up to a second Avengers movie and use existing plots like Civil War to use lots more characters. Now the cash is rolling in, we have a loyal fan base. Let’s try digging deeper to add minority characters like Black Panther and Captain Marvel. Those movies were even bigger hits, earning more money than Spiderman and Doctor Strange.
In 2008 if you had said that a movie with a black character as the lead or a superhero movie with a female lead would earn more than a Spiderman movie, you would have been laughed at. These things were not “givens”; risks and luck played a part.
DC have tried to create their version of the MCU but failed miserably and with considerable expense.
What’s this got to do with young athletes?
Sports’ National Governing Bodies (NGBs) in the UK offer ‘pathways’ to the International Stage, predicting success in 10 years. There is simply no evidence that a single route will lead to success.
Copying one person’s route to the top is unlikely to succeed: just as DC have failed to reproduce what Marvel did with End Game.
Just because it worked once, doesn’t mean it will work again, even in the same environment: Disney has spectacularly failed to produce the quality of this movie tie-in epic since. No one could predict this, either.
Todd Rosen in his excellent book, The End of Average, says this about pathways (1):
“We presume the best way to be successful in life is to follow that well-blazed trail. But what the pathways principle tells us is that we are always creating our own pathway for the first time, inventing it as we go along, since every decision we make- or every event we experience- changes the possibilities available to us.” (p139).
How then can we help develop athletes to become champions?
This is the wrong question for club coaches, parents and teachers.
To produce champions at 22-26 we need many people participating in physical activity, every child sampling several sports over their primary and secondary school years and then competition. The best people will emerge from 16-19 years old and then the NGBs can tailor elite-level training to those few who show capability and desire (rather than those whose parents can afford fuel and coaching).
To paraphrase Owen Slot in the Talent Lab “UK sport is all about the shop window of Olympic medals, but we don’t have enough people in the shop.” (2).
The question I ask as a parent is:
How can I help my children develop various physical skills in a fun and challenging environment?
This is what I look for in activities for my children.
So far horse riding, lifeguarding and climbing in our local area have been led by excellent people and have included a mix of fun, skill and challenge. At no point have I been asked or asked about “talent” and competition. I realise that by keeping moving and being exposed to different environments my children will develop in ways that I can’t imagine or foresee, or control.
The observant reader will have noticed that the three activities I mentioned could be classed as individual ‘sports’. Excelsior Athletic Development Club offers gymnastics, athletics and weight lifting, 3 more ‘individual’ sports.
Except for horse riding which is a 1 adult: 1 child ratio, all of the other activities happen in group environments. Collaboration is essential- belaying a fellow climber, rescuing a drowning victim or supporting a handspring all require another person to help.
The children compete like crazy sometimes in these sessions- who can get up the wall fastest, who can hurdle the fastest or throw the furthest, who can hold a headstand for the longest. But, not every child is trying to beat another person. The competition is self-organised for the most part. I always put some competitive element in each session- either a challenge to themselves- or against each other.
This is different from the team sport environments that I have witnessed for the under 10s, where the emphasis is on winning on Saturday or Sunday and the weekly training reflects this. Do the children want a weekly match against other teams? Or are they thrust into the environment and get swept along for the ride?
More importantly, children are simply too young to understand the group dynamics of team sports. They focus on one thing- themselves. This was well known in the past in physical education circles, where team sports were not introduced until about 10-11 years old in schools (1,2). Unfortunately, the commercialisation of youth sports has not meant a corresponding increase in understanding of what activity is best for the child’s age and stage of development.
My son and daughter both represented their Primary school in team events. The matches were few and far between, enough for a taster, not enough to be a grind. They had developed the basic skills of throwing, catching, striking, running and jumping that allowed them to pick up sport-specific skills when shown.
Compare that to the girls I saw this week doing cricket who flinched away when a ball was thrown underarm to them from 2 metres away. Cricket is a prime example of a sport that expresses skill rather than develops skill. When there is one ball and 22 players, how much time can be spent getting better by playing a match?
Where then to start?
Start where the child is now, not where a model says they should be. One of the biggest changes in my coaching over the last 10 years is using guided discovery at the younger ages rather than directions.
In gymnastics, the forward roll is often used as a benchmark of achievement. In this video you can see me learning from a gymnastics coach, with everything returning to the forward roll:
In this video you can see me leading the boys and allowing them to work out different movements:
They may or may not be able to perform a forward roll at the end of this session, but that is not the aim. The aim is to get them to learn and explore how their body works. If they feel competent, have learnt something and had the chance to try new ways of doing something themselves, they are more likely to return. Keeping them involved is critical.
Good coaches know this already. But, if you are trying to “fun it up” with 5-year-olds trying to learn rugby with a ball bigger than their heads, you are unlikely to succeed. You are trying to get them to adapt to a system for which they are unprepared: physically, socially, emotionally and skill-wise.
By piecing together adult-led initiatives and reverse engineering from the Olympics into the youth system, you are more likely to create the next Aquaman rather than the next Iron Man.
References
1. The end of average. Todd Rose. Harper One (2016).
2. The Talent Lab: The secrets of creating and sustaining success. Owen Slot. Ebury Press (2017).
3. Physical Education for children: A focus on the teaching process. Ed. B. Logsdon. Lea & Febiger (1977).
4. Movement: Physical Education in the Primary years. Department of Education and Science. HMSO (1972).