Quickness > Fundamentals > The Body Imperfect

The Body Imperfect - Improving Success While Avoiding Injury and Bad Habits

An infant starts life with 306 bones which fuse together to become 200 bones in a human adult. And if you ask a child's body to do what it is not yet ready for then injuries, bad habits and developmental problems can and do result. 

Soccer programs world wide view players by chronological age based on the player's date of birth. It's an easy to establish criteria, but it doesn't reflect each individuals very unique mixed maturity. There are many different types of maturity and while an individual may be two or more years ahead of their peers in one type of maturity (height for example), they can also be two or more years behind in another aspect of maturity (coordination and flexibility) compared to their peers.

always accurately reflect skeletal maturity, muscular maturity, flexibility, motor skill development, social maturity, emotional maturity,   

And many well intended adults try to help children learn the game by teaching all of them the way they remember being taught. Often what they remember is what they learned when they were older than the players they are trying to help.

In other cases the players they are trying to help have a physical anomaly 


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