Caitlin Hogan

Being a great athlete incorporates more than just being good at your sport.

Your ability to move is more important than any one individual sport specific skill. In today’s world of sport, we are beginning to see sport specialization earlier and earlier. The more an athlete focuses on one sport, the less patterns of movement the athlete is asked to perform. Or if we think of it from a different perspective, the more repetitions of the same movements the athlete is performing if they specialize.

For example: if we have a baseball player playing year round baseball from age 7-18. They are throwing and rotating constantly - in practice, in games, in showcases, in clinics. Most the time these athletes will be performing similar patterns in the gym as well but overloaded with weight or even at higher velocities. That’s 11 years of the same movements over and over again.

Compare this to an athlete who plays baseball, hockey, and soccer. This athlete is asked to perform many different movements and patterns from sport to sport. Their shoulders don’t get overused from throwing. Their groins don’t get overused from skating, their knees don’t get overused from cutting on turf.

The more patterns of movement our bodies are able to replicate, the less likely we are to stumble upon overuse injuries.

In this video, you can see hockey players ages 7-12. Almost all of the kids only focus on hockey. This was my first day training them so in their defense, they didn’t have a chance to practice these movements. You can see the lack of balance and coordination on the ground even though they move great on the ice.

I try to teach my athletes to be athletic in all pursuits, not just great at one!