Why Don't U.S. Coaches Assess Growth & Maturation?
Last week, I ran a poll on the social media site X asking U.S.-based coaches and strength & conditioning practitioners who work with youth and adolescent athletes (approximately 11-15 yrs of age) if they routinely monitor growth and maturation using anthropometrics (height, weight, sitting height, etc.), calculated growth rates (height cm/yr), or maturity status (i.e. Peak Height Velocity, Maturity Offset, Khamis-Roche method).
I have a nearly 17K followers on X, and have (had) a decent response to posts. This particular one drew only 30 respondents. However, in some ways, I was not surprised because my general observation has been that a lot of my posts related to general growth and maturation of young athletes are liked more by non-U.S. followers. There just does not seem to be the interest (or perhaps it’s awareness) of this topic among American coaches like there is in other parts of the world, particularly among the English and European soccer community due to a lot of the great work of my friend and colleague Professor Sean Cumming and others.
Nonetheless, as you can see, 13 of 30 (43%) respondents reported routine assessment of growth and maturation; leaving 17 of 30 who do not take measurements during the adolescence despite the impact of growth and maturation on participation, talent identification, selection, fitness, performance and injury risk.
There were 1 in 5 (20%) who do not assess growth and maturation, but would like to. I would like to know the barriers and challenges for this latter group. Time? Resources? Equipment? Staff? Buy-in? Know-how? Or likely a combination of these factors.
In terms of the process, the standard protocol of the assessment of height and weight (and sitting height if using Maturity Offset) can be found elsewhere. The next steps are the calculation of growth rates and/or estimation of maturity status using either the Maturity Offset or Khamis-Roche methods. Further insights can be found here in a video lecture, and will also be provided on this site.
For those interested in consultation on assessing growth and maturation in young athletes, please reach out: joeeisenmann@gmail.com