Welcome to the first issue in a series of articles that will help support your young athlete through some of the most pivotal moments in their sporting lives.
There is a whole host of terminology that could confuse a layperson in a conversation around growth and maturation. Clearing this up will aim to support your understanding, subsequently improving the health and wellbeing of your child.
Child Development – Regarded as the process that creates both biological and behavioral developmental change over time.
Growth – The process of physical change in size, shape, or composition of the whole body or parts of the body. It’s measured by assessing height, weight or length of the limbs or trunk.
Maturation – The process towards a biologically mature or adult state. Measured by timing (age at which maturation processes occur), tempo (speed of maturation), and status (level of maturity). Maturation is a completely individualized and non-linear process, which even relates to the organ, sexual, and skeletal components in one child developing at their own rate.
The Growth Spurt
Growth often happens in periods of rapid acceleration. It also tends to happen from the ground up, hence feet growing disproportionately big first! The period of most accelerated growth is known as peak height velocity (PHV). This is driven by the onset of puberty and involves big surges of hormones, usually occurring between 13-14 years of age in boys. This can result in a 5-12cm per year increase in height across a period of up to 24 months, but this is highly individual in nature. After PHV, you’ll tend to see a peak weight velocity (PWV) lagging around 2 months behind the PHV period. This is why you’ll see your boy grow upwards, then ‘fill out’ their new frame afterwards. Normal increases in weight during this period of time are between 8-10kg.
Physically developing early, on time, or late, can have certain impacts on children’s involvement or selection in sporting teams depending on the demands of the sport at hand. For example, many early maturers may move toward contact dominated sports such as rugby, or be more likely to be pace bowlers in cricket at a younger age. This can also be impacted by their date of birth within one age group. If you have an early maturing boy born in September, and a late maturing boy born in August, there could be up to three years difference in physiology within one school year!
But It’s Not All Bad!
If your son does develop physically later than others, this can actually benefit their long term athletic development (LTAD). They will need to develop their technical and tactical skills above and beyond those who may have physically developed earlier, meaning that come the point that they catch up, later developers can be more prepared for a highly complex and technically challenging environments like first team or academy sport. When carefully managed within a school environment, both ends can be stretched and challenged appropriately through bio-banding. This is the term which describes placing individuals within a developmentally appropriate group rather than a chronologically set group. This might mean someone developing early going up an age group to be physically matched and require them to develop their technical ability, or vice versa with later developing children going down an age group to have opportunities to lead in physically demanding activities.
Rounding Up
Monitoring your child’s growth and development can help to explain why they may experience dips in body control, strength, and athleticism as they grow, especially during peak growth periods. It takes time for bodies to figure out their new size and strength, and adapting training demands throughout this time is the topic of article two, helping to manage these periods.
If you’d like to know more about physiological maturation for your boys during key moments throughout their time at school, some links below go into more detail and can provide additional support.
https://www.scienceforsport.com/monitoring-growth
https://research.edgehill.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/30238739/1_s2.0_S2095254620301198_main.pdf
