The Athleticism-Skill Relationship and What It Means for Player Development
The Theory and Model
I want to dive into my thoughts on the relationship between skill and athleticism in both youth and professional populations. Before discussing this topic, it is important to define each term with what I am talking about.
Skill: An athlete’s ability to do sport specific tasks. I.e., In Soccer, play a pass, take a shot, beat an opponent. In American Football, run a route, make a tackle, make a block etc.
Athleticism: The conglomeration of physical abilities that affect an athlete’s ability to perform a task. i.e., speed, acceleration, jumping, strength, agility etc.
Now, starting with youth sports I think we have all seen that kid who just dominated against everyone because they are so fast, strong, nimble etc. But why does this happen almost universally across all sports? My theory is that there is a relationship between Skill and Athleticism that determines effectiveness. Going forward for now consider the skill players a 0/10 on an athleticism scale.
The relationship can be characterized as a threshold that must be met. At each level of athleticism, there is a threshold that a player’s skill must meet to be able to overcome the opponent’s athleticism. For example, if we have a kid who is a 4/10 in athleticism, a player needs less skill to be able to beat that player than to beat a player with 9/10 athleticism. Why is this?
When we look at it, players with high athleticism can recover, adjust, move and maneuver better than someone without. This causes more mistakes to be allowed while still being successful in the task. A poor defender can make a mistake but recover and win the ball anyways.
The higher the player’s athleticism the higher skill a player will need to overcome that player. This is probably not a linear relationship. As a player’s athleticism increases it becomes exponentially more difficult for a skill player to overcome. This is why we see so many top athletes getting chosen to represent strong teams earlier than players with less athletic prowess.
Unfortunately, this is the problem we are facing in youth sports in America. To win you need more effective players. In general, younger kids do not have the skill to be able to overcome the athletes. And thus, the athletes are more effective and get chosen. That is where we see the bigger, faster, stronger issues develop. For arguments sake let’s say all athletes at a 7/10 or higher are taken to academies.
How does it change as players get older? This is where things get interesting. As all kids grow and go through puberty, they begin to increase their athleticism naturally. Now we have the kids who were 0/10 athletic who were forced to develop higher skill to compete, begin to add athleticism to their game. During this time were the players who had super high natural athleticism developing their skill at the same rate? Probably not. Why? Because they didn’t need to. Their athleticism kept them effective.
Before moving forward, I want to go through a quick overview of athleticism across the population. Working off of a scale of 1-10 athletes are distributed in a bell curve. The tail on the left represents 0/10 athleticism. The tail on the right represents 10/10. As we get closer to each extreme, we see fewer and athletes in those boats. A 10/10 athlete is extremely rare to come by, even an 8 and 9 aren’t very common. There is also a cap with athleticism, you can only be so fast, so strong etc. As you get closer to the cap it becomes more and more difficult to come by improvements, shaving your 100m time from 13 seconds to 11 is way easier than from 11-10. This cap on athleticism is also different for every individual based primarily on genetic factors. One player may never have the potential to be an 8/10. This is where skill players have an edge. There is no cap to skill and nothing holding players back from developing it.
For the next section it will be beneficial to have arbitrary numbers for visualization. For every point of athleticism, we will award a player 10x. So a 4/10 athletic would be a 40x. Skill will be awarded on a differential based on the competition they compete with. A 6/10 athlete competing with 9/10 will be given a skill rating of 9-6=3y. To work with the same numbers, we will multiply by 10. So, the 6/10 player receives a 60x30y = 90.
Now the extra layer is added. Instead of Skill vs Athleticism we have a value of Skill+Athleticism vs Athleticism+Skill. Now we get to add the values and see who is on top. Let’s take a look at a 0/10 athlete who has been playing and working on their skill away from the bigger, faster, stronger environment (playing against 0/10 – 6/10). Sitting at a 0x60y skill has had to be this player’s primary weapon to compete. Now they begin to enter teenage years and puberty. With puberty naturally comes an increase in athleticism. Remember that moving on the lower half of the athleticism continuum is easier than the top half so maybe this 0/10 jumps to a 4/10. This player is now at a 40x60y or a score of 100. Outscoring most 8/10 athletes who have only had to maintain a slight skill advantage to compete with 9/10s. Remember though, skill has no cap, and these are just minimums.
Now comes the question. Is there an ideal ratio? I say absolutely not. Let’s start with Messi and Ronaldo. 8-9/10 athletes with extreme skill values. There is a reason they have been so dominant. Now the interesting part. Are there any pure athletes with no skill? No. Are there highly athletic players with low skill? Rarely. Are there low tier athletes? Absolutely. I will point to Sergio Busquets. One of the greatest defensive midfielders of all time. He is not athletically dominant when compared to other players. So in order to compete he has to have a very high skill value to overcome the better athletes.
So, I ask. If you can make it to the pros with an average or below athleticism value and high skill, but not with a high athleticism and low skill value. Why do we ever focus on pure athleticism in our choices in the youth ranks.
Let’s talk about development.
Player Development.
As previously discussed, skill is the most important difference when looking at which players make it to the professional level, and which do not. If a player does not have the technical ability necessary, it is extremely unlikely they will be given the opportunity. The same goes, however, for athleticism. If you never develop as an athlete and cannot hold your own in a game, you will not be picked.
I framed it with an assumption that the athletic players are gaining little to no skill as they grow up. Of course, this is not a realistic assumption. Anytime you are playing and touching a ball you are gaining skill. This makes it harder for the less athletic players to catch up. They need to gain enough skill to outplay the athletic disparity, but also to surpass the skill the athletic players have which is not an easy task.
Looking at professional players, most often we see they are athletic with huge amounts of skill. So how do we steer development in this direction to produce more players of this quality.
1) At young ages the focus needs to be on skill. Younger players tend to have an easier time developing skill at a rapid rate. It is the time they can develop their own unique style, their own adaptations to their body. Environments need to be created to target this. If you give an 8/10 athlete a giant field, what are they going to do? Kick the ball, run past everyone and score. Why would they develop the ability to dribble? Why would they develop quick decisions and ball control? They have no reason; they will play to their strengths. The kids with 0/10 athleticism will almost never get the ball in a big field and now they have no opportunity to develop either. Shrink the field, lower the number of players and let the kids adapt.
2) Don’t leave anyone behind. Most people end up as a 4,5, or 6/10 athlete when they grow older. Even the kids who look like a 7/8 or 9 right off the bat. Give the lesser athletes the time they need to develop and don’t count them out too early.
3) Don’t pull all of the best athletes out to one “elite team”. Doing this only hinders the diversity which they can learn from. We have all seen the slow player who can pick anyone’s pocket. It is a different defending style than the aggressive one and is important for all players to be exposed to all styles.
4) Support a player needs as they grow. Stimulation is the key to growth. Without stimulation in some form, you will never get growth. If you have a player who is bored, how can you get them to reengage. My favorite method is the “don’t pass to anyone” or the “try to get everyone on your team to score.”
5) Encourage other sports to passively develop athleticism. If you have a super athlete and you are consistently having them play small sided, it does not nurture their natural ability. Encourage another sport that allows this. Play football, run track, etc. If they truly like soccer you won’t lose them and if they don’t like soccer, they should take another route anyways.
6) Integrate a progressive strength and conditioning coach into your program once the kids are ready. I am not saying we need to start players doing weights at age 8, but as they develop physically it is extremely beneficial to give them some outside stimulus. As we have outlined, skill is #1. But that doesn’t mean athleticism isn’t important. The more athleticism a player can have, the more utilization of their skills they can have and the more discrepancy they can create between themselves and more athletic players. Everything is additive, taking a super high skilled player and giving them more weapons in terms of athleticism will only further their ability. However! And remember I am a Strength and Conditioning coach saying this. The primary focus should always be skill. S and C are secondary and additive. Focusing primarily on injury prevention with some performance work. There are plenty of awful Strength Coaches out there. Find one who understands.
a. Jumping back to my example of Sergio Busquets. Not the most athletic player, but his lateral quickness and short burst speed is up there with the bunch. Athleticism adapts to playstyle.
b. Why is just playing soccer not enough?
i. Too much repetition will build imbalances that can be helped with outside weights. I.e., Injury prevention.
ii. Without outside stimulus there will not be much of an adaptation demand.
iii. Weights teach force absorption.
iv. Another activity is good for peoples’ brains to help and prevent burnout and challenge them in a new way.
7) Stop overcoaching. You can give ideas but let the players decide what they like. A speedy player doesn’t need to be told to kick it past someone and run. Let them adapt and figure it out.
I am by no means saying this is the correct way to look at things, nor am I saying it is the only way to look at development. But I do believe it is important to take into account that athleticism can dominate early and cloud our vision of who will become top level players.
If you read this and want to discuss it, challenge my thoughts, add anything to it, investigate something further please reach out to me and let’s chat about it!
I hope this was able to spark some ideas and challenge your thinking in some areas.
Nextleveltwf@gmail.com
