Delusion and the Other Ways We Think About Molding Sports Success in the 21st Century | Dr. Brad Kayden

The Youth Sports Myth

Delusion and the other ways we think about molding sports success in the 21st century creates confusion around what sports success actually is.  Molding sports success has been left up for interpretation and caused us to live far too long inside a youth sports reality that, while it has felt "normal," is little more than delusional, at best.   Less than scientific, it is these delusional beliefs that have left grave imbalances to exist in the athletic talent development process and broader natural order of sports.    

Truth or Myth Directional Sign

It can be fixed but will require a framework for our literate understanding of what to learn, unlearn and relearn about youth sport and what it means to mold sports success inside of it.   

I talk about this sports success framework inside another post called, 5 Truths for Molding Sports Success in the 21st Century.     

Defining Myth

If it is not truth that we most depend upon, then it can be categorically described as little more than myth.   It is, for most of us, an experiential knowledge or instinct, if you will, we depend upon to define sports success.  Delusional thinking suggests that one is operating under myth or mythical pretenses.  The arguable challenge in this type of instinctual thinking is that it often lacks important empirical elements of form, function or both.  This is myth.  

Defining Delusion

Top NFL Coaches

It is myth that is the source of contention and many people's false sense of security.  It is a delusion of having the same "satisfactions" and "reassurances" that, like top coaches and athletes, we too know what it takes to mold sports success in the 21st century.  Unfortunately, as is more often the case, we do not.  

Unlike them, we do not, generally, rely upon all the bounties of sports science that exist today.  Rather, we rely upon instinct and in doing so continue to perpetuate the inappropriate practices that are the delusional realities of the long misunderstood social program that is youth sports today.

It is in the same archaic fashion that our forefathers functioned, without the help of the sports science community.  Only they did it out of necessity, because sports science did not exist, and we do it out of delusion, or another way said, "the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."  

Read more from Dr. Kayden on Molding Sports Success in the 21st Century

Teaching Skills and Techniques are Only 5% of Sports Coaching   

   

From Truth to Myth

Was youth sports doomed from the beginning?  No.  Delusion and the other ways we think about molding sports success in the 21st century were manufactured. 

Long ago, it was our forefathers who had theories about youth sports that today we either call truth or myth.  To truly understand the continuum of how youth sports moved from truth to myth, it is necessary to start at the beginning.

The Early Years  

WWII Famous Victory Kiss Photo

Youth sports started in post-WWII America.  A time when family values ruled the day.  We looked to provide social programs to the families of all the GI's returning home from overseas.  This is when the baby boomer generation, as we know them today, was born and raised.  Meanwhile youth sports was also being born out of an educational system that once governed it exclusively.  Teachers, not everyday parents, once taught sport in formal settings and with training on and mandate of empirical methods.  

When the educational system decided not to run youth sports anymore out of fear of the psychological risks competition presented to kids, it was everyday people that began answering the societal call because sports were valued.  They filled the void left by schools to keep youth sports programs running.  And it would be everyday people that also took on the coaching roles once filled by teachers.  Although untrained, they managed to keep youth sports alive working off of instinct and their own personal sports experiences.   

There were popular sports organizations like Pop Warner football and Little League baseball that would also be born out of these early years in youth sports.  However, the myths manufactured during these times continued to persist, even through today.  In the end, it would be, coincidentally, the birth or rise of the baby boomers that also represents the death or decline of an empirically-based youth sports system.  It gave way to a less developmentally-oriented mindsets for competitively-oriented mindsets. 

How Does this Affect You? 

I think you might agree how it is understandable that during a time when there is a scarcity of knowledge, early theories, that otherwise exist today as myth, are acceptable.  This is rational.  Today however, using the same myths is unacceptable.  It is, to the contrary, irrational or delusional, considering we are no longer living in scarcity, but rather a surplus of knowledge.  

While it may sound heavy and academic to read, molding sports success in the 21st century relies upon you finding resources based in empirical knowledge.  Youth sports is full of dreamers, instinctual and non-empirical thinkers.  The barrier to entry into youth sports coaching is low and often only requires proving one's personal sports experiences, if that.    

If you intend to effectively mold sports success in the 21st century, you will require help from others.  In this way, you have to be selective.  I always get a little leery of folks or programs who define their coaching methods by their past sports experiences.  Sports experience does not necessarily make someone a good teacher, or a program full of sports experienced coaches, a quality program.  It more often, in my experience, makes them value outcomes over development and focus on the sports success of a few rather than the majority.

The litmus test for beginning to identify quality coaching or sports programs needs to begin with empirical data or hard factual evidence that the methods being used, work.  Otherwise, you risk thinking that coaches or programs work when they don't.  Many are just answering a social call and keeping youth sports alive.  Finding coaching or programs that work require they have the form and function needed to perform accordingly.  Without it, the thinking is categorically delusional from both sides of the equation.  It essentially represents the the bigger problem that has long existed in youth sports, the perpetuation of myth.

(Arguably) Youth Sport's #1 Problem 

We as sports educators can always do a better job of teaching how to apply sports science in everyday practice to improve how we think about molding sports success in the 21st century.  But in the end, it is our personal responsibility to battle human nature and our own predisposed discomforts towards thinking and changing.  For it is here where we have become caught up in the "persistent, persuasive and unrealistic" myths that have become the nature of youth sports and how it operates.  


  

John F. Kennedy Quote

Read More by Dr. Kayden on Molding Sports Success in the 21st century

5 Truths for Molding Sports Success in the 21st Century

Getting Back to Truth

We don't know how good youth sports can be because we don't let ourselves think about it.  It is a sad reality that very much reflects the downtrodden state of youth sports today. 

So how do we make things better and get back to a truth that more mirrors what education once brought to youth sports?  

Carl Sagan, world-renown astrophysicist and author said, before his untimely death in 1996:

"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to press in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." 

--Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World:  Science as a Candle in the Dark

And this is how we more need to begin thinking about youth sports.  Much like the Universe, youth sports is still very much in its infancy.  So there is a lot to learn and many myths to overcome.  

As the volume of scientific data continues to pile up and youth's participation in sport continues to decline, there is no better time than the present to begin bridging the gap between our limited understandings and their connection to molding sports success, or lack thereof.    

The 2% Mindset
Image from WhoisChick.com

The inter-generational effect of the acceptance of youth sports myths means that not everybody will be an early-adopter of this theory.  This is something we have to, initially, be alright with.  Change is hard and as humans we usually rely upon that which is most comfortable.  The motivation for you is whether you believe in the idea of molding sports success or fame the idea of manufacturing it using the myths and cliches of our forefathers. 

If it wasn't clear before now, our thinking must begin to be led more by the truths that balance the form and the function inside our molding sports success.  It will be then that the truest nature of youth sports and how it actually operates will be represented.   

Copyright 2015 Dr. Brad Kayden, All Rights Reserved.