Your child is a baseball player. Maybe they are really good at volleyball. You might have a kid who is an exciting basketball player. You want to enhance their talent. So you decide they need more training. What is it they should do?
Well, different sports need different training, right? Well, maybe when they get older, but as a kid develops, maybe we shouldn’t really be differentiating what that training looks like. If they are playing a sport that involves change of direction, speed, quickness, and coordination, maybe the training shouldn’t look all that different.
It might look something like this: 2-3 days a week, work on foundational skills like balance, coordination and agility to start the session, then get in some fundamental strength training, whether it be bodyweight or with external resistance depending on level, and then sprinkle in some speed training drills and easy to complex coordination throughout.
Too often we are trying to advance kids into sport specific training, when there are other holes that need to be filled. Work on the foundations of athleticism rather than really specifying sport related skills. They have time to do that at practice and in games. Right now, you should focus on having them be able to move better, be stronger, quicker and more coordinated from an overall perspective, which will help translate INTO their sport, as well as any other sport they may pick up.