The “five Ss” of trainability and performance are critical periods of development that all youth strength and conditioning coaches should consider when creating a training program. Coaches should take advantage of each window to maximize a youth athlete’s potential and help ensure a long athletic career.

Learn practical programming ideas to implement in youth speed training programs. In this session from the NSCA’s 2017 National Conference, Lance Walker explains how to leverage the differences between starting, acceleration, and maximum velocity dynamics (movement preparation) and plyometrics. Learn about the most common errors made by young athletes when training linear speed with practical tools, teachings, and contextual cues.

Learn about the anthropometric, kinematic, kinetic, and asymmetric variables that contribute to sprint performance, as well as how a coach can design effective speed development programs for male youth athletes.

This infographic provides a developmental framework within multidirectional speed for strength and conditioning coaches who work with youth athletes.

This book excerpt from Developing Agility and Quickness describes the windows of opportunity in youth athletes to time progressions in speed and agility training with their biological and chronological development.

Learn how to coach various weight room exercises and understand the differences of “intention” between the various levels of football. In this session from the NSCA’s 2017 Coaches Conference, Pete Bommarito dives into the details of building strength in the weight room for youth and early high school football players, how to maximize all aspects of speed-strength and power by heavy variable loading, and advanced techniques at the elite and professional levels.

The Scholastic Action Shooting Program (SASP) is a speed shooting competition designed for school-aged youth. The key to training a successful SASP competitor is to not overlook the often forgotten balance and eccentric training exercises that target key muscle groups involved in the competition. An implementation of balance and eccentric training is suggested to aid the performance of young shooters in competition.

This article from Developing Agility briefly discusses the importance of age-appropriate speed and agility drills.

This article applies LTAD principles to guide the process of generating an athletic profile (part 1) and sample program design (part 2) for a middle school athlete and a high school athlete.

Strength and conditioning professionals who incorporate a properly designed and supervised training program can help their young athletes train, compete, and reduce the likelihood of injury.