The Strong Youth Project is a BYU research organization directed by exercise science professors Matthew Seeley and Justin Yee aimed at improving organized youth sport experiences for athletes, parents and coaches through education and implementation of evidence-based practices.
“We want [kids] to be choosing to be active so that after high school, after college when there's not any official organized league, that they're playing and they still choose to be active every day,” Blake Lee from the Strong Youth Project communications team said.
Lee believes his positive experience in youth sports has encouraged him to be more active in his adult life, and wants the same for others.
Research Assistant Callie Rae Floyd said she thinks more parents have started to realize being too intense and doing things like yelling at the coaches and refs makes their kids have less fun and feel more pressure.
“It's important to bring the joy back to sports,” Floyd said. “A lot of times so many kids are dropping out because they don't feel like sports are an outlet for them to have fun … I think the big purpose of this project is to help kids learn to have fun again.”
The Strong Youth Project researches both the physical and mental sides of improving youth sports to have a healthier training experience.
The Strong Youth Project has three aims in their mission statement.
- Communicate scientific evidence to youth sports stakeholders, including youth athletes, concerning factors affecting the quality of youth sport experiences.
- Conduct scientific research regarding issues influencing youth sport experiences.
- Design and deliver evidence-based training programs to youth athletes.
“ It's not just putting information out there,” Research Assistant Alyssa Price said. “It's about giving our audience an actual, physical way that they can help better youth sports.”
Price says everything they put out is backed by research and data. She has had the opportunity to work on various research projects.
A project led by Floyd and Peter Williamson, a BYU graduate working towards his doctorate of physical therapy at the University of Utah, is currently in the process of getting published. They researched how coaches can cue their athletes into proper biomechanical movements that will reduce injury but still improve performance.
The research has been done by testing the difference between internal cues and external cues.
“An internal cue would be to focus on, ‘Okay, when I jump forward I want to make sure I'm swinging my arms as hard as I can,’” Price said. “Whereas an external cue would be, ‘Do you see that wall in the distance? I want you to try to jump as far as that wall.’”
They found external cues were by far more effective than internal cues.
The Strong Youth Project has various platforms they put their research out on including social media, their webpage, seminars, podcasts and even an annual conference that began last year.
The next Strong Youth Conference will be held May 3. More information can be found on the flyer included in this article and registration can be done at this link.
After the first conference last year, Lee said they took a feedback survey and many attendees found the information given at the conference to be very useful and insightful.
Callie Rae Floyd is a dance major at BYU and a research assistant. Growing up she felt she had to focus all of her time exclusively into dance in order to be successful, but since joining the Strong Youth Project, she has found that early sports specialization is not always the best answer.
“That's where the burnout a lot of times comes in,” Floyd said. “'Cause these kids feel like they're forced, or, ‘The only way I can be better is to only do this one sport.’”
Floyd said research shows kids that are involved in multiple sports growing up are often found to be collegiate level athletes, and kids who specialize in only one sport often don’t go on to play in college.
“The biggest thing I see when people specialize in one sport is that they're working the same muscles in the same ways,” Floyd said. “And so then once they do something that's out of the normal for their body to do, that's when injuries happen.”
She believes to be a healthier individual and athlete, one needs to be well-rounded, despite the world around us which insists on only doing one sport in order to be successful.
The Strong Youth Project team said it has been exciting to see more and more coaches, professors, parents and athletes take a bigger interest in what they are researching and accomplishing.
“I feel like this is a way I can kind of make a difference,” Lee said. “Help people have that same positive experience I did through this research. And hopefully that will lead them to a lifetime of physical activity.”