What Coaching Young Athletes Taught Me About Training.
Updated: Aug 30
What three years working inside school Strength & Conditioning programmes taught me about developing stronger, healthier and more capable humans.
From Making Mistakes to Coaching the Next Generation
My journey into school Strength & Conditioning really started when I joined The ISF Academy in Hong Kong in 2023.
But in many ways, the story started much earlier.
When I first walked into a gym at around 15, my friends and I had absolutely no idea what we were doing. Nobody properly taught us how teenagers should approach strength training.
We copied bodybuilding programmes, chased muscle, trained whatever body part we wanted to make bigger and learned mostly through trial and error.
I made a ton of mistakes.
Looking back, I'm actually grateful for them.
Because when I started coaching students myself, I realised I couldn't go back and teach my 15-year-old self — but I could make sure my students didn't have to make the same mistakes I did.
From 2023–2025, I was given ownership over Strength & Conditioning programmes supporting ISF's swimming and squash teams.
I also had the opportunity to work individually with students competing at a very high level, including athletes representing Hong Kong in sports such as golf and wushu.
Different sports. Different bodies. Different demands.
That taught me one of the most important lessons of my coaching career:
You can't train every athlete the same way.
Being Good at Your Sport Isn't Enough
This was one of the things that surprised me most.
A student could be extremely talented at their sport but still struggle with something seemingly basic.
Single-leg balance. Landing. Upper-body strength. Coordination. Mobility.
Producing force quickly.
That's when I started separating sport practice from physical development.
If you want to become a better swimmer, obviously you need to swim.
If you want to become a better squash player, you need to play squash.
But simply doing more and more of your sport doesn't automatically develop every physical quality underneath it.
Sometimes the limitation isn't your sporting skill.
It's your physical capacity to express that skill.
That's where Strength & Conditioning comes in.
Build the Athlete Before the Specialist
The more students I coached, the less interested I became in making them simply "better in the gym."
I wanted them to become better movers.
Can you run?
Can you jump and land properly?
Can you balance on one leg?
Can you rotate and control your trunk?
Can you push, pull, squat and hinge?
Can you accelerate and decelerate?
Can you produce force quickly?
These aren't particularly exciting things to post on social media, but they're physical
qualities that appear across almost every sport.
And there's science behind this approach too.
Research and long-term athletic development models support exposing young people to a broad range of movement skills and physical qualities rather than pushing them into excessive sport specialisation too early.
The International Olympic Committee has also highlighted concerns around intensive early specialisation, including overuse injuries, burnout and the loss of broader athletic development.
That reinforced something I'd already started seeing in my own coaching:
Before building the specialist, build the athlete.
Strength Training Isn't Bodybuilding
This was probably the biggest shift from how I trained as a teenager.
When I was 15:
Gym = build muscle.
Chest. Back. Legs. Shoulders. Arms.
But training an athlete is different.
A young footballer, swimmer, golfer or squash player doesn't necessarily need to become as muscular as possible.
They need usable strength.
Strength relative to their bodyweight.
Control through different positions.
Explosiveness.
The ability to absorb force.
The ability to repeatedly produce force without their movement falling apart.
Adding muscle can absolutely benefit an athlete. But adding mass simply for the sake of becoming bigger isn't always the goal.
That's why I became less interested in asking:
"How much can you lift?"
And more interested in asking:
"What can you actually do with your body?"
Appropriately designed resistance training in young people has been shown to improve qualities including muscular strength, power and motor performance.
Organisations such as the National Strength and Conditioning Association also support properly supervised youth resistance training when technique, progression and appropriate programming are prioritised.
The key isn't avoiding strength training.
It's teaching young athletes how to do it properly.
Expanding the Philosophy at KGV
In 2025, I moved to ESF King George V School, where I spent another year working in a very different environment.
KGV had a much larger training facility, which gave me the opportunity to think beyond traditional Strength & Conditioning.
My role wasn't only about student athletes anymore.
I expanded training into staff wellness, giving teachers and staff opportunities to work on their own strength, fitness and health.
I also introduced HYROX-style training into the PE programme.
That was particularly interesting to me because HYROX combines so many different physical qualities.
Running. Strength. Conditioning. Movement efficiency. Work capacity. Mental resilience.
Students didn't have to be competitive athletes to benefit from it.
And that helped broaden my philosophy again.
Strength & Conditioning wasn't simply about helping a swimmer swim faster or helping a squash player become more explosive.
It could help anyone become more physically capable.
That idea eventually became much bigger than sport for me.
What I Care About Now
After working with so many different students, my definition of successful training has changed.
Of course I want an athlete to become stronger.
Of course I want them to perform better.
But I'm no longer particularly impressed by how much weight a teenager can put on a bar.
I'm more interested in the bigger picture.
Can you move well?
Are you becoming stronger without losing mobility?
Are you becoming quicker and more coordinated?
Can you control your own body?
Are you recovering properly?
Do you understand why you're doing the exercises you're doing?
And perhaps most importantly:
Do you actually enjoy training?
Because the perfect programme means very little if a teenager hates every minute of it and stops exercising the moment school sport finishes.
Most student athletes won't become professional athletes.
And that's completely fine.
The rugby matches eventually stop.
The swimming competitions finish.
School sport ends.
But your relationship with your body continues for the rest of your life.
That's why I now see youth Strength & Conditioning as something much bigger than improving sporting performance.
We're teaching young people how to train.
How to move.
How to challenge themselves.
How to be consistent.
And hopefully, how to look after their bodies long after their competitive sporting years are over.
Final Thoughts
My three years across ISF and KGV shaped a huge part of the coaching philosophy I eventually carried into MAN Academy.
I started out wanting to make athletes stronger.
I came away wanting to build more capable humans.
Build strength.
Develop movement.
Explore different sports and disciplines.
Understand your body.
And don't rush the process.
I made plenty of mistakes figuring all of this out when I was young.
If my experience means the next generation can skip a few of those mistakes and build a better foundation from the beginning, then those mistakes were worth making.
The sport might change.
The goal might change.
But the physical foundation you build when you're young can stay with you for life.
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