The “Rule of 3” basically says that young athletes should do at least 3 years of GPP (General Physical Preparedness) training before beginning to specialize with a sport and their training… build the base of the pyramid nice and big before trying to make it tall.

This rule came from the soviets and eastern europeans where they would start training their children between 4 and 7 years old with GPP for 3 years then push them into a specialization.

In America we screw this rule up and it’s one of the reasons for our athletes being injured and burned out by high school… We do the reverse.. specialize early then try to throw some training in when they get older because lack of strength has become a sticking point in their sport….

Now we have 15 year old kids that have all sorts of issues from specialization (poor posture, overuse, imbalances) and no base of fitness or strength to both bring those skills to a high level or mitigate injuries. When they come to train we are trying to cram 3 years of training into 3 months.

I don’t care if its here at BT or in your backyard or another gym make sure your young athletes are building physical fitness by the age of 10. This is going to make a BIG difference when they are in HS because they won’t be rushing and cramming 3 years of training into 3 months and it allows them to focus on their sport when it matters most!

I made a video about this stuff here:

We have a program for young athletes 9-11 where we focus on building the fundamentals of fitness… email me you’d like to try it out! You can see some of their training here: