What sport or sports would you recommend before young athletes get serious with running?
Soccer and basketball are great sports for young athletes to do before they get serious with running. They have aerobic, anaerobic, and neuromuscular components which can help improve running performance. Movement skills should also be emphasized, as demonstrated by the success of professional boxers like Lomachenko who included dance in his training routine.
Transcript: "So doing different sports for young athletes before they get serious with running I think is a really good idea. And I would say the first thing that comes to mind is soccer. But there's a lot of sports you can do. The reason I like soccer because I think it really has everything, every element in it that you need to be a great distance runner. There's running in it. So there's an aerobic component. There's an anaerobic component, really short sprints and stuff. There's a lot of movement, a lot of running, and there's neuromuscular stuff with footwork and strengthening the bones through the foot and the leg from running and both kicking the ball and all that coordination stuff. So soccer has everything I think that you need. But one of the most under-neglected things for young athletes is movement skills. And there's a great story about, and this has to do with boxing but I think it's a really good metaphor. The best athletes move super well. And Lomachenko is a Ukrainian boxer, I think he's fighting the war right now if I'm not mistaken. And his dad was a boxer and he got him into boxing and he realized that for him to be great at what he did he needed to have something else. And so his dad made him get into Ukrainian dance. So a lot of dance stuff is really good. I think even Shannon Robery did Irish dancing. So he did Ukrainian dancing for movement and he's one of the best footwork boxers there is. You watch him, it's a work of art how he moves and stuff. So a lot of different ways, you want the aerobic component but don't neglect movement and neuromuscular and I would say soccer and basketball are probably the two best."
