Simple answer - kids should play flag football until approximately 6th or 7th grade, then move to tackle football. Kids SHOULD NOT play tackle football until middle school. If you want to know more, or disagree, read below. 

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Keep in mind, I'm a high school varsity football coach. 

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Click below to jump to that section or scroll down. 

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SUBCONCUSSIVE TRAUMA         AGE OF PROPRIOCEPTION         USA FOOTBALL        NFL FLAG

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When you understand the cumulative effects of subconcussive trauma (when kids bump heads and it doesn't result in a concussion), and what happens at the age of proprioception, you'll agree, flag football until 6th or 7th grade is the answer. Don't fall into the "This is how we've always done it" trap. 

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Here's an article from Youth Football Online that gives reasons why kids should play tackle football. 

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Absolutely nothing on this list actually explains why kids need to play before middle school. 

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This sums it up:

“When you start to play before age 12, it’s associated with worse later life outcomes.”

In a study of 246 former youth football players, she said, “Those that played before age 12 saw cognitive symptoms and mood swings an average of 13 years earlier than those who did not begin to play until after age 12.”

Dr. Ann McKee from the CTE Center at Boston University

 

"As we're learning more about CTE...we're finding that it's not the number of concussions that predicts CTE, it's the cumulative number of years spent playing football. So, if a child starts at age 5 vs age 14, that's about ten times the risk."

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SUBCONCUSSIVE TRAUMA

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Subconcussive trauma is a bump or blow to the head that does not cause symptoms. A collision while playing sports is one way a person can get a subconcussive head impact.

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Here is a great article from Dr. Bart Grelinger where he says subconcussive head trauma still can cause irreversible damage to the 100 billion fragile, hair-like neurons in the brain and can result in the same outcomes as someone diagnosed with a concussion, including early-onset Alzheimer’s type symptoms, changes in behavior and ultimately chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE. The article is here. 

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Learn more with this Fact Sheet for Youth

Sports Coaches from the CDC.

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Also read this article from the Concussion

Legacy Foundation on Subconcussive

Impacts.

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Here is a research article on NCBI by Dr.

Brian Johnson, Dr. Thomas Neuberger, Dr.

Michael Gay, Dr. Mark Hallett, and Dr.

Semyon Slobounov on the Effects of

Subconcussive Head Trauma on the

Default Mode Network of the Brain. Here are two outstanding quotes from the NCBI article:

"Although they are less severe than a full-blown concussive episode, subconcussive impacts happen much more frequently and current research has suggested this form of head trauma may have an accumulative effect and lead to neurological impairment later in life."

"Although using a task-based approach Talavage and colleagues reported significant alterations in fMRI activation in a study of 11 high school football players attributed to subconcussive impacts sustained over the course of a single season, despite any clinically observable impairment."

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Here' is a study found in Annual Reviews on

Mitigating the Consequences of Subconcussive

Head Injuries completed by Dr. Eric Nauman, Dr.

Thomas Talavage, and Dr. Paul Auerbach. Here

are two quotes from the study:
"In sports, minimization may be effected through

changes in the number or nature of collision

activities in practices and games, improved training

to promulgate more safe techniques, and

improvements in protective equipment." 

"These low-level injuries are poorly connected to

readily observable clinical impairments that may be identified as concussion symptoms—an observation not altogether surprising given the complexity and interconnectedness of the brain."

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THE AGE OF PROPRIOCEPTION

Proprioception, otherwise known as kinesthesia, is your body’s ability to sense movement, action, and location. It’s present in every muscle movement you have.

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Without proprioception, you wouldn’t be able to move without thinking about your next step. Proprioception allows you to walk without consciously thinking about where to place your foot next. It lets you touch your elbow with your eyes closed.

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This is the concept behind the Long-Term Athlete Development Models and "age appropriate" training. 

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We all know someone we went to school with who wasn't really much of an athlete until he or she got into middle school or early high school. Then people were saying, "Where did that come from?" The Age of Proprioception (AoP) generally aligns with puberty and is a growth in the general awareness of our bodies in space. 

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This elevated athletic awareness helps the athletes to produce and reproduce finer motor skills, modify individual movement patterns, and better adjust to the surrounding athletic environment. This is why a 7-year-old will likely struggle with baseball swing adjustments, but a high school varsity player will likely be able to. Learn more on the Relative Age Effect here. 

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The focus of attention for pre AoP athlete should be on development of foundational and fundamental movement skills, along with development of muscle strength using a variety of combination exercises and bodyweight movements. For post AoP athletes, once they can demonstrate proficiency of motor skill development, those skills can be developed and applied to sport specific settings. Simplified, trying to teach a pre AoP athlete fine motor skills will often result in failure (and coaches being frustrated that the player "can't get it.") It's better to wait to change fine motor movements until post AoP.  Find more information in the article Using LTAD to Program for a Middle School Athlete and a High School Athlete. 

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Generally speaking, the more complex the movement patterns, and the faster that patterns is conducted, the more difficult it is to modify.

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Now apply this to football. Blocking, tackling, and being tackled are quick, fast, aggressive combination skills that, when done correctly, can be safe and very effective. But when the athlete is unable to (due to not being proprioceptively developed yet) apply correct technique, it becomes less effective, and even worse, more dangerous. 

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So, teaching a football player to block, tackle, and be tackled would be best done when the athlete is proprioceptively developed in order for them to do it the right way which makes it the most effective, and the safest. The athlete not knowing (not physically being able to) block or tackle the correct way opens the door for subconcussive trauma (above). 

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