Growth Spurts and Soccer: Why a Good Player Suddenly Looks Clumsy

A growth spurt can temporarily make a good young soccer player look worse — heavier first touch, late reactions, awkward turns — and the research says this is real for some kids, poorly understood in general, and almost always temporary. What the evidence does not support is the idea that every child goes through a clumsy phase, or that a dip in form during a growth spurt means your child has stopped developing.

If your 12-year-old has grown three inches since August and suddenly can't trap a ball they used to control in their sleep, here is what's actually happening, how long it lasts, what the injury data says, and the thing that matters most: not being written off while it's happening.

Does a growth spurt affect soccer performance?

Sometimes, in some players — far less universally than coaching folklore suggests.

The phenomenon has a name. "Adolescent awkwardness" was coined in 1922 by Homburger to describe teenagers whose changing bodies left them clumsy, and sports science has repeated it ever since. A 2025 narrative review in the International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching by Borato and colleagues gathered the 21 studies that actually use the term, and its headline finding is a useful corrective: most authors agree adolescent awkwardness is "a transitory period in which youth experience decreases in coordination and balance, impacting athletic performance and potentially increasing injury risk, yet there is no single accepted definition."

It gets more honest from there. The review found "no consistency or standardization in the tests used," and concluded that "cumulatively, there is little to no evidence of an actual deterioration in coordination during adolescence. Limited evidence suggests that some adolescents (prevalence unknown) will experience a degree of motor awkwardness."

Prevalence unknown. That is the single most important phrase for a worried parent. Four of the reviewed studies suggested it's more common in boys than girls, though the authors note few studies have looked at girls at all. And sprinting — the most-used test — generally gets faster through the growth spurt, because longer legs mean longer strides.

So the fair summary: your child may genuinely be struggling with a body that changed faster than their coordination could keep up, and plenty of kids don't. Both are normal.

When does the growth spurt happen?

The reference point researchers use is peak height velocity (PHV) — the moment a child is growing fastest. A 2025 scoping review in the Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology lays out the timings:

Borato and colleagues put the window slightly differently — roughly 12 to 16 for boys and, on average, 10 to 12 for girls — which tells you something in itself: averages shift with the population studied, and the range matters far more than the average.

That range is the whole story. The standard deviation around the average age at PHV is about a year, which is how researchers define an early maturer (reaching PHV more than a year before the average), an average maturer, and a late maturer (more than a year after). In a single U13 team, you can have a boy who finished his growth spurt last season and a boy who won't start his for two more years, standing next to each other in the same kit.

This is a different problem from the one created by birth dates, though the two stack on top of each other. If your child is both young for their age group and a late maturer, they're carrying two disadvantages at once — we covered the first in detail in our guide to the relative age effect in youth soccer.

Why does rapid growth make ball control harder?

The mechanism everyone proposes is the same: the skeleton gets ahead of everything attached to it.

Limbs don't grow in proportion with the trunk — lower limbs grow faster — so limb length, center of mass and the leverage needed to swing a leg all change within months, while muscle and motor control catch up afterwards. The scoping review notes that peak strength velocity starts roughly 1.5 years before PHV and peaks about half a year to a year after it, with the fastest rate of strength gain arriving roughly a year after the PHV year. In plain terms: height comes first, strength arrives later. A player mid-spurt is briefly operating longer levers with the strength they had before they got them.

Alongside that, lower-limb flexibility reduces in the six months either side of PHV, increasing load where muscle attaches to bone — the proposed route to the knee and heel pain that shows up at exactly this age. If that's the symptom you're seeing rather than clumsiness, our guide to growing pains in youth soccer covers Osgood-Schlatter and Sever's disease and when to worry.

England Football's coach guidance frames the practical version well: growth "can give players advantages when playing football. But it can also throw them off," and "if a player has any sudden challenges with movement or controlling the ball, this can signal a growth spurt, too."

Is the growth spurt a higher-risk period for injury?

This is where the evidence is firmer, and it deserves more attention than the clumsiness question.

A Dutch study by van der Sluis and colleagues followed 26 talented academy soccer players (mean age 11.9) for three years around their growth spurt. In the year of PHV, players picked up significantly more traumatic injuries than in the year before — 1.41 versus 0.81 per player per year — and days missed through injury more than doubled, from 7.27 to 15.69 per player per year. Overuse injuries rose the year after PHV, from 0.81 to 1.41. The authors' conclusion: the growth spurt "seems to result in increased vulnerability for traumatic injuries. Afterwards athletes seem to be susceptible to overuse injuries."

A follow-up from the same group compared earlier- and later-maturing players and found later maturers carried a markedly higher overuse injury rate both in the year before PHV (3.53 vs 0.49 injuries per 1,000 hours of exposure) and in the year of PHV (3.97 vs 1.56). Their practical takeaway was blunt: coaches "should be careful with the training and match load they put on talented soccer players, especially those physically not (yet) able to handle that load," noting players appear especially susceptible to injury between 13.5 and 14.5 years of age.

Two caveats. These are small samples — 26 players — in an elite academy, not a rec league. And the broader review found only one study linking adolescent awkwardness itself to injury, so the clumsiness and the injury risk are better treated as two separate consequences of rapid growth than as cause and effect. Even so, the direction is consistent enough to change how you manage the year: this is the wrong season to add a third team. Our guide to managing training load in youth soccer covers how without pulling a motivated kid off the field.

The real risk isn't the dip — it's being judged during it

Here is the finding that should make every club uncomfortable. Studies reviewed by Borato and colleagues looked at how academy coaches rated match performance across the growth spurt. Coaches could spot performance drops during the spurt, particularly in under-12 players — and in the under-15 group, ratings improved again afterwards, a pattern the authors note is consistent with adolescent awkwardness and, critically, "potentially leading to a bias in player selection."

Translated: a temporary, self-correcting dip can land in the middle of a selection decision and get recorded as a permanent judgment about a player's ceiling. The player isn't worse. The snapshot is badly timed.

This is the argument behind bio-banding — grouping players by biological maturity rather than birth year. The evidence is promising but early. A 2026 systematic review in the Journal of Sports Science & Medicine covering 13 studies and 861 young players found bio-banding can "alter the competitive environment and reveal different player behaviors," while cautioning that the evidence rests on short-term match responses rather than proof of better selection accuracy or long-term development. A separate 2026 scoping review in Frontiers in Psychology covering 20 studies found none had examined injury outcomes at all.

So it's a sensible idea with thin long-term data, and almost no US youth club runs it. Which leaves the burden on parents and individual coaches to say the obvious thing out loud: this kid grew four inches, give it a season.

What should parents actually do?

Five things, in order of how much they matter.

• Measure, don't guess. Mark height on a doorframe every two or three months. England Football's guidance is that "the obvious sign is if a player suddenly seems taller after a few weeks," and it suggests coaches ask parents, because parents hold the measurements. Knowing your child grew 2 inches in ten weeks turns a mystery slump into a timeline.
• Tell the coach it's growth, not effort. A coach who knows a player is mid-spurt reads a bad touch differently. England Football advises coaches to reassure families "that this is a normal phase," and warns against pigeonholing players into positions by size and speed, because "these traits will change as they grow."
• Keep training, but trade volume for quality. The scoping review's conclusion is encouraging: "systematic participation in sports training can limit the phenomenon of adolescent awkwardness in the performance of strength and power." Stopping is the wrong answer; so is the same volume at higher intensity through the highest-risk window.
• Start proper strength work if they haven't. Strength arrives behind height, so this is the moment to help it along — see our guide to strength training for youth soccer players for what's appropriate by age.
• Protect their confidence. A player who has gone from best on the pitch to visibly struggling, in front of teammates, at twelve or thirteen, is dealing with more than a technical problem. Patience from adults is the intervention.

The bottom line: the body making your child look awkward this fall is the same body that will make them faster, stronger and more physical than they have ever been, roughly a year from now. The job in between is to keep them healthy, keep them touching the ball, and keep anyone from drawing permanent conclusions from a temporary picture.

Short, frequent technical work is what holds a touch together while the body changes — ten to fifteen minutes a day on the ball beats a two-hour session they're too sore to finish. FlickTec's guided daily sessions, built on a methodology from Coach Roman Pivarnik (UEFA Pro Licence), are designed for exactly that format.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a growth spurt make you worse at soccer?

It can, for some players, and the effect is temporary. The term for it is "adolescent awkwardness," but a 2025 review of 21 studies found "little to no evidence of an actual deterioration in coordination during adolescence" across the population, and that where it does happen it is highly individualized, with the prevalence unknown. Plenty of players go through a growth spurt with no visible dip at all.

How long does adolescent awkwardness last in soccer players?

There's no established answer, which is itself part of the finding. Several studies put the window at around six months, some at six to twelve months before peak height velocity, and one argues it begins after the growth spurt and lasts up to a year — and the review gathering them notes the six-month figure "is not well justified." Practically, think in seasons rather than weeks, and expect performance to rebound as the fastest rate of strength gain arrives roughly a year after the peak growth year.

At what age do soccer players have their growth spurt?

On average the spurt begins around 11.6–12.1 years in girls and 13.8–14.1 years in boys, but the full range for age at peak height velocity runs from about 9 to 15 in girls and 11.5 to 17 in boys. A player reaching it more than a year before the average is called an early maturer; more than a year after, a late maturer. That spread is why two players the same age on the same team can be at completely different stages.

Are soccer players more likely to get injured during a growth spurt?

The evidence points that way. A three-year study of 26 academy players found significantly more traumatic injuries in the year of peak height velocity than the year before, with days missed rising from 7.27 to 15.69 per player per year, and more overuse injuries in the year afterwards. A companion study found later-maturing players had much higher overuse injury rates, and that players seemed especially susceptible between 13.5 and 14.5 years of age. Sample sizes are small and the players elite, so treat it as a reason to manage load carefully rather than a precise risk figure.

Should my child stop playing soccer during a growth spurt?

No. The research points the other way: a 2025 review concluded that systematic participation in sports training can limit the performance effects of the growth spurt. Adjust the load, not the participation — avoid adding a second or third team in the highest-risk window, watch for knee and heel pain, and favor frequent technical work over long, heavy sessions.

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Measure them every couple of months, tell the coach, keep the ball at their feet, and don't let anyone — including your child — decide what kind of player they are in the middle of a growth spurt.