Youth Sports Conditioning Coaching Mistakes
Proper and developmentally-sound adjunct training in the form of speed, agility, strength, power and mobility work is the silver bullet in terms of building champions in any sport.
Done correctly, the collective gains of such training will serve to soundly support your mission as a sports coach to produce elite level competitors.
Done incorrectly, as is unfortunately often the case and your young athletes are destined for a life of injuries, missed opportunities and burnout.
That being said let me be blunt with my opening words of wisdom to you –
Leave what you currently know at the door and decide to open your heart to a new, fresh and much more effective method of training young athletes.
My job here is not to prove you wrong or cause you strive, but instead make your diligent and tireless work as a sports coach decidedly easier.
After 13 years of working as an Athletic Development Specialist throughout the world, I am now considered one of the foremost experts on this topic.
That is not meant to sound egocentric or in any way cocky.
Merely a statement to reflect that you can trust what it is I have to say.
I have personally worked with more than 10,000 young athletes worldwide and simply stated; I know what works and what doesn’t for youth sports conditioning
My advice will be sometimes poignant, often counter-conventional, but always direct.
With my first blog entry, I have decided to provide you with a series of metaphors that describe what proper youth athletic development should look like.
This will set the stage and provide a solid foundation on which to explain my proven methods for developing optimal speed, agility, strength, power and mobility.
As with anything, the degree to which you can successfully build upwards is solely determined by the strength, depth and solidification of your foundation…
Which leads me to my first metaphor…
Don’t Rush Grade 2
The school year has been created based on an understanding that the curriculum needing to be presented to students will take ‘x’ amount of time to teach properly.
If you were to take all the lessons and education contained in a standard Grade 2 school year and condense it down to 6-weeks worth of schooling, you would find that students did not understand, comprehend or retain virtually any of the material.
They would be overwhelmed and simply unable to ascend to higher levels of education successfully without this base building block of knowledge.
You Can’t Study Just Mathematics
Even if an 8-year-old child excelled and loved everything about math, you wouldn’t restrict them from learning the material offered in other subjects.
Removing basic curriculum such as Language, Science and Music would severely handicap that student from a developmental learning perspective.
General knowledge is a critically important element for children to be exposed to and learn at a young age. It sets the foundation for thinking process, problem solving and even study habits.
More over, to eventually specialize and excel in one particular area of study, a broad and far reaching understanding of all academic subjects is necessary.
When solving an involved mathematical equation for instance, the truly successful will pull from all their past experiences and resources in order to determine the appropriate answer.
‘Pigeonholing’ or relying on one specific area of expertise in youth sports conditioning is a practice that seldom proves successful
School is Progressive for a Reason
A student couldn’t understand advanced literature unless they were taught to read.
They couldn’t solve difficult mathematic problems with a basic foundation of knowing how to add, subtract, multiply and divide.
A Master’s Degree in Science couldn’t be obtained without first being exposed to the basic elements of biology, physics and chemistry taught in high school.
Elementary through High School is a progressive building block of knowledge gaining that allows an individual to eventually specify and excel in a single area of study.
Miss any of the steps leading up to that climax however, and your success rate will plummet.
In my next blog post, I will outline what all of this means to you from a sporting perspective.
In support of your youth sports conditioning mission,