Archive for “Execution” Tag

5 Traits Of A Champion That Coaches Love To See

Posted on: March 20th, 2012 by IYCA 2 Comments

Youth Sport Coaches Want These Habits

By Jim Herrick

Do you want to make the team, get more playing time, or win a championship this season? If you do, stop worrying about ability and start focusing on habit building.

Athletic Revolution coaches around the country work hard to instill Champion habits into all the kids who work with us, whether they play sports or not. We do this because we see how important they are to a young athlete’s long-term success on the field, in the classroom, and in life.

Kids who focus on winning or other external goals often lose sight of the internal factors that in many cases lead to much more personal and team success in the long run.

For anyone going out for a team, remember that by developing these 5 critical habits you will help yourself to get noticed by youth sport coaches, contribute more to your team, and become the best player you can possibly be over time.

Attention to detail: There are so many small details that go into the successful execution of a play or game plan. Players who do the little things that most kids overlook send a message to their coach that they are the detail-oriented type that helps teams become more successful. Building this habit during your youth league experiences will make it far easier to succeed as you move through high school and beyond, where sport has just as much to do with execution as it does ability.

Focus: Youth sport coaches never have enough practice time to do all the things they’d like to in order to prepare their teams. Players that are focused and attentive help to keep things moving along positively in practices, helping the team as a whole to get more done. And since the habits we all build in practices or training carry over to game performance, improving your focus will help you deal with adversity from opponents, crowds and other distractions that come up during the heat of competition.

Passion: Nothing is more infectious than enthusiasm. If you live to play your sport and can’t get enough of it, let it come out! Show energy and excitement at appropriate times. Give 100% in everything you do, from the simplest drill to the toughest physical challenge. Project a feeling of excitement on a regular basis, and your youth sport coaches will surely take notice.

Leadership: You do not have to be the star of your team to be a leader. Leadership is about helping to do what is best for the group as a whole, especially at times when it is not easy to do so. When it’s needed, pick up a teammate who is struggling. Let your passion show when the team appears flat. In critical moments where your group needs a leader, step up and be the voice that moves everyone in a better direction.

Show Improvement Over Time/Perseverance: The gains you make over the course of a season are a byproduct of your focus, passion, and attention to detail. I mention it separately because it is possible your coaches may not immediately realize the value of all the little things you bring to the table. But with the right habits in place, over time you’re going to get significantly better. And when that happens, I can almost guarantee your youth sport coaches will see it.

If you are not getting the playing time or having the team success you wished for right away, hang in there. Keep training and practicing with passion, stay focused and do all the little things you’ll need for success. Often times it takes longer to reach your goals than you realize. The true achievers in this world are those that hang in there and fight through the struggles while continuing to build great habits.

Many young athletes simply want to win as many youth sport coaches know, but are either unsure or unwilling to focus on all the critical steps that lead to long-term success. A true Champion recognizes that those who come out on top in the end put in countless hours of focused practice, took hundreds or thousands of small steps forward along the way, and continued to stay energized despite the roadblocks that fell on their path.

Youth Sports Training Technique: Part 3

Posted on: February 17th, 2011 by IYCA No Comments

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Youth Sports Training

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The Importance of Speed Training for Young Athletes…

Click Here —> http://CompleteAthleteDevelopment.com

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Open versus Closed Habits?

‘Part 3’:

The core of technique development or learning is in the action of achieving perfect sensory-motor habits. A sensory-motor habit is simply a “learned activity of sensory and motor processes intentionally practiced to the point of nationalization”. From a physiological perspective, this entails creating a permanent conditional reflex connection that enables the exact same motor reactions to respond to the same stimuli. The development of a sensory-motor habit occurs through many stages:

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7 Steps to Kids Programming: Part 3

Posted on: October 13th, 2010 by IYCA No Comments

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Kids Programming

Picking up from yesterday…

Over the years, I have grown fond of referring to these issues as the ‘Likely Bunch’ and have created a training template intended to meet of the aforementioned needs as a matter of principle rather than what an assessment tells me.

Rather than programming for the day, week or month, my standard Training Template for a high school athlete looks as follows:

Tissue Quality – 10 minutes
ROM/Torso/Activation – 10 minutes
Movement Preparatory – 10 minutes
Movement – 10 minutes
Strength/Power Technique – 10 minutes
Strength Execution – 10 minutes
Warm-Down/Active Flexibility – 10 minutes

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How To Shape Speed Training – Part 1

Posted on: December 28th, 2009 by IYCA 7 Comments

Speed Training

Many articles, books and information products discuss the development of speed from its physiological perspective of bio-motor enhancement.

How to get athletes stronger so as to create more force production and absorption.

How many sets and reps are necessary in a given training program in order to elicit the greatest possible hypertrophic response.

How long should the rest times be between sprints or cone drills so as to ensure maximum recoverability.

These are all valid considerations and the purpose of this article is not to diminish their value.

The pursuit of lasting speed and movement enhancement with your athletes however, should not be reduced to learning and applying just the overviews of quality programming. There is a much larger picture to consider – and it requires a more long-term approach and keen eye from a coaching perspective.

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Youth Sports Training: Do You Confuse Your Young Athletes?

Posted on: March 24th, 2009 by IYCA 8 Comments

Youth sports training with kids

You could open an interesting debate with respect to teaching sporting skills to kids.

I did last week during a presentation I gave to area basketball coaches.

Some trainers and coaches have decided that the skills required to achieve a certain task should be taught from the beginning.

Others believe in the concept of motor patterning – allowing the young athlete to find his or her own way of achieving a task.

The debate gets even trickier when you factor in the varying nuances and therefore objectives of different sports.

For example, in basketball, if the ball goes in the hoop, it doesn’t really matter how it got there.

But in diving, you know going in that once you jump off the platform, gravity will pull you into the water – the style in which you get there is all that really matters.

Where do you sit on this debate?

I asked the coaches in my audience the same question.

Should you teach or over-teach a certain style of execution to young athletes from day one, or should you allow the young athletes to learn the relative motor patterning via exploration and natural refinement?

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Young Athletes & Poor Technique

Posted on: January 7th, 2009 by IYCA 7 Comments

Correcting Young Athletes Technique

With young athletes who exhibit poor technical quality on a particular exercise or group of exercises, the best method of offering correction is often to become less dogmatic or predictable in your teaching method.

When teaching the squat for example, most Trainers and Coaches tend to take a ‘top down’ approach to skill execution

They teach the young athlete to set their feet and proceed through an eccentric-concentric progression.

The nuances as to why a squat may be faulty are many, but very often, it is the inability of the young athlete to get to and summarily regulate the base of the squat phase (the ‘hole’). When inaccurate applications of force production/absorption are applied to the eccentric and ‘pause’ phase of the eccentric base (no matter how quick or seemingly inconsequential), the ability of the athlete to apply correct force sequences towards the concentric motion will be compromised.

In that, it is often the incorrect pattern of eccentric loading and ‘hole’ stabilizing that causes an incorrect pattern of force production through the concentric phase of the lift.

Many Trainers and Coaches will visually recognize the poor form during the concentric phase, but fail to recognize that it was due to incorrect loading patterns during the eccentric portion.

Having said that, a wonderful way to reform poor squat technique (as an example) is to start the young athletes in the fixed, static ‘hole’ position, and then proceed up through the concentric phase.

Have the young athlete assume a quality ‘hole’ position and talk them through what they should be feeling:

Weight back on the heels
Knees pushing outward
Neutral low back
Chin up
Chest push forward
Elbows angled downward

Do not be afraid to hold these positions for several second counts. An increase in the static strength of this position can, and usually does, improve technical patterning of the entire squat.

Upon ascending into the concentric phase, be sure that the young athlete understands how to push from their heels, using the large muscles of the hip extensors and drive through the ground.

Repeated efforts of this exercise, perhaps over a single training session or for several successive sessions, will have a tremendously positive impact on the technical qualities of a young athletes squat.

So, whether it is the squat, lunge, push-press or any other compound exercise, think ‘BOTTOM UP’ when trying to create a positive change in the technique capacity of young athletes.