Exercise Programs For Kids and The Art Of Teaching Speed

Posted on: March 11th, 2009 by IYCA 1 Comment

Exercise Programs For Kids Speed Training

One of my favorite things to teach, both to young athletes as well as
Coaches, is the mechanics of speed.

Deceleration techniques specifically.

And that’s because speed is seldom taught as a skill at all.

Usually, the ‘speed work’ of a training session consists of some hurdles,
cones, sprinting and ‘plyo’ exercises with little attention being paid to
form or function.

Simply put, we don’t often TEACH speed and respect it in the way we
should.

Young athletes can (and should) be taught how to become faster and
more efficient from a movement perspective.

And in order to do that correctly, you must have a progressive system
in place that allows them to learn.

I always teach speed by instructing on the skill of deceleration first –
and I teach that from both a lateral and linear perspective.

Here’s my overview for teaching the skill of lateral deceleration for Exercise Programs For Kids:

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You’re Destroying Young Athletes

Posted on: February 9th, 2009 by IYCA 4 Comments

Young Athletes Programming

One of my favorite things to do is chat with the ‘big name’ trainers in our industry about programming, speed training, strength development or flexibility for young athletes.

Sometimes, in the middle of a casual conversation about nothing at all related to conditioning, I will switch gears in an instant and turn the discussion to something related to training.

And that’s just what I did with superstar trainer, Alwyn Cosgrove this past weekend.

Alwyn and I are good friends, so it’s not really unusual for us to be chatting about sports or family late in the afternoon on Saturday.

“Ya, baseball doesn’t really do it for me – after all, I’m Scottish!” Alwyn was telling me.

“Uh huh” I replied, not really listening… I was planning my big move.

“It’s kinda like Cricket I guess, except for a smaller field, smaller bat, different throwing motion, different scoring system… actually, it’s not really like Cricket at all is it?” Alwyn continued on.

“I guess not,” I countered… about ready to evoke my patented conversation-switching technique.

“Ya, and besides, Cricket games can go on for like 4,000 years or something like that. Rugby, now there’s a game. I remember…” Alwyn stopped mid-sentence – I had finally sprung into action.

“What’s the biggest mistake trainers are making with young athletes in this industry, Al?” I finally asked.

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