Archive for “Female Athletes” Tag

4 Levels of Youth Sports Training Business

Posted on: March 26th, 2012 by IYCA 5 Comments

Youth Sports Training Business Success

By Ryan Ketchum

Training youth athletes can be hard.
It might be one of the most enjoyable experiences in all of coaching, but it can be difficult to gain traction in your community if you have no previous relationships with coaches or sports organizations. The toughest part, much like any other aspect of business, is getting started. Once you have a little momentum behind you all it takes is consistency to grow your youth sports training business at an incredible rate.

For some reason it has taken me a few years to figure out just how easy and simple building your youth sports performance business can be if you follow the right steps.

Over the past several months I have implemented this system into our business with great success. It is almost scary how easy it is to follow and how quickly it can have an effect on your bottom line.

The greatest part of this system is that it doesn’t require you to be great at marketing or selling. I modified this system so that any coach can sell with the experience of their coaching and the results that come because of their great coaching. All you have to do to make this work is be consistent and dependable.

The first level of building an incredible youth sports training performance business is leveraging your network to build relationships with coaches, parents and leaders of youth sports organizations. You should focus on an area that you already have traction in and put all of your energy into it. If you aren’t sure where you might have traction I suggest you focus on middle school or younger athletes and female athletes. Stay away from football unless you are established or have some great connections. Building relationships is easier than most people think, but it requires you to step out of your comfort zone. For a little while you have to take a back seat to being the expert and ask for advice. Call up coaches, parents and organizational leaders and ask their advice on what they see a need for in their sports training. Take them to lunch, grab coffee and don’t step on their toes!

Once you have established a relationship and secretly found out what the biggest need in that sports community is (that is why you asked for advice earlier) you can offer a solution. The next step is offering a free clinic to help the coach or organization’s athletes better prepare for their sport. This clinic should be catered to meet the needs that were unveiled by those in your network.

To make this clinic extra successful you should have as much done for you material as possible. Write the emails for the coach, set up times that are convenient for the entire team, create the fliers and deliver the copies, etc. The easier you can make it on the coach or those in charge the more likely it is that you will get access to a lot of athletes.

When selling this free clinic idea to a coach you must explain how it will help them. How is this going to make their life easier and their athletes better? How can they use this in their practices and training?

Once you have established a date and set up the clinic your only job is to show up and be ready to wow the parents, coaches and athletes with your knowledge and coaching ability. Connect with the kids, make it fun and give them what they want. If you can show immediate results and improvement with the kids speed, agility or strength you will have won them over.

At the end of this free clinic it is time to move onto the third level. We must speak the language that coaches and parents are used to hearing, we have to do the unspeakable when talking about long term athletic development, we must offer a short term sport specific and skill specific academy!!!!

You might be wondering why we would offer a short term program if we have already won these athletes and their parents over?

The reason you offer a 6-8 week program to start is because that is what they are conditioned to believe will produce the best results. Create an offering that will help get them prepared for the season or improve a specific skill. The goal for the 6-8 week program is to educate them on the long term athletic development model and continue to build a relationship with the athletes and those in charge.

You can offer this program on site at the team’s location or at your own location. Many times it is easier to take the athletes off site to your location. We have got the athletes in our funnel now and we should do our best to move them into our long term training programs.

This 6-8 week program should be low cost, with a specific purpose. Our goal here is not to make a lot of money, but rather to gain the confidence of the athletes and the community. It is a great way to “slow cook” your leads and earn their trust. This works particularly well if you are new in the sports performance community.

Towards the end of the 6-8 week program you will now attempt to move these athletes on to level 4. This is your long term development program, your core offerings and strength and conditioning program. After 6-8 weeks of education and a phenomenal experience it should be an easy sell to get them into your programs so that they can continue their athletic development with you.

The key to transitioning these athletes from the short term to long term program is understanding their needs at the time of the conversion. If they are going in season it would be silly to recommend a three time per week training program, however you could offer a one-time per week program to ensure they maintain their results and continue to make progress so that come playoff time they are in the best condition. If they are going into an off season you will want to make the most appealing offer, which is a complete off season solution for them.

To recap here are the 4 levels of youth sports training business success:

Build and develop relationships

Set up FREE Clinics

Convert into low cost short term programs with specific training focus

Convert into long term development program

If you follow these simple steps you will have no problem becoming the go-to resource for athletic development and youth sports performance training in your community.

Preventing Knee Injuries With Youth Strength Training Programs

Posted on: February 28th, 2012 by IYCA 5 Comments

Does Your Youth Strength Training Program Promote ACL Injuries?

The good news about knee injuries these days, and Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) tears in particular, is that medical science has turned what used to be a career-ending injury into something most athletes can recover from in time.

The bad news is that ACL tears are occurring more often than ever. Anyone involved in a youth strength training program likely knows at least one athlete who has had a severe knee injury in the past year.

Why do these injuries occur?

The ACL is a small ligament that runs diagonally inside the knee and connects the upper leg (femur) to the main shin bone (tibia). It’s job is to prevent the knee from twisting or moving side-to-side more than just a few degrees. When pushed beyond its relatively small limit, the ACL can either be partially stretched or ripped completely.

In a sports setting, the ACL almost always gets torn during a one-time event. This can occur due to contact with another athlete, or during non-contact moments where the knee may be pushed out of position from a high level of force placed on it. Non-contact situations where this normally happens are during cutting, pivoting, out-of-control stopping, and awkward landings on jumps.

Surprisingly, about 70% of ACL tears in young athletes occur during non-contact events. Female athletes are between 3 and 8 times more likely than males to tear their ACL. Although all youth sports have some level of ACL injuries, soccer and basketball have the most for girls playing sports. For boys, it is football and lacrosse.

With nearly 150,000 tears occurring annually in the United States alone, more focus has not just gone into the rehabilitation process, but also in preventing these injuries from happening in the first place.

How To Prevent ACL Injuries With Your Youth Strength Training Program

One big piece of preventing ACL tears is to focus on both the ankle and hip joints, strange as that may seem. Knees basically go where the ankles and hips send them, so ‘prehabilitation’ measures focus on those areas.

For the ankle, it is crucial that young athletes limit the amount of side-to-side movement that occurs in that joint. Either during one leg standing postures or when running, the more their ankles roll the better the chance it will push their knees either in or out during faster-paced athletic events. Kids who tend to roll their ankles a lot may be much more susceptible to knee injuries when they get bigger, faster and stronger in their later years.

The hip joint needs to both be flexible and strong to function correctly, making it a little harder to train. For the flexibility side, stretches that specifically target the hips may be needed for those with limited ability to do a deep squat. Very young athletes (ages 11 and younger) are almost never in need of these, but once the teenage years approach and growth spurts really kick in, more stretching may be warranted.

Strengthening the hips can be tricky, because most athletes with weak hip muscles have learned to move in a way that shifts the stress to their stronger leg and back muscles. You’d think a basic exercise like a squat would work the hips very well, but not for those who are leg-muscle dominant already. Isolated strength for the hip muscles plus relearning other exercise patterns, such as squatting, must both be done to stabilize and protect the knees.

Just as important in this equation is for young athletes to learn how to move properly. Being able to efficiently absorb the force of gravity when landing on a jump can lower your ACL tear risk substantially, and is relatively easy to learn for most focused and dedicated athletes. In addition, controlling momentum during stopping and cutting movements will further decrease your risk. These skills tend to take much more repetition to improve on, but it certainly can be done.

Although it is true that the younger someone starts improving these skills the better chance it will lower their future injury risk, it is never too late to build the strength, flexibility and movement skill required in sports with a great youth strength training program to keep your knees stable and safe.

Help young athletes train the RIGHT way, perform to their full potential and learn from the very best in industry by getting your IYCA Youth Fitness Specialist Certification today!

SOURCES: British Association of Sports Medicine, www.livestrong.com

233 Young Athletes By Summer?

Posted on: December 26th, 2010 by IYCA 1 Comment

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How would you enjoy participant numbers like this for your young athletes Fitness & Sport Camps next summer?

I did 4 Camps last summer:

Camp 1 – 135 High School Boys

Camp 2 – 40 Middle School Boys & Girls

Camp 3 – 40 High School Female young Athletes

Camp 4 – 18 Elite College Athletes

That’s 233 athletes in total!!! In ONE (more…)

Youth Training Coaches Are They This Crazy?

Posted on: November 2nd, 2010 by IYCA 15 Comments

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Ken Grall is one of the very best Coaches (and people) involved in our Athletic Revolution franchise of Youth Training Centers nationwide.

One of Ken’s young athletes (a 13 year old pitcher) has a Softball Coach who is rather… how shall I say this… INTENSE about what he thinks he knows to be true and right about all matters pertaining to strength and conditioning.

He and Ken recently had a disagreement about what was ‘best’ for the 13-year-old in question. With Ken’s permission, I’ve posted the return email “Mr. Softball Coach” sent declaring himself to be 100% RIGHT on all counts below:

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ACL Injuries and Young Athletes

Posted on: July 20th, 2009 by IYCA 9 Comments

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Young Athletes Commn Injury

Sooner or later you’re going to get hurt. That’s what happens when athletes train hard and play intensely. But thanks to professionals like Erin Perry, young athletes are returning to action better and faster than ever before. Not to mention, her tips in this article will help you avoid injuries before they happen.

Erin is a sought-after athletic therapist in Toronto, Canada, specializing in pediatric elite athletes. She has worked with the women’s national soccer teams for 8 years, as well as the national gymnastics team, and regional teams including hockey, rugby, soccer, swimming, basketball, and volleyball to name a few. Erin also runs Developing Athletics Canada and the EOS Performance Institute.

Brian: Erin, can you tell us about the young athletes you typically work with and how you got into athletic therapy?

Erin Perry: As a young person, I was athletic, I enjoyed soccer, swimming, rowing, and skiing. I experienced some injuries, but it was the concussions that caused me to ‘hang ’em up’. I figured then and there that if I couldn’t be an athlete, that I would work hard to take care of other athletes in helping them realizing their dreams. Now I specialize in pediatric elite athletes both in clinic and field situations. Their development, training and treatment are my focus. So many injuries that I treat are preventable.

Brian: One of the most common injuries in female athletes is a torn ACL. What are your experiences in treating this injury and your thoughts on injury prevention?

EP: I am so happy that you asked. Most ACL injuries are what we call non-traumatic, which simply means that it is an injury that no contact was made in. For example, a soccer player running down the line with the ball, works to move the ball inside, and suddenly falls down while hearing a pop; an ACL tear. These are all preventable! The number one cause of these types of injuries is tight hamstrings. The three hamstrings should be stretched separately, and when tested in a straight leg raise, attention must be made that the findings are made with the pelvis remaining stationary. As soon as the pelvis rotates posteriorly, the test is negated. Most females have good straight leg raise range of motion, but have poor hamstring flexibility. The difference here is crucial. Normal is 80-90degrees. Please be tested, do the tests, and tell all of your friends and teammates, so that we decrease the incidence of ACLs! The other preventable cause is a muscle imbalance between the quadriceps and hamstrings. I will say that this is crucial, that the three hamstrings need to be strengthened again individually. Closed kinetic chain strengthening should be done all of the time, unless it is a rehab program.

Brian: Is the ACL injury common among all sports?

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