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Archive for “Working With Kids” Tag

What Inspires You To Work With Young Athletes?

 

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Young Athletes Give Back

The fact that you read my random thoughts every day means a great
deal to me.

 

No joke.

 

This has never been a "static" message medium for me.

 

I take great care in drafting the kind of information I think you need in
becoming the very best Youth Fitness Coach you can be.

 

And I don’t take the fact you read my daily ramblings for granted.

 

Over the past several days, I’ve recounted some memories I have from
the days when I spent all my waking hours in the trenches working with
kids.

 

Fond memories all.

 

And through them, you’ve gotten to learn a bit more about me.

 

But now I want something from you.

 

I want to know something that I know I have never asked before.

 

What inspires you to work with young athletes and youth fitness

participants?

 

Why is it so important to you?

 

How does it fulfill you?

 

I want to know.

 

Sincerely.

 

Leave your comments below…

3 Tips to Becoming a World-Class Athlete Development Coach

Athlete Development Coaching Tips

Read carefully.

 

But don’t forget…. I want to hear what you have to say.

 

Be sure to leave your comments…..

 

1) Read, Listen and Watch

 

Read books.

 

Listen to CD’s and audio’s.

 

Watch great athlete development Coaches do what they do best.

 

But here’s the key (and it’s something I very seldom hear anyone else mention)…

 

Don’t just learn from the stuff or professionals you agree with.

 

We all like to be validated and stay in a relative comfort zone in terms of our knowledge
base, but this industry is chalk full of professionals who cast negative opinions about certain
training methodologies without truly understanding them.

 

Spend 75% of your time on learning from resources you enjoy and agree with. 15% of
your time on resources you COMPLETELY disagree with and the remaining 10% on
resources you have never heard of and are not at all familiar with.

 

A well-rounded education is predicated on knowing parts of it all.

 

(more…)

Why Test Young Athletes?

 

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Young Athletes Performance

How to test a group of young athletes has become a popular
‘discussion board’ question recently. I have seen this query
raised on several prominent websites and have been asked
about it a great deal over the past few months as well.
Thus… my desire to touch on this subject.

 

The common curiosity surrounds how to test absolute strength
ability via 1, 4 or 8 RM (rep maximum). The thought process
is that once a trainer or coach has a baseline measurement of a
given athletes strength capacity, they can deduce two specific
things:

 

– The strength gain(s) that an athlete will see following a training
program (because inevitably they will re-test the athlete at the
conclusion of there 6 or 8 week training cycle).

 

– The percentage of absolute strength the athlete can and should
perform their training programs. For example, if a 1RM squat
equals 225 pounds, then a ‘training weight’ may be 70% of that,
or 158 pounds.

 

I have touched on my disdain of this type of testing procedure
many times in my newsletter, so the following will serve as
little more than a recap:

 

Biomotor improvements (strength, speed, flexibility) are not
hard to come by with young athletes and are often just as
attributable to their natural adolescent maturation process as
they are to any ‘cutting edge’ training program a given trainer
or coach will put together.

 

More over, as demonstrated in countless studies, detraining
effects will occur in a relatively short period of time once the
training program has concluded.

 

Pursuant to the above point, we must progress away from the
‘value-intensive’ practice of training young athletes in short
bursts (6 – 8 weeks) and shift to a more long-term and
‘principle-focused’ approach to working with kids.

 

In that, a given training program would not look to isolate and
improve biomotor ability as much as it would act as a teaching
agent with a focus on improving transferability to sport.

 

In this value to principle shift I suggest, we must also look to take
pressure off of kids in general. Like it or not, if you adhere to test
or re-test training programs of short durations, you are allowing
that athlete to think only of the numbers and specific improvement
gains.

 

Kids should not be placed in a situation where the efficacy of
their training is based on how much more they can squat in week
7 than they did in week 1.

 

Again, your focus as a trainer or coach should be on technical
ability and improvements in this consideration. Create RTA
(rate of technical ability) charts that mark how well a child is
progressing from a form and function standpoint.

 

Not only is this a more ‘teaching-based’ approach to conditioning,
but it also changes the focus and mental stress for the athlete – from
performance considerations (i.e. how much weight can they lift) to
technical considerations (i.e. how well can they lift it).

 

One of the more problematic issues I have seen in this debate revolves
around why a trainer or coach is testing at all. The reason to test must
be completely based on what you want to glean from the results…
and most coaches and trainers don’t seem to see that clearly enough.

 

For example, one of the questions that was recently posed to me was
in reference to a freshman baseball team (14 year old athletes). The
coach told me straight out that the kids had little to no experience in
terms of strength training, so testing the squat would not be a
worthwhile assessment. Instead, the coach wanted to know if leg
press or leg extension would be more feasible because they lack
technical difficulty.

 

Points to consider:

 

If you know that the kids have no lifting expertise, than by
nature of that conclusion, your role as a trainer/coach is to teach.

 

Period.

 

There is simply no reason to test strength capacity in a situation
where the kids you are working with have no experience at all.

 

That is part of the dogmatic thinking that must change in our
youth training culture.

 

Leg press and leg extension are silly exercises that will do more
harm than good to anyone. Specifically, lumbar rounding in the
leg press and anterior sheering at the knee joint with leg extension
make the risk/reward ratio of these exercises useless.

 

Additionally, and this speaks to my statement above, what is
the point of testing strength on an apparatus that you have no
intension of using during training?

 

Again, you must first ascertain why you are testing.

 

The reality is that in the United States, many high schools use
a programming model that is based on test/re-test situations
right from freshman through varsity.

 

The notion that incoming freshman, with little to no technical
ability, are being asked to perform strength assessments from
day one is nothing short of ridiculous… oh… and maybe a
touch dangerous as well.

 

Teach… Teach… Teach.

 

I cannot re-state that enough. Forget about testing biomotor
ability and concentrate on actually teaching young athletes the
skills they need to excel in sport AND be remain injury free.

 

 

‘Til Next Time,

 

Brian

 

http://www.iyca.org/2009summit

 

 

Exercise Programs For Kids: Tip of the Week

 

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Exercise Programs For Kids From The IYCA

I had a great conversation today with brilliant and passionate
IYCA Member, Billy Corbett.

 

He mentioned that while tooling around on the IYCA website,
something caught his eye that he knew he had seen before, but
never really paid close attention to –

 

The photograph of me running around and playing with a group
of small children.

 

"It occurred to me that I should be doing more stuff like that, Brian"
Billy told me over the phone.

 

"Is that kind of coaching a good idea when working with kids?"

 

Excellent question and an easy answer….

 

Yes!
HECK yes!

 

There is certainly a fine line between goofing around with your
young clients and enjoying physical activity with them.

 

In my 13 years of coaching Exercise Programs For Kids experience, I can tell you that one of
the fastest and most practical ways of creating relationships with
youngsters that will bridge a level of trust and keep them coming
back for more (i.e. member retention) is to section off a period of
class time during which you participate in a game with them.

 

In fact, my standard training session for kids between the ages of
6 – 9 looks something like this –

 

1) Introductions (5 minutes)
2) Technique Instruction (5 minutes)
3) Technique Play (10 minutes)
4) Technique Instruction 2 (5 minutes)
5) Technique Play 2 (10 minutes)
6) Free Play (10 minutes)

 

And #6 is where I jump in and play WITH them during the Exercise Programs For Kids!

 

They love it, I love it and the parents LOVE it!

 

Be sure to get down and dirty with your young clients and play
with them during certain period of your training session.

 

To learn more about my Exercise Programs For Kids training system and why this ‘play time’
is absolutely critical to the proper growth and development of your
young clients, click on the link below to access the IYCA’s Level 1
Youth Fitness Specialist certification –

 

http://www.iyca.org/fitspecialist1.html

 

 

Have a great weekend!

 

Brian