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Coaching Articles

Coaching Styles
In a previous article, I discussed the need to look at the personality traits of your young athletes when considering a coaching style. I do not believe in a ‘one size fits all’ approach to coaching and work to make Trainers and Coaches understand that within every training session and team setting exists the need to conform and streamline your delivery style to fit the situation or athlete(s) - indeed, respect the ART of coaching.

Teaching Technique
Demonstrating good technique from a sporting perspective involves applying optimal movement ability in order to accomplish or solve a particular task effectively. A young athlete, for instance, who demonstrates sound technical ability while running is getting from point A to point B in an effective manner.

Global Development vs. Sport Specific Training
The goals of any trainer or coach working with a young athlete (pre-pubescent) should include increasing proficiency of motor ability, developing functional versatility (from a strength, movement and biomechanical standpoint) and lastly, inhibiting the potential negative effects of specialized training ... the mandate should be one of global, all-encompassing development rather than specialized ventures into a single sport.

Goal Confusion
You really could open an interesting debate with respect to teaching sporting skills to kids. 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 their own style of achieving a task.
Where do you sit on this debate?

Youth Training... Think Outside the Box
The Art of Coaching infers that it is not what you know as a coach that matters... It’s how you can relay it to young athletes. In that, I want to discuss today a coaching strategy that I have used that truly enables young athletes to master a given technique.

Strength Articles

Strength Training & the Young Athlete
Should pre-adolescent kids lift weights or shouldn’t they? Will it stunt their growth or increase their likelihood of future sporting success? Is growth plate damage a real concern or merely an exaggerated issue? This debate has raged on for years.
Hopefully, this article will help clear up some of the concerns.

ACL Injuries & Female Athletes
There has been an epidemic of sorts in the past few years regarding ACL injuries and young female athletes. Since the majority of ACL injuries are non-contact based, then either biological or mechanical issues are to blame. That is, either the injuries are due to unfortunate, yet genetic structural dysfunctions or they are the result of improper loading and mechanical faults – which is a matter of poor coaching.

The Machine Myth
Whenever I come into contact with a coach or trainer who preaches the virtues of machine-based strength training for young athletes, the same argument is typically offered – machines are safer for kids because they eliminate the dangerous aspects of traditional free weight training. Not True! In fact, having young athletes train on machines for strength development can actually lead to injuries and a whole host of other concerning factors.

Why Test Young Athletes?
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.

Training Philosophy Articles

Warm-up Design
This may be among the most controversial and misunderstood topics within the entire youth development industry. There is really only one way to safely and effectively warm-up your young athletes...

Plyometrics
Almost without exception, every ‘sport-performance training center’ and youth sporting association in North America both markets and incorporates some degree of plyometric conditioning into the routines of the athletes they manage. The key, however, is to teach proper elements of jumping and landing as skills with the intent of developing lower leg and hip strength/durability.

A Practical Way to Prevent Overtraining
In far too many situations throughout North America, strength coaches and personal trainers make common errors in their programming for young athletes, many of which can lead to overtraining syndromes... Here is a practical guide to prevent overtraining your young athletes.

Endurance Training
Endurance training and young athletes is an often-misunderstood topic. On one hand, there are strength coaches who tend to disregard developmentally sound elements of endurance training in lieu of producing stronger and faster athletes. On the other hand, there are over-zealous coaches and trainers who equate endurance to long distance/duration activities, often with little regard for the athlete’s ability or current level of conditioning.

Coordination Articles

Coordination Development
The key ingredient to working with pre-adolescent and early adolescent athletes is providing global stimulation from a movement perspective. Developing basic coordination through movement stimulus is a must, with the eventual goal of developing sport-specific coordination in the teenage years.

Sports ALL Kids Should Play
One of the questions that I get asked most routinely is which sports I believe offer the best development capacity to young athletes. So, here than are my top four sports that all kids should play (in no particular order)...

Speed & Movement Articles

Teaching the Basics of Movement
In the initial phases of training with a young athlete (technically referred to as General Preparatory or GPP), the undeniable key and focus (outside of fun!) should be aptitude development. That being said, how does one begin the process of teaching movement habits?

Flexibility Articles

Flexibility - Are We Hurting Kids?
Flexibility remains a mysterious avenue within the sport industry, cluttered with myths, half-truths and opinion. Questions purvey in many trainers’, coaches’, and parents’ minds as to the type of flexibility training one should perform, when they should perform it, and for how long. This article will may answer every question you have, but it will shed some light on a few key points.