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What do you really want from your kids athletic program?

For over 15 years I have trained kids to get better at their sport, learn muay thai, develop athletic skills such as speed, strength, agility, balance and coordination.   I’ve also worked with kids on developmental issues that kept them from playing the sports they love with their peers.   The largest obstacle in my way as their coach is…

OTHER COACHES!

The way coaches are training youth athletes makes it nearly impossible for kids to reach their full potential.   Their intentions are normally good, but the kids get overworked.   Kids are pushed too hard at practice and the exercises they are doing are designed to get them tired instead of improve specific skills.

To give you an example, I met with one of my ten year old athletes not long ago.   He’s a young stud on the soccer field who broke his foot last year and making progress on his foot speed isn’t as simple as it was prior to the injury.   On this particular day his legs were so sore he hobbled into the gym asking me if he could just train his upper body.   Now, I understand when you work hard you can get pretty sore, and that’s fine if the exercises and drills the athlete has done are building specific skills he or she needs to become the best player on the field, but being so sore you can hardly walk is only a sign of one thing… being over trained.

So I asked him what he did.   He said he was at running practice for soccer and he was “doing a lot of these”.   He proceeded to demonstrate some skier-type motions with his feet together hopping side to side with hands up and behind his head.   After making him do that until his calves began to burn, his coach would have him react to a whistle with a full sprint across the field.

This is the kind of stuff that drives me absolutely, off the wall, CRAZY!   I just want to approach these coaches and say, “Hey!   You’re an awesome soccer coach.   TEACH HIM HOW TO PLAY SOCCER, DAMN IT!”

Youth athletes are trained to “Work hard!   And then work even harder!”   They’re trained as if the best quality a kid can have on the playing field is mental toughness or maybe perseverance.   Of course, it’s a necessary part of the game and this mentality isn’t something new.   It’s been around for a while, even when you played high school sports.   Yet this is exactly what will keep a young athlete from ever finding his or her true potential.

In The Fit Labs we teach every athlete young and old (and we consider life a sport so everyone is an athlete in our eyes) about one core principle the human body always follows no matter what:   the S.A.I.D. Principle.

Specific
Adaptation to
Imposed
Demand

This means your body is ALWAYS learning EXACTLY what it’s doing.   If you are performing high quality repetitions of whatever it is you are trying to get better at then you will get better at exactly that, but if you are doing something incorrectly, you will get better at performing that movement incorrectly.

To bring this into perspective in relation to my 10 year old athlete, his coach had him do what he believed to be a useful agility drill combined with a sprint.   Now just think a bit about the game of soccer.   You don’t have to be a seasoned soccer player or even a soccer fan to know that at no point in the game of soccer does a player of any position put his feet together and hop side to side down the field with his hands interlocked behind his head.   Maybe this might be closer to something an angry coach might do on the side line when his team is losing, but again, doesn’t even relate to something one of the players would be doing.

Instead, the only thing this “agility drill” did was make him tired before he performed the truly important part which was running.   His form was affected due to the fatigue set in by the agility drill and not only was his form off, but his run was slower than it would have been if he hadn’t performed a useless exercise before hand.   So the end result was my ten year old soccer player spent a good portion of his soccer practice practicing to run less efficiently and slower!

And when the kids seem slower than what they are normally capable of, what do you think team coaches do?   They make them do it over and over and over again, getter better at getting WORSE.   Anyone who has played team sports or has a son or daughter in a sport has experienced this.

This is the sad reality of what is happening to so many kids who are trying to be the best young athletes they can be.   Young athletes who may want to play at a higher level one day in college or professionally are stumped in their development because the focus is on just working hard and putting your time in, but the quality of the repetitions is neglected.

The kids who don’t seem to be affected by this are usually saved by their good genetics which are able to resist the negative effects of what would be detrimental training techniques.   These are the kids who were always the faster, stronger, “gifted” ones who seemed to be better than everyone else without even trying.   But what about the average child who loves the sport, wants to compete and spend every moment in practice sharpening their skills, getting better, growing stronger and faster?   They should have their fair shot at the big leagues if they want.

This is what inspired us to open a kids athletic program.   If there’s one thing in the world of youth sports that really bothers me, it’s watching these young athletes get stripped of their opportunities to play at a higher level or even just be the athletes they could have and should have been by coaches who just don’t realize their lack of attention to detail in the quality of reps their athletes are performing is just the thing that will stump the athletes’ progress.

So what do we do in the lab? We focus on exactly what your child needs to improve on and break it all down step by step. We focus on training the NERVOUS SYSTEM and it is broken down into 3 parts:

1.  Visual System  (much more that just 20/20)
70% or more of everything that we do is in some way dependent on our visual system.  It ranks up at #1 in importance in the neurological hierarchy and training your eyes can have lightning fast results in speed, strength, and improving movement patterns.  This type of trianing is commonly overlooked and may be what is holding your child back fro being the athlete they are meant to be.  Eye training includes, near-far recognition, lateral tracking, hand-eye coordination, foot-eye coordination, convergence and more.

2.  Vestibular System (balance and coordination)
Imbedded in the skull behind the ear canal is your vestibular system.  It is the organ responsible for telling your body what is level and works very closely in conjunction with your visual system to keep your body aware of where it is in space.  This can be sharpened and help your tremendously increase your child’s balance, coordination and reaction time.

3.  Proprioceptive System (body mapping)
This system is your brain’s 3D map of your body.  Through the peripheral nerves in throughout your body it is providing all kinds of information like movement reception, touch/feel, hot/cold, chemical reactions within the body and combines this information with the information it is receiving from your eyes (visual system) and “inner ear” (vestibular system).  This is where we focus on efficiency of movement and training kids proper form for things like  jumping, running, linear speed, lateral movement, etc.

We focus on integrating these systems and this is exactly what will give your child what we like to call “The Unfair Advantage”!  So don’t let your kids get jerked around by coaches who try to teach them things that are outside of expertise.  Seek a real professional who understands body mechanics and sensory integration!  Click the link below for more information about The Fit Labs Kids Athletic Development Program!

For pricing, scheduling and more information on The Fit Labs Youth Athletic Program CLICK HERE!