This article will describe a basic jump training program with an emphasis on the sport of basketball and volleyball to help those that are coaches and players improve in the area of jumping higher. Even though it is designed specifically for those athletes that play sports such as basketball and volleyball, coaches of other sports that require jumping can also use the information as well.
Very few athletic measurements evoke awe-inspiring glances as a forty-inch vertical jump. While incredibly important when dunking a basketball or spiking a volleyball, the vertical jump test is a standard measurement of one's explosive power; that is, the amount of force one is able to generate in a specific, in this case immediate, amount of time. A high vertical jump requires the athlete to coordinate a whole body movement to drive a downward force onto the ground sufficient to propel the body against the force of gravity and into the air.
Many athletes attempt to improve their vertical jump through gimmicks such as the strength shoes that are marketed on the Internet or in catalog magazines; however, the only true way to increase one’s vertical is through the traditional strength training that is done in the gym through Olympic lifts and jump training exercises.
Jump training is very individual and must be tailored to the specific athlete it is intended for. Every athlete has different concerns and needs. Additionally, injury can result from the incorrect use of it.
Jumping is a complex multi-joint movement that requires muscle coordination best improved by specific skill development. Traditional strength training, explosive types of weight training, jump training and Olympic lifting can be effective for increasing the vertical jump. Before embarking in a jump training regiment, athletes and coaches must consider the athlete’s goal. In addition, they must determine the relative strength and weakness the athlete has at the start of designing a program.
Some program considerations.
As discussed in previous articles, the principle of specificity must govern the training regimen. What this means is the exercises selected for the program must simulate basketball movements in speed, biomechanics and resistance. Train athletes so that they are able to transfer what is being taught into their sport. (This is the reason for them coming to me in the first place.)
Safety and proper progression must be at the forefront of the program. It is better to under-prescribe then to over-prescribe.
Advanced exercises must be reserved for only advanced athletes.
Beginners always want to progress faster than they are capable of. It is the coach’s job to explain, and insist on, proper progression.
Although beginning jump training programs may be performed by most people, to participate safely in an aggressive jump training program many authors suggest that the athlete should be able to squat 1.5 times body weight. Therefore, a considerable strength base becomes imperative when embarking on a challenging jump training program. For most athletes, 8-12 weeks of periodized, resistance training should be sufficient to bring strength levels to adequate levels.
A proper warm up and cool down can not be emphasized enough. The warm-up must proceed from general (e.g. jogging or skipping rope) to specific preparatory exercises (e.g. dynamic stretches similar to exercises being performed). The cool down should focus on flexibility via static stretches and allow the gradual return to a pre-exercises state.
The correct amount of jump training must be provided. High intensity must govern the jump training training session. Quality, not quantity, is the cornerstone of jump training training – all exercises are to be performed at maximal effort. When training, emphasis should be on the athlete training in game time speed so that the muscles train in the manner needed when they are actually in the competition.
However, there must be a balanced relationship between stress and rest. Insufficient rest is the most common cause of injury in jump trainings.
Let me repeat that statement again. Insufficient rest is the most common case of injury in jump training. Too much, too soon.
Athletes should rest 1-3 minutes between sets and 3-5 minutes between exercises within a single training session. Recovery between sessions becomes more complex due to the many variables to consider (e.g. practice schedules, strength training volume, level of athletic development, etc.). It is here where the experience of a trained professional becomes paramount.
Finally, individual program design must be part of the final process. Although a general program can be designed for a team. The coach must “tweak” each program to deal with the specifics of the individual athlete. Adjustments to fit the athlete’s characteristics are always made. Because of individual variations, cookie-cutter jump training programs are a sure way to hurt athletes. Medical history, training age, muscle imbalances, sport and position played are some of the variables that will dictate the specific design of the program. For the sake for simplicity there are three basic categories of jump training exercises.
Jumps, hops and bounds.
Jumps are exercises where you land with both feet (e.g. long jump). The take off can be performed with one foot or two feet. Jumps can be done in place (e.g. jumping jacks) or for distance (e.g. multiple long jumps).
Hops are exercises where you take off one foot and land on the same foot (e.g. single leg hopping). Hops can also be done in place (e.g. stationary single leg ankle hops) or for distance (e.g. multiple single leg hops). Since hops are a single leg exercise, they require much more strength than jumps.
Bounding exercises are exercises where one takes off on one foot and lands on the other foot (e.g. alternate leg bounding). Bounds are usually done for distance. Bounds can be the most challenging of the jump training exercises. However, there is over lap between the categories. For example, a very advance jump exercise can be more demanding than a beginning bound exercise.
Athletes should make sure they seek the advice of a professional who is trained and experienced in this method of training before you embark on a serious jump training routine. A good program put together by a professional strength coach can aid an athlete and improve the athlete's speed, quickness and jumping ability, and these gains may transform the player's playing career.
Charlotte Strength and Speed Coach
Showing posts with label exercise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exercise. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Dear Mr. Obama: Help our kids play
I thought since we all have been glued to the news rather you voted for the new President or not this past election, this blog post was appropriate for the occasion. It was taken from ESPN.com on my blackberry and it's an open letter to President Barack Obama. I hope you enjoy it.
Dear Mr. President:
Every 50 years or so since the rise of the U.S. as an industrial power, someone with your impending job title takes a hard look at the athletic activity of children.
He finds neglect and opportunity.
He takes action.
He leaves the nation -- and, ultimately, the sports nation -- in a better place.
Just over a century ago, it was Teddy Roosevelt. Ascending to the presidency at a time when America was about to make its play as leader of the free world, he didn't like what he saw happening with teenage boys. Roosevelt grew up an asthmatic, a sickly boy from polluted New York who made his body strong by embracing a life of vigorous exercise. He wrestled and lifted weights, and he boxed even after moving into the White House. He worried that the comforts of urban life had rendered middle- and upper-class boys soft and effeminate, raised, as many of them were, by their mothers. They hardly seemed fit, the way he saw it, to take over the businesses that their more manly fathers were hard at work creating. At the same time, the nation needed dependable laborers to pave the expansion into new markets. Sports, and team sports specifically, became seen as a way to indoctrinate immigrant boys into the ways of American capitalism. "Only aggressive sports can create the brawn, the spirit, the self-confidence, and quickness of men essential for the existence of a strong nation," Roosevelt roared.
Stirred, TR's contemporaries introduced organized sports to school systems in Gotham and other large cities. And they built thousands of playgrounds, green spaces where kids could get off the streets and get into games like baseball.
A half-century later, Dwight Eisenhower was fighting a Cold War that seemed as if it might turn hot on a moment's notice. As a former general, he knew that half of all men who had shown up at draft boards around the nation were considered physically unfit. And a study presented at the American Medical Association had shown that U.S. children were far more out of shape than their European peers. Over there, kids still walked or rode bikes to school and chopped wood for home heating. In the new suburban America, boys and girls were being driven everywhere. Home chores consisted of making their beds. As for school sports, they were focused on interscholastic competition, the province of the certified jock.
An alarmed Ike created in 1956 what ultimately became known as the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, which promoted physical education classes as early as first grade. Intramurals exploded, giving the less athletically gifted kid a chance to compete. Also, the groundwork was laid for passage a few years later of a federal program to help fund the construction or renovation of 40,000 parks and recreation centers in just about every county in the country. Today's baby boomers, the first generation to grow up with an exercise ethos, were the chief beneficiaries of these investments.
Your turn, No. 44.
I know you have a lot on your plate, between fixing the economy and smoking out bin Laden. But you've got a big brain, so let me introduce you to another mounting crisis that will require your leadership to solve: That of our sport system at its base. Maybe as you're trying to modernize our schools and mend our health care system, you can think about building in reforms to the opportunities our children have for physical activity.
From the top down, the system looks pretty good. Our pro leagues are thriving, as are the owners of their franchises. Our athletes are worldwide brands -- Kobe; A-Rod; Peyton Manning; the Williams sisters; and, especially, Tiger. From the window of an airplane, our mega-stadiums sparkle like 10-carat diamonds amid urban and college-town landscapes.
But viewed from the bottom up, the setup looks a lot more like the Wall Street we have come to know of late: a system compromised by greed and ignorance, in which the haves increasingly get rewarded at the expense of the have-nots, with the support of government.
To understand where the priorities lie today, start in America's largest burg. Last week, officials for the city and the New York Yankees were hauled before a state assembly committee to justify the most expensive stadium project in U.S. history. The $1.5 billion ballpark is being built on one of those historic playgrounds built a century ago, Macombs Dam Park, whose fields over the years have served countless youth and school teams in the South Bronx, the poorest congressional district in the U.S. The city effectively gave a 22-acre parcel to the richest team in baseball, then allegedly jacked up the estimated value of the land to gain access to $940 million in federal tax-exempt bonds. Now the Yankees have been granted another $370 million in such bonds -- just weeks after signing Mark Teixeira and two other free agents for a combined $423 million.
The city promises to build a series of smaller replacement parks elsewhere. But some won't be ready for years, one will be on top of a parking garage, and another is in an industrial area far from the neighborhood. And we'll see what residents really get once the economy wreaks full havoc on city budgets.
"In New York City, 70 percent of kids are kicked to the curb at the end of the school day," said Al Bevilacqua, a wrestling coach whose nonprofit organization, Beat the Streets, is trying to reintroduce that sport to public schools using private funding. In the city that pioneered the uniquely American tradition of school sports, the options for many students are very limited. As an undergraduate at Columbia, you lived in New York long enough to get a sense of the experiential gap between that of a large public high school there and an elite private school such as the one you attended in Honolulu. Well, it's grown. Intramurals and quality P.E. classes are scarce, and only so many kids can make varsity basketball. Do you know how many U.S. Olympians the Big Apple sent to Beijing? Just eight. Four fencers, one boxer, one judoka, one riflewoman and one table tennis player originally trained in China.
Australia, which draws from a population only some two and a half times the size of New York City, won 46 medals.
Just about everywhere in America, inner-city kids struggle to find athletic opportunities. That's true even in places like Miami, with its reputation for producing elite football players. Miami Northwestern Senior High School won the mythical national championship in 2007 with a team that sent more than a dozen seniors to D-I programs, yet the school profile shows most students at the school couldn't pass the annual fitness exam. So is Northwestern a jock factory -- or a fitness flunkie?
You'd never know it from watching pro sports, in which African-American presence has grown, but black teenagers play sports less often than they did decades ago. In 1980, no ethnic group had a higher participation rate, according to U.S. Department of Education statistics. Not anymore. In fact, since then, no group has lost more participants. The obesity crisis is a national problem, but especially in black and Hispanic communities.
Those at the top of the sports pyramid aren't unaware of deficits at the bottom. Perhaps no league does more than the NFL, which has created an endowment that spends $25 million a year on refurbishing community football fields in distressed areas, according to a league spokesman. But such gifts are table scraps in the all-you-can-eat feast that is pro sports, where growth has been fueled by billions in public subsidies and tax advantages.
"They're more or less P.R. campaigns," says Scott Lancaster, who ran the NFL's youth programs for 12 years until 2007.
The NFL recently stopped funding one of its main youth programs. Junior Player Development, created by Lancaster, had helped repopularize football in poor urban areas by introducing the game to hundreds of thousands of kids through trained coaches. Many went on to play in college. Now the well-regarded program has been shut down, likely for good. The NFL cites the economy. Lancaster suspects it had more to do with posturing for negotiations with the players' union, a desire to plead poverty where none exists. "They've put youth in the middle and made it a victim," he says.
In tough times, sports funding for kids is always an easy cut. Even in the 'burbs now, school districts are talking about eliminating teams -- or even entire athletic programs. "You're going to see decisions made in the next two years that we've never seen made," one Connecticut high school athletic director told me. Youth sports in these communities will become further privatized, the realm of parents who can afford to sign their kids up for an endless slate of organized activities, from sport-specific camps to private lessons to travel teams with paid coaches.
It's hard to get your mind around how much the sports activity of children has changed since we were boys. As recently as the mid-1990s, the average age at which kids began to play organized sports was 8. Now, many start slipping on uniforms by 5, and after that you rarely see kids playing games without one. When my daughter was in second grade, there were girls on her rec league soccer team who were in their ninth season of soccer, having been signed up each fall, winter and spring since kindergarten (three seasons a year).
By third grade, in some sports, elite travel teams are being formed that stand apart from the in-town rec leagues that historically have provided opportunities for all kids. Ghettoized, the rec leagues begin to wither, while the travel kids go on to dominate varsity rosters. We're effectively holding high school tryouts now in grade school, sorting the weak from the strong before kids even hit puberty.
You seem like a man who can appreciate that youth sport is the most important institution in all of sports, because that's where the magic begins. It's where we learn to love these games, picking up fitness habits and rooting interests that can last a lifetime. But many kids start falling away from sports around age 11 now. The system has become less accessible to the late bloomer, the economically disadvantaged, the child of a one-parent household, the physically or mentally disabled, and the kid who needs exercise more than any other: the clinically obese.
We also risk burning out the "winners" of this premature struggle. It's worth keeping in mind the modern cautionary tale of Elena Delle Donne, the 2008 national high school player of the year in girls basketball. Soon after arriving at UConn with a full ride, she quit the game, later explaining that she had stopped enjoying hoops back in middle school. All those AAU national championships, all those sessions with the personal trainer her parents had hired for her since second grade, led to no return on investment. She chose to walk on instead with a volleyball team at the University of Delaware, closer to home and friends.
Government policies have shaped this landscape. It's tempting to point to Title IX for the spread of scholarship mania among parents, as the amount of athletic aid handed out by NCAA programs has quadrupled since the early 1990s, to $1.5 billion annually. But that law also has been the greatest tool for growing participation since, well, the advent of organized youth sports, by forcing high schools and middle schools to create opportunities for girls.
It's clear that you, Barack, get that.
"I am the father of two young girls who are growing up playing sports and who are the beneficiaries of the doors Title IX opened," you said last year, signaling your intention to strengthen enforcement of the law down to the "pre-kindergarten" level.
Far more problematic is the Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, which charters the U.S. Olympic Committee and makes requirements of the national governing bodies of individual sports. The law asks that the USOC coordinate amateur sports activity in the country, but it's an unfunded mandate, a real bridge to nowhere (which was a specialty of its author, former Senator Ted Stevens). The USOC has focused its limited resources on the elite of the elite, making little effort to push coaches' education down to the youth level. In Europe, coaches are certified and trained in athlete development; here, the scene is dominated by millions of parent volunteers, well-meaning but winging it.
Attrition drops when coaches are trained in working with kids. It's been proven.
You are no doubt looking for ways to cut, not add to, the federal budget. But look at it this way: The economic consequences of Americans' physical inactivity are huge, costing more than $76 billion a year in direct medical costs alone, according to one academic study. Health care is a major priority of yours, with an emphasis on prevention. There's no better preventative care than finding a sport for life, like those weekly pickup hoop games you'll soon bring to the White House, Cabinet members in tow.
A bunch of your advisers got game, from education secretary nominee Arne Duncan (former Harvard co-captain) to attorney general nominee Eric Holder (former Columbia player) to brother-in-law Craig Robinson (current Oregon State men's coach). So get them in a huddle and come up with a new model for grassroots sports, built from the bottom up with a simple premise: sport as a human right, just like education. Here's how to do it:
• Offer incentives for schools to create more teams, not fewer, which is what is happening in the era of No Child Left Behind, with its strictly academic focus. The least that schools can do is modernize P.E. by connecting teens with local clubs that sponsor lesser-known sports in which they might find success. "You have to connect the national governing bodies with the schools," says Judy Young, a top expert on school-based sports. "Schools just can't teach the full array of 45 sports seen in the Olympics."
• Restore funding for urban parks and rec centers that have been gutted in recent years. Perhaps you can pay for it with a tax on the pro leagues that do business in these cities and whose empires have been built on the public dime.
• Rewrite the Olympic and Amateur Sports Act so that Job 1 for the USOC is tending to the base of the participation pyramid. While you're at it, enlist Larry Probst, its new chairman, who comes from the video game industry, to share what he knows about creating games that engage today's children. "A lot needs to be learned about making sports a contemporary experience for kids," says Lancaster, who while at the NFL experimented with hybrid games that married hand-held video with real play. "We're still asking them to play games the way their dads did a generation ago."
The key is getting progressive, not sentimental, about youth sports. Parents just aren't going to let their kid ride a bike halfway across town anymore to play sandlot ball, unsupervised. The murder of Adam Walsh changed all that.
And now, you can change it again, for the better. Imagine a Chicago Olympics in 2016 -- the first truly "Sport for All" Olympics, as you can pitch it when the host city is selected in October 2009, deploying an ideal celebrated by the IOC. An Olympics in which national governing bodies like U.S. Swimming and U.S. Badminton already are making new efforts to go into the inner city and get kids involved. An Olympics with a legacy of facilities that will benefit regular athletes, not just elites. An Olympics measured by growth in the number of Chicago kids who play sports into their teenage years and beyond. An Olympics that can cap your eight-year run as a president known for fresh ideas, with a statement in your adopted hometown about the possibilities of American sport.
The moment is there for the taking, Mr. Obama. It's one Teddy and Ike would surely seize.
Hope that gets you thinking.
Sincerely,
Tom Farrey
Tom Farrey is the author of "Game On: The All-American Race to Make Champions of Our Children," an exploration of the culture of modern youth sports. The book, his first, was recently named the 2008 Sports Education Book of the Year by the Institute of International Sport at the University of Rhode Island. Tom can be reached at tom.farrey@espn3.com
Youth Fitness Professional in Charlotte, NC
Dear Mr. President:
Every 50 years or so since the rise of the U.S. as an industrial power, someone with your impending job title takes a hard look at the athletic activity of children.
He finds neglect and opportunity.
He takes action.
He leaves the nation -- and, ultimately, the sports nation -- in a better place.
Just over a century ago, it was Teddy Roosevelt. Ascending to the presidency at a time when America was about to make its play as leader of the free world, he didn't like what he saw happening with teenage boys. Roosevelt grew up an asthmatic, a sickly boy from polluted New York who made his body strong by embracing a life of vigorous exercise. He wrestled and lifted weights, and he boxed even after moving into the White House. He worried that the comforts of urban life had rendered middle- and upper-class boys soft and effeminate, raised, as many of them were, by their mothers. They hardly seemed fit, the way he saw it, to take over the businesses that their more manly fathers were hard at work creating. At the same time, the nation needed dependable laborers to pave the expansion into new markets. Sports, and team sports specifically, became seen as a way to indoctrinate immigrant boys into the ways of American capitalism. "Only aggressive sports can create the brawn, the spirit, the self-confidence, and quickness of men essential for the existence of a strong nation," Roosevelt roared.
Stirred, TR's contemporaries introduced organized sports to school systems in Gotham and other large cities. And they built thousands of playgrounds, green spaces where kids could get off the streets and get into games like baseball.
A half-century later, Dwight Eisenhower was fighting a Cold War that seemed as if it might turn hot on a moment's notice. As a former general, he knew that half of all men who had shown up at draft boards around the nation were considered physically unfit. And a study presented at the American Medical Association had shown that U.S. children were far more out of shape than their European peers. Over there, kids still walked or rode bikes to school and chopped wood for home heating. In the new suburban America, boys and girls were being driven everywhere. Home chores consisted of making their beds. As for school sports, they were focused on interscholastic competition, the province of the certified jock.
An alarmed Ike created in 1956 what ultimately became known as the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, which promoted physical education classes as early as first grade. Intramurals exploded, giving the less athletically gifted kid a chance to compete. Also, the groundwork was laid for passage a few years later of a federal program to help fund the construction or renovation of 40,000 parks and recreation centers in just about every county in the country. Today's baby boomers, the first generation to grow up with an exercise ethos, were the chief beneficiaries of these investments.
Your turn, No. 44.
I know you have a lot on your plate, between fixing the economy and smoking out bin Laden. But you've got a big brain, so let me introduce you to another mounting crisis that will require your leadership to solve: That of our sport system at its base. Maybe as you're trying to modernize our schools and mend our health care system, you can think about building in reforms to the opportunities our children have for physical activity.
From the top down, the system looks pretty good. Our pro leagues are thriving, as are the owners of their franchises. Our athletes are worldwide brands -- Kobe; A-Rod; Peyton Manning; the Williams sisters; and, especially, Tiger. From the window of an airplane, our mega-stadiums sparkle like 10-carat diamonds amid urban and college-town landscapes.
But viewed from the bottom up, the setup looks a lot more like the Wall Street we have come to know of late: a system compromised by greed and ignorance, in which the haves increasingly get rewarded at the expense of the have-nots, with the support of government.
To understand where the priorities lie today, start in America's largest burg. Last week, officials for the city and the New York Yankees were hauled before a state assembly committee to justify the most expensive stadium project in U.S. history. The $1.5 billion ballpark is being built on one of those historic playgrounds built a century ago, Macombs Dam Park, whose fields over the years have served countless youth and school teams in the South Bronx, the poorest congressional district in the U.S. The city effectively gave a 22-acre parcel to the richest team in baseball, then allegedly jacked up the estimated value of the land to gain access to $940 million in federal tax-exempt bonds. Now the Yankees have been granted another $370 million in such bonds -- just weeks after signing Mark Teixeira and two other free agents for a combined $423 million.
The city promises to build a series of smaller replacement parks elsewhere. But some won't be ready for years, one will be on top of a parking garage, and another is in an industrial area far from the neighborhood. And we'll see what residents really get once the economy wreaks full havoc on city budgets.
"In New York City, 70 percent of kids are kicked to the curb at the end of the school day," said Al Bevilacqua, a wrestling coach whose nonprofit organization, Beat the Streets, is trying to reintroduce that sport to public schools using private funding. In the city that pioneered the uniquely American tradition of school sports, the options for many students are very limited. As an undergraduate at Columbia, you lived in New York long enough to get a sense of the experiential gap between that of a large public high school there and an elite private school such as the one you attended in Honolulu. Well, it's grown. Intramurals and quality P.E. classes are scarce, and only so many kids can make varsity basketball. Do you know how many U.S. Olympians the Big Apple sent to Beijing? Just eight. Four fencers, one boxer, one judoka, one riflewoman and one table tennis player originally trained in China.
Australia, which draws from a population only some two and a half times the size of New York City, won 46 medals.
Just about everywhere in America, inner-city kids struggle to find athletic opportunities. That's true even in places like Miami, with its reputation for producing elite football players. Miami Northwestern Senior High School won the mythical national championship in 2007 with a team that sent more than a dozen seniors to D-I programs, yet the school profile shows most students at the school couldn't pass the annual fitness exam. So is Northwestern a jock factory -- or a fitness flunkie?
You'd never know it from watching pro sports, in which African-American presence has grown, but black teenagers play sports less often than they did decades ago. In 1980, no ethnic group had a higher participation rate, according to U.S. Department of Education statistics. Not anymore. In fact, since then, no group has lost more participants. The obesity crisis is a national problem, but especially in black and Hispanic communities.
Those at the top of the sports pyramid aren't unaware of deficits at the bottom. Perhaps no league does more than the NFL, which has created an endowment that spends $25 million a year on refurbishing community football fields in distressed areas, according to a league spokesman. But such gifts are table scraps in the all-you-can-eat feast that is pro sports, where growth has been fueled by billions in public subsidies and tax advantages.
"They're more or less P.R. campaigns," says Scott Lancaster, who ran the NFL's youth programs for 12 years until 2007.
The NFL recently stopped funding one of its main youth programs. Junior Player Development, created by Lancaster, had helped repopularize football in poor urban areas by introducing the game to hundreds of thousands of kids through trained coaches. Many went on to play in college. Now the well-regarded program has been shut down, likely for good. The NFL cites the economy. Lancaster suspects it had more to do with posturing for negotiations with the players' union, a desire to plead poverty where none exists. "They've put youth in the middle and made it a victim," he says.
In tough times, sports funding for kids is always an easy cut. Even in the 'burbs now, school districts are talking about eliminating teams -- or even entire athletic programs. "You're going to see decisions made in the next two years that we've never seen made," one Connecticut high school athletic director told me. Youth sports in these communities will become further privatized, the realm of parents who can afford to sign their kids up for an endless slate of organized activities, from sport-specific camps to private lessons to travel teams with paid coaches.
It's hard to get your mind around how much the sports activity of children has changed since we were boys. As recently as the mid-1990s, the average age at which kids began to play organized sports was 8. Now, many start slipping on uniforms by 5, and after that you rarely see kids playing games without one. When my daughter was in second grade, there were girls on her rec league soccer team who were in their ninth season of soccer, having been signed up each fall, winter and spring since kindergarten (three seasons a year).
By third grade, in some sports, elite travel teams are being formed that stand apart from the in-town rec leagues that historically have provided opportunities for all kids. Ghettoized, the rec leagues begin to wither, while the travel kids go on to dominate varsity rosters. We're effectively holding high school tryouts now in grade school, sorting the weak from the strong before kids even hit puberty.
You seem like a man who can appreciate that youth sport is the most important institution in all of sports, because that's where the magic begins. It's where we learn to love these games, picking up fitness habits and rooting interests that can last a lifetime. But many kids start falling away from sports around age 11 now. The system has become less accessible to the late bloomer, the economically disadvantaged, the child of a one-parent household, the physically or mentally disabled, and the kid who needs exercise more than any other: the clinically obese.
We also risk burning out the "winners" of this premature struggle. It's worth keeping in mind the modern cautionary tale of Elena Delle Donne, the 2008 national high school player of the year in girls basketball. Soon after arriving at UConn with a full ride, she quit the game, later explaining that she had stopped enjoying hoops back in middle school. All those AAU national championships, all those sessions with the personal trainer her parents had hired for her since second grade, led to no return on investment. She chose to walk on instead with a volleyball team at the University of Delaware, closer to home and friends.
Government policies have shaped this landscape. It's tempting to point to Title IX for the spread of scholarship mania among parents, as the amount of athletic aid handed out by NCAA programs has quadrupled since the early 1990s, to $1.5 billion annually. But that law also has been the greatest tool for growing participation since, well, the advent of organized youth sports, by forcing high schools and middle schools to create opportunities for girls.
It's clear that you, Barack, get that.
"I am the father of two young girls who are growing up playing sports and who are the beneficiaries of the doors Title IX opened," you said last year, signaling your intention to strengthen enforcement of the law down to the "pre-kindergarten" level.
Far more problematic is the Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, which charters the U.S. Olympic Committee and makes requirements of the national governing bodies of individual sports. The law asks that the USOC coordinate amateur sports activity in the country, but it's an unfunded mandate, a real bridge to nowhere (which was a specialty of its author, former Senator Ted Stevens). The USOC has focused its limited resources on the elite of the elite, making little effort to push coaches' education down to the youth level. In Europe, coaches are certified and trained in athlete development; here, the scene is dominated by millions of parent volunteers, well-meaning but winging it.
Attrition drops when coaches are trained in working with kids. It's been proven.
You are no doubt looking for ways to cut, not add to, the federal budget. But look at it this way: The economic consequences of Americans' physical inactivity are huge, costing more than $76 billion a year in direct medical costs alone, according to one academic study. Health care is a major priority of yours, with an emphasis on prevention. There's no better preventative care than finding a sport for life, like those weekly pickup hoop games you'll soon bring to the White House, Cabinet members in tow.
A bunch of your advisers got game, from education secretary nominee Arne Duncan (former Harvard co-captain) to attorney general nominee Eric Holder (former Columbia player) to brother-in-law Craig Robinson (current Oregon State men's coach). So get them in a huddle and come up with a new model for grassroots sports, built from the bottom up with a simple premise: sport as a human right, just like education. Here's how to do it:
• Offer incentives for schools to create more teams, not fewer, which is what is happening in the era of No Child Left Behind, with its strictly academic focus. The least that schools can do is modernize P.E. by connecting teens with local clubs that sponsor lesser-known sports in which they might find success. "You have to connect the national governing bodies with the schools," says Judy Young, a top expert on school-based sports. "Schools just can't teach the full array of 45 sports seen in the Olympics."
• Restore funding for urban parks and rec centers that have been gutted in recent years. Perhaps you can pay for it with a tax on the pro leagues that do business in these cities and whose empires have been built on the public dime.
• Rewrite the Olympic and Amateur Sports Act so that Job 1 for the USOC is tending to the base of the participation pyramid. While you're at it, enlist Larry Probst, its new chairman, who comes from the video game industry, to share what he knows about creating games that engage today's children. "A lot needs to be learned about making sports a contemporary experience for kids," says Lancaster, who while at the NFL experimented with hybrid games that married hand-held video with real play. "We're still asking them to play games the way their dads did a generation ago."
The key is getting progressive, not sentimental, about youth sports. Parents just aren't going to let their kid ride a bike halfway across town anymore to play sandlot ball, unsupervised. The murder of Adam Walsh changed all that.
And now, you can change it again, for the better. Imagine a Chicago Olympics in 2016 -- the first truly "Sport for All" Olympics, as you can pitch it when the host city is selected in October 2009, deploying an ideal celebrated by the IOC. An Olympics in which national governing bodies like U.S. Swimming and U.S. Badminton already are making new efforts to go into the inner city and get kids involved. An Olympics with a legacy of facilities that will benefit regular athletes, not just elites. An Olympics measured by growth in the number of Chicago kids who play sports into their teenage years and beyond. An Olympics that can cap your eight-year run as a president known for fresh ideas, with a statement in your adopted hometown about the possibilities of American sport.
The moment is there for the taking, Mr. Obama. It's one Teddy and Ike would surely seize.
Hope that gets you thinking.
Sincerely,
Tom Farrey
Tom Farrey is the author of "Game On: The All-American Race to Make Champions of Our Children," an exploration of the culture of modern youth sports. The book, his first, was recently named the 2008 Sports Education Book of the Year by the Institute of International Sport at the University of Rhode Island. Tom can be reached at tom.farrey@espn3.com
Youth Fitness Professional in Charlotte, NC
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Global Training for Youth Athletes
The majority of my information on today's topic is taken from one of the leading youth fitness experts in the world, Mr. Brian Grasso.
With that said let's get started.
Remember back in the day when you were a kid, you would go outside and play multiple games throughout the day. The day may start off with you and the fellows walking to your neighbor's house to ask and see if your best friend could come out but during that trip you wouldn't just walk on the sidewalk like normal kids, you would walk on the edge of the sidewalk to test your balance and coordination or play "Don't step on the crack cause it'll break your momma's back. Remember that was the game where you jumped the lines that separated the slobs of cement from each other on the sidewalk. Once everyone got outside you guys may warm up by playing a quick game of freeze tag. Then progress to playing some type of sport rather it was touch football, or basketball, or some type of organized play depending on the season that was in or televised on tv. Afterward, somebody would notion everyone going to get their bikes so you guys could ride up to the corner store to get some candy or something. And if you didn't have a bike, then you either rode standing on the back spokes of the guy who did have a bike, or you rode on the front handlebars as he used you as his personal Tom Tom navigation system. And at the end the day you guys may have orchestrated "the fastest kid in the neighborhood" race so to see who was the fastest kid in the neighborhood.
I had the opportunity this week to work with one of the local high schools where I currently reside. Before working with them, the coach and I met so that I had a clear vision on what goals she wanted for her team. I thought her response was going to be for me to come in and bring out all the toys and whistles that I have i.e. the agility ladder or some piece of agility/ speed equipment. But I was pleasantly surprised because that was not the case. What she said her number one goal that she wanted me to work with her girl's basketball team on was developing and improving upon their global skills and motor skills instead of concentrating on sports specific training.
Some reading this article may ask why???
And here is the answer. FOUNDATION.
Most parents, coaches, and trainers have narrow goals when designing a program for their youth athlete. However, like yesterday's post, the main goal for youth athletes should be for them to master the different motor skill components of coordination before they are introduced to more complex topics or sport specific drills and subjects. A global development of training approach not only ensures success in the future for the athlete but also prevents future injury.
The goal in early training for youth is to develop coordination through movement based stimuli so that they graduate later in their adolescence and post adolescence years to a more sports specific type of training that parents, coaches, and trainers are accustom to seeing and more familiar with their athlete participating in. First, let's define coordination. Most reading this post may think of coordination being a single ability or single skill; however, coordination is made up of several elements that work together. These elements are balance, rhythm, spatial orientation, and the ability to react to auditory and visual cues. An example of a coordination program would be a young athlete performing some type of spatial awareness exercise with no speed involved in the beginning and later progress to the same skill with the incorporation of a speed component combined with a change in the environment to make it more challenging for the athlete to master.
Research points out that coordination development is best introduced between the ages of 7-14 with the most crucial period of learning and training being in the period of 10-13. At the age of 16 usually is when the athlete has optimized the development of coordination. As a result, the drills planned should be age appropriate and structured so that it is challenging but yet fun for optimal results. Athletes who have a firm foundation with coordination development are far better athletes in the long term than athletes who are never exposed or are exposed to coordination/ global training later in their athletic career after these prescribed ages.
Why you might ask?
Because it is all about building a firm foundation to work upon. I like to use the analogy of a Jenga game, in which one piece missing could be detrimental in the end and cause the whole structure to fall. Thus young athletes should have a firm foundation so that they become a successful and healthy athlete in the long term.
Coordination development is a process of years of exposure to diverse yet versatile exercises and training. Coaches, parents, and trainers must understand that coordination training is a process and that each component builds upon the other. This statement alone should cause parents, coaches, and trainers to sit up and pay more close attention. Young athletes should have an opportunity to be exposed to different kinds of sports on a yearly basis so that they are introduced to a variety of coordination skills that they ordinarily would not be exposed to if they were to play the same sport year-round. Parents and coaches should not concentrate so much on sport-specific and specialized training for young athletes early on because it causes a faulty, weak foundation in the long term.
In addition, parents, coaches, and trainers should not wait to introduce global training in the beginning of an athlete's adolescent years because of the rapid changes that occur in their bodies during this period of time. The best time to introduce global training is during the pre-adolescence years when the athlete's nervous system is still highly plausible and their motor skill learning has not become fully developed permanently. Once the athlete masters the pre-adolescent stage, the next level to build upon is their adolescent years in which the main goal should be to refine those skills that were introduced in the pre-adolescent stage. Then and only then should the concentration be shifted to a more sports-specific or specialized type of environment for the athlete, which we will call the post-adolescence stage.
I must address the issue of genetics as it relates to global training. Less coordinated athletes will never exhibit the coordination of well-skilled athletes no matter how much global training they receive; however, improvement will be seen and achieved on a more personal level.
1. Start young – coordination improves as a result of learning and mastering new movements. Start young athletes off early with coordination-based exercises that challenge their abilities (within reason). The more coordination a young athlete has, the more ability he or she will display at any perspective sport.
2. Challenge young athletes on an individual and appropriate level – Some youngsters have good balance while others display good rhythm. The key to successful coaching is to undercover what elements of coordination each athlete requires and develop drills/exercises that most suitably target the weaknesses.
3. Change exercises frequently – young athletes learn quickly in most cases. Be sure to challenge them physically and intellectually with new exercises often.
Until then keep working hard. Tomorrow we will look at what sports every kid must play in order to be an overall stud on the field/ court/ or rink.
Personal Trainer in Charlotte, NC
With that said let's get started.
Remember back in the day when you were a kid, you would go outside and play multiple games throughout the day. The day may start off with you and the fellows walking to your neighbor's house to ask and see if your best friend could come out but during that trip you wouldn't just walk on the sidewalk like normal kids, you would walk on the edge of the sidewalk to test your balance and coordination or play "Don't step on the crack cause it'll break your momma's back. Remember that was the game where you jumped the lines that separated the slobs of cement from each other on the sidewalk. Once everyone got outside you guys may warm up by playing a quick game of freeze tag. Then progress to playing some type of sport rather it was touch football, or basketball, or some type of organized play depending on the season that was in or televised on tv. Afterward, somebody would notion everyone going to get their bikes so you guys could ride up to the corner store to get some candy or something. And if you didn't have a bike, then you either rode standing on the back spokes of the guy who did have a bike, or you rode on the front handlebars as he used you as his personal Tom Tom navigation system. And at the end the day you guys may have orchestrated "the fastest kid in the neighborhood" race so to see who was the fastest kid in the neighborhood.
I had the opportunity this week to work with one of the local high schools where I currently reside. Before working with them, the coach and I met so that I had a clear vision on what goals she wanted for her team. I thought her response was going to be for me to come in and bring out all the toys and whistles that I have i.e. the agility ladder or some piece of agility/ speed equipment. But I was pleasantly surprised because that was not the case. What she said her number one goal that she wanted me to work with her girl's basketball team on was developing and improving upon their global skills and motor skills instead of concentrating on sports specific training.
Some reading this article may ask why???
And here is the answer. FOUNDATION.
Most parents, coaches, and trainers have narrow goals when designing a program for their youth athlete. However, like yesterday's post, the main goal for youth athletes should be for them to master the different motor skill components of coordination before they are introduced to more complex topics or sport specific drills and subjects. A global development of training approach not only ensures success in the future for the athlete but also prevents future injury.
The goal in early training for youth is to develop coordination through movement based stimuli so that they graduate later in their adolescence and post adolescence years to a more sports specific type of training that parents, coaches, and trainers are accustom to seeing and more familiar with their athlete participating in. First, let's define coordination. Most reading this post may think of coordination being a single ability or single skill; however, coordination is made up of several elements that work together. These elements are balance, rhythm, spatial orientation, and the ability to react to auditory and visual cues. An example of a coordination program would be a young athlete performing some type of spatial awareness exercise with no speed involved in the beginning and later progress to the same skill with the incorporation of a speed component combined with a change in the environment to make it more challenging for the athlete to master.
Research points out that coordination development is best introduced between the ages of 7-14 with the most crucial period of learning and training being in the period of 10-13. At the age of 16 usually is when the athlete has optimized the development of coordination. As a result, the drills planned should be age appropriate and structured so that it is challenging but yet fun for optimal results. Athletes who have a firm foundation with coordination development are far better athletes in the long term than athletes who are never exposed or are exposed to coordination/ global training later in their athletic career after these prescribed ages.
Why you might ask?
Because it is all about building a firm foundation to work upon. I like to use the analogy of a Jenga game, in which one piece missing could be detrimental in the end and cause the whole structure to fall. Thus young athletes should have a firm foundation so that they become a successful and healthy athlete in the long term.
Coordination development is a process of years of exposure to diverse yet versatile exercises and training. Coaches, parents, and trainers must understand that coordination training is a process and that each component builds upon the other. This statement alone should cause parents, coaches, and trainers to sit up and pay more close attention. Young athletes should have an opportunity to be exposed to different kinds of sports on a yearly basis so that they are introduced to a variety of coordination skills that they ordinarily would not be exposed to if they were to play the same sport year-round. Parents and coaches should not concentrate so much on sport-specific and specialized training for young athletes early on because it causes a faulty, weak foundation in the long term.
In addition, parents, coaches, and trainers should not wait to introduce global training in the beginning of an athlete's adolescent years because of the rapid changes that occur in their bodies during this period of time. The best time to introduce global training is during the pre-adolescence years when the athlete's nervous system is still highly plausible and their motor skill learning has not become fully developed permanently. Once the athlete masters the pre-adolescent stage, the next level to build upon is their adolescent years in which the main goal should be to refine those skills that were introduced in the pre-adolescent stage. Then and only then should the concentration be shifted to a more sports-specific or specialized type of environment for the athlete, which we will call the post-adolescence stage.
I must address the issue of genetics as it relates to global training. Less coordinated athletes will never exhibit the coordination of well-skilled athletes no matter how much global training they receive; however, improvement will be seen and achieved on a more personal level.
1. Start young – coordination improves as a result of learning and mastering new movements. Start young athletes off early with coordination-based exercises that challenge their abilities (within reason). The more coordination a young athlete has, the more ability he or she will display at any perspective sport.
2. Challenge young athletes on an individual and appropriate level – Some youngsters have good balance while others display good rhythm. The key to successful coaching is to undercover what elements of coordination each athlete requires and develop drills/exercises that most suitably target the weaknesses.
3. Change exercises frequently – young athletes learn quickly in most cases. Be sure to challenge them physically and intellectually with new exercises often.
Until then keep working hard. Tomorrow we will look at what sports every kid must play in order to be an overall stud on the field/ court/ or rink.
Personal Trainer in Charlotte, NC
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Overweight Siblings Of Children With Type 2 Diabetes Likely To Have Abnormal Blood Sugar Levels
ScienceDaily (Dec. 23, 2008) — Overweight siblings of children with type 2 diabetes are four times more likely to have abnormal glucose levels compared to other overweight children. Because abnormal glucose levels may indicate risk for diabetes or diabetes itself, these children could benefit from screening tests and diabetes prevention education. Researchers from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia published their findings December 9 in the online edition of the Journal of Pediatrics.
The study looked at 62 children: 20 obese subjects with a sibling who had type 2 diabetes and a control group of 42 obese children. The groups were similar for age, gender, racial distribution (predominantly African American), pubertal status and body mass index over 95th percentile.
The researchers found that overweight siblings of children with type 2 diabetes had four times greater odds of having abnormal glucose levels (impaired glucose tolerance or type 2 diabetes) than other overweight children. However, investigators found no significant differences in insulin resistance, as measured by the homeostasis model assessment.
Not all children with a family history of type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance or obesity develop type 2 diabetes, cautions Dr. Magge.
Dr. Magge's coauthors were Nicolas Stettler, M.D., M.S.C.E.; Abbas Jawad, M.Sc., Ph.D.; and Lorraine E. Levitt Katz, M.D.; all of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania.
The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Center for Research Resources.
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (2008, December 23). Overweight Siblings Of Children With Type 2 Diabetes Likely To Have Abnormal
Personal Trainer in Charlotte. NC
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Nintendo Wii: A Combatant of Childhood Obesity
Motion sensor-controlled consoles can make an impact on a child’s energy expenditure and calories burned, however parents should encourage outdoor pursuits such as riding a bike, or playing a quick pick up game of football, baseball, or basketball. If kids aren't able to go outside or can't find the time to go outdoors, the Nintendo Wii is the best substitute in the video game market in comparison to the other companies.
In conclusion, traditionally, video gaming systems are expensive, as are the games that must be purchased separately. In today's economy, setting up a video game systems can be a burden on a family's pocketbook. If you are debating to purchase a game console for your children and family this Christmas, the Nintendo Wii actively encourages gamers to get up and play rather than sinking further into a sedentary lifestyle. However, playing new generation active computer games uses significantly more energy than playing sedentary computer games but not as much energy as playing the sport itself. Therefore, parents and children should use the game console as an auxiliary to whatever current physical active that they have in place for their family and themselves.
Until next time keep moving. I have next on Madden Football on the Wii. Let's Go Panthers!!!
Reference: Physorg.com and Selfgrowth.com
Personal Trainer in Charlotte, NC
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Why We Need An Obesity Tax
Today, we find ourselves in the midst of a new public health epidemic: childhood obesity.
What smoking was to my parents' generation, obesity is to my children's generation. Nearly one out of every four New Yorkers under the age of 18 is obese. In many high-poverty areas, the rate is closer to one out of three.
That is why, in the state budget I presented last Tuesday, I proposed a tax on sugared beverages like soda. Research has demonstrated that soft-drink consumption is one of the main drivers of childhood obesity.
For example, a study by Harvard researchers found that each additional 12-ounce soft drink consumed per day increases the risk of a child becoming obese by 60 percent. For adults, the association is similar.
If we are to succeed in reducing childhood obesity, we must reduce consumption of sugared beverages. That is the purpose of our proposed tax. We estimate that an 18 percent tax will reduce consumption by five percent.
Our tax would apply only to sugared drinks -- including fruit drinks that are less than 70 percent juice -- that are non diet. The $404 million this tax would raise next year will go toward funding public health programs, including obesity prevention programs, across New York state.
The surgeon general estimates that obesity was associated with 112,000 deaths in the United States every year. Here in New York state, we spend almost $6.1 billion on health care related to adult obesity -- the second-highest level of spending in the nation.
Last year, legitimate concerns about links between consumption of fast food and the prevalence of heart disease prompted New York City to ban the use of trans fats in restaurant food.
No one can deny the urgency of reducing the rate of obesity, including childhood obesity. Obesity causes serious health problems like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. It puts children at much greater risk for life-threatening conditions such as cardiovascular disease and cancer.
We must never stigmatize children who are overweight or obese. Yet, for the sake of our children's health, we have an obligation to address this crisis. I believe we can ultimately curb the obesity epidemic the same way we curbed smoking: through smart public policy.
In recent decades, anti-smoking campaigns have raised awareness. Smoking bans have been enacted and enforced. And, perhaps most importantly, we have raised the price of cigarettes.
In June, New York state raised the state cigarette tax an additional $1.25. According to the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, this increase alone will prevent more than 243,000 kids from smoking, save more than 37,000 lives and produce more than $5 billion in health care savings.
These taxes may be unpopular, but their benefits are undeniable. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that, for the first time in generations, fewer than 20 percent of Americans smoked. Lung cancer rates have finally begun to decline. As a result, we are all healthier.
Just as the cigarette tax has helped reduce the number of smokers and smoking-related deaths, a tax on highly caloric, non-nutritional beverages can help reduce the prevalence of obesity.
To address the obesity crisis, we need more than just a surcharge on soda. We need to take junk food out of our schools. We need to encourage our children to exercise more. And we need to increase the availability of healthy food in underserved communities.
But to make serious progress in this effort, we need to reduce the consumption of high-calorie drinks like nondiet soda among children and adults.
I understand that New Yorkers may not like paying a surcharge for their favorite drinks. But surely it's a small price to pay for our children's health.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Paterson.
Personal Trainer in Charlotte, NC
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