Stop Your Child’s Athletic Decline and
Improve Their Athletic Performance!

You may think your child is receiving the athletic foundation of fitness and development to succeed in sports for the long term. But unfortunately your child is seriously deficient in athletic movement skills and conditioning if they participate in traditional youth organized sports. How can I make such a bold statement? After 20 years of working in athletic and coaching development on the grass roots level for some of the largest and most prestigious sports organizations in the world I can without a doubt know your child has not fully developed into the best and complete athlete they can be.

Traditional conditioning for kids is outdated, boring, does not effectively develop athletes, and as a result drives many young athletes out of sports. When you think back to your own childhood sports experience it was most likely the conditioning drills that you disliked the most. Suicide sprints till you drop, repeated hill runs, shuttle runs that lasted much too long, countless laps around a field, leg raises until you wanted to cry, push-ups as punishment, are just a sample of what you most likely experienced when you went to practice. If there were reasons you dreaded practice, conditioning was most likely on the top of your list.

Now take today’s kid, either totally out of shape, or so over scheduled they fully don’t benefit from the overall fitness and athletic development that sports can provide. With multiple practices and games to attend, paired with limited field space and time available, youth coaches either avoid any type of athletic development and fitness all together or they implement the same conditioning drills we experienced with not so fond memories.

The typical viewpoint among many coaches is that – sure conditioning is hard, but the toughness you develop working through fatigue helps you get stronger. All true statements, but seriously flawed logic when it comes to kids. The last thing you want to do is turn your athletes off and their desire to learn. Building stamina is important, but it can be accomplished in such a way that it becomes appealing to kids and develops their athletic movement skills at the same time. Sprints, push-ups, running hills or countless laps, or what I call traditional training methods are one-dimensional and do very little to develop your athletes, and serve no practical purpose other than to turn them off.

Conditioning should be packaged in such a way that it tricks kids into accomplishing total fitness. It takes a little creativity, which I’ll help you implement by suggesting and illustrating fun drills that meet your sport’s specific movements and skill requirements by accomplishing the following four things.

1. Develop Multiple Sport Specific Movement Skills: It’s important that during stamina training that you’re developing the multiple movement athletes’ use on the field, otherwise you’re missing a huge opportunity to improve their overall athletic performance. In many sports lateral movement is vital, yet many high school through youth programs overlook developing this important skill. Not only is this movement key throughout competition, it’s also something you don’t want to lose when your athletes become fatigued. Therefore different movements used though out competition should be incorporated into stamina/conditioning sessions.
   
   
2. Incorporate Self-Measuring Competitions: What use is it to condition your athletes if they have no means to measure their progress? Kids love to be timed and have their performances measured. All of our suggested conditioning drills involve some type of measuring devise. This allows each individual to continue to self measure their performance, providing every athlete with an incentive to push themselves to improve.
   
   
3. Make Every Drill Uplifting and Rewarding: Coaches should never use conditioning as a form of punishment. When used as a form of punishment it associates conditioning for that particular athlete and all their teammates as undesirable. I could never understand why my coaches got so frustrated by our lack of effort during conditioning drills after they had just spent and entire practice punishing everyone with the very same drills. It became “what did we do wrong” rather than understanding the purpose and value behind the drill. As a coach make this portion of your practice a highly motivated and spirited portion of your practice that is fun and uplifting.
   
   
4. Spread Conditioning Drills Throughout a Practice: Traditionally conditioning is reserved for the last portion of practice. At this point your athletes’ focus and energy are at a all-time low. Therefore conditioning never receives the complete attention or enthusiasm that it deserves from your athletes. Try splitting up your conditioning drills throughout practice and you’ll discover more effort from your athletes.