PinnacleSportsMedicine.com

Are you worried about injuries, spraining an ankle/knee or worse tearing your ACL?  Are there things that can be done to prevent injuries?  Sure there are, being stronger, quicker, better coordinated, having better balance, etc…  Please join us and Dr. Barnhill in an ACL prevention clinic on Nov 7th at the KC Soccer Dome.  Dr. Barnhill will give a talk on ACL prevention/care and then we will be going through a sample FASST speed/agility/strengthening clinic all at no cost to you!  Please call 816-891-7162 for times/directions etc.  Can’t wait to see all soccer players there, girls and boys, ages 10 and up!!!!!

The fall sports season is in full swing and it’s already started…injuries.  From the pro level all the way down to grade school.  Just heard of a 10 year old that tore his ACL in a football game.  Now don’t get me wrong, our youth have become much more athletic and their bodies are doing things that we would not have seen in years past on a regular basis.

 But what are we doing to keep our youth healthy even as we’re asking their bodies to do more?  Are they getting the right amount of nutrition or sleep?  Have we “taught” their bodies how to correctly perform the activities that we’re asking them to do?  Do we warm them up correctly before games/practices?  Do we allow them time to just play?

 If these are things that you are already doing, simply stated…thank you!  If not, here’s to changing the youth training culture!

Lately I have been talking with different athletes about weight lifting. And it seems that many high school lifting programs are designed for football players. So that means, the tennis teams, the volleyball teams, etc…, are lifting like football players.

WHAT???

Most female athletes don’t want to look like football players! Or at least thats what they tell me!

So why not spend some time and design lifting programs that are more beneficial to each athletic team? Yeah it takes a little extra time and thought, but I think the athletes are worth it, and deserve the best opportunity to reach their athletic potential. WE (athletes, and coachs) might have to go a little out of our comfort-zone of “standard” lifts to attain these goals, but at that point it is good for both the athletes and the coachs. We both can learn from this type of “Out of the Box” thinking.

Now don’t get me wrong I think there will be plenty of cross over exercises from sport to sport, but we should design programs that are more in tune with the athletic goals of each individual team.

I don’t need my tennis players to look like football players! The tennis player will never have to push around a 250lb offensive lineman on the court!!!

Post by Jamie Smith, MPT, Performance Coach

 In today’s busy world, we are running to softball practice, softball games, dance class, basketball practice, basketball games, swim lessons, swim meets-and that is just one child in one week.  WOW!!!  How can the parents keep up, let alone the child?  At what point are we over-training?  You have to put the body under a certain amount of stress to increase its physical abilities, but to what degree without having burnout?

What are some of the signs that a child is over exerted? The re-appearance of deficiencies that seemed to have been corrected, poor concentration levels, inability to correct errors, disrupted flow of movement, decreased competitive qualities, irritability, decreased coachability, oversensitivity, etc…

Take a quick 24 hour assessment; if you score less than 13/20 points on the Total Quality Recovery scale, your recovery from activity is insufficient. (Kentta and Hassmen, 2002)

Breakfast(1 point), Lunch(2 points), Dinner (2 points), Snacks(1 point), Carbo reloading(2 points), rehydrate throughout the day(1 point)/during/post workout(1 point), good night sleep(3 points), daily nap(1 point), mental/muscle relaxation after training(2 points), relaxed state throughout the day(1 point), proper cool down after training(2 points), stretching exercised muscle groups(1 point) 

If you only train or practice below your full effort then you will never know what your true potential could be!!

Athletes often ask how they can get bigger or stronger?  And the answer I almost always give them is eat more, and lift heavy and harder!

While I know that sounds like a silly saying, it can hold true depending on your overall goals as an athlete.

(While I think many athletes place too much emphasis on wanting to get bigger, and many sports really don’t need to get BIGGER.  Stronger yes, but bigger NO!)

Most athletes lift under their true capability.  I am not saying that you need to MAX out every time you lift.  But I believe if we could just lift a little harder and heavier, and SMARTER I think we would see more results.

Now I am not saying to lift so hard you cause injury, but I think we could lift harder and smarter and advance our overall strength and athleticism.

This might seem like a funny question, but this seems to be how athletes look at their advances in sport. How long till I get a xx height with my vertical jump, how long till I take off xx seconds from my times?

What we have to get the athletes to understand is that their evolution to reach their desired goals is not a point A to point B drive. It is going to be an A to B drive with about a 100 stops between, and a few reverses in there too!

The way to get to the goals that the athletes set is like everything else out there, there will be days where you make leaps, and bounds (and hopefully all forward), but there will be days where the advances will move at a snails pace too. But what the athletes need to understand is that the snail pace days are just as important to reaching the end goals. At times the advances that come on those days will provide results that will bring substantial gains to the overall end goals.

So enjoy the big gains, as well as the little ones!

And as always, ENJOY THE RIDE, AND DON’T FORGET TO SMELL THE ROSES!
Because this can provide a fresh, renewed look at things!!!

Do you want to be the best 8 year old basketball player, or do you want to be the best @ 18?

Some athletes and parents need to realize that maybe specialization at an early age is not the key!

There are many possibilities that can be foreseen happening, from injury due to repeated trauma from chronic injuries, inability to adapt to continually evolving sport, burn out from no mental break. And I am sure there are many more out there.

But what we need to understand when we are trying to teach long term athletic development at a young age, that instead of trying to build the best soccer player @ 8 or the best basketball player @ 10 that we need to develop the best “ATHLETE”.

By developing the best Athlete @ 8 and 10 we are teaching them the tools they will need to evolve as an athlete as they grow in their sports.

To be the best Athlete they will need the tools so they can adapt to the imposed demands that are placed on them wither that be physical, psychological, or emotional!

A good friend brought up a good point to me.

We need to keep the ultimate goal in mind when setting out to develop athletes.
If we do not have goals then we will have no direction in which to design a program.
And with no direction to design a program we are more likely just to provide workouts that have no purpose other than to work them out, and for a majority of athletes that will not get it done!

Once the goal has been set then it is time to begin the journey towards long term athletic development. The journey will be the important part in the long run. The journey is where the athlete makes all their deposits in the “Athletic Performance Bank” to draw on in the future. The journey will include all the practices(both with the teams, and by yourself), working out in the gym, eating correctly, recovery, etc…

While on our journey there will be many road blocks, and distractions, and that is where keeping our eyes on the ultimate goal is very important. Keeping our eyes on the ultimate goal will get us through many of those road blocks, and distractions.

But don’t forget to “stop and smell the flowers”, at times this can give us a renewed look, and also helps refresh our drive to help our athletes reach their ultimate goal.

And in the end don’t forget to “Enjoy the Ride”, because if we are not able to enjoy the ride, then is it truly worth it in the end?

The more I read about the developmental process and training, the more I learn I have so much more to learn and understand. In an article by Istvan Balyi called “Long Term Athlete Development:Trainability in Childhood and Adolescence windows of opportunity, optimal trainability” he discusses the 6 stage model of Late Specialization Sports. He discusses that the first opportunity to introduce in speed training for boys is ages 7-9, and for girls is from age 6-8. The speed that should be worked on at this time is Quickness and Agility less than 5 seconds.

So this makes me question if kids have speed training at those ages (6-9), then are they going to be more advanced with training and competition at later stages of training and competition? I would tend to believe that this will give those athletes that had organized training at ages 6-9 would have an advantage at that time. But as they mature into their later stage athletic bodies will they maintain those results from the early stages of training? Or by performing these specific athletic activities (ie.. speed training) that is providing an accumulative effect that will make them complete athletes when hitting the elite levels of competition?