Other talent hotbeds in the country are private schools with open enrollment, or schools benefitting from the best facilities and most qualified training professionals. For example, California’s Mater Dei High School produced three NFL quarterbacks between 2001 and 2009 and employs professional strength coach Scot Prohaska. The school’s facilities, tuition, and atmosphere are closer to Notre Dame than a traditional high school.

Muck City has none of those frills. The area has a median income of $27,000. But despite the lower economic profile, Muck City’s schools routinely win state championships in the intensely competitive state of Florida and produce professional athletes. In fact, the region has produced more than sixty NFL athletes since 1980, most notably Fred Taylor, Anquan Boldin, and Super Bowl MVP Santonio Holmes. In a world where youth training has become big business, this region has created a training formula for speed and agility that doesn’t require the employ of celebrity coaches or top facilities. It’s time we examine this training bright spot.

The most expensive facilities and coaches in the world can’t replace the athletic benefit of just playing. [Photo courtesy Pixabay]

If You Want Speed, Chase Rabbits

More and more strength and conditioning coaches have realized movement quality is paramount over any other athletic quality. The emphasis has changed from individual muscle groups to strength training of movement patterns and mobility through full range of motion. As the Arizona Cardinals’ Director of Sports Performance Buddy Morris says, “I don’t care how strong you get, if you can’t move, you can’t help us.”

Sure enough, the young athletes of Muck City seem to have an advantage in movement. Why is this the case? One word: “rabbits.”

Muck City got its name from the dark soil where citrus fruits and sugarcane flourish. Most families struggle to make ends meet, so Muck City youth help the family bring in extra money catching rabbits, which yield about $3.00 per fur. No fancy cages or contraptions are used. Instead, every winter when the sugarcane fields are set on fire, the youth march into the smoke to chase rabbits.

Catching one of these lightning-quick creatures requires razor-sharp focus, speed, and instantaneous reflexes. What begins as a game of survival teaches these young men everything they need to know about acceleration, angles, using the surrounding environment, and efficient change of direction on the playing field.

In our sedentary culture, most people will never have a need for the most essential of human activities – chasing and fleeing for survival. Most students sit for eight or more hours a day in school. At home, they’re texting and watching TV. Physical education is devalued and youth physical standards have been systematically lowered. As a result, kids’ muscles become stiff and their senses dull as they lose fluidity and mindful connection to external stimuli.

Within Muck City’s poverty and lack of resources lies another of Coach Buddy Morris’s greatest lessons: “Let the body solve complex motor problems in a chaotic environment.”

Integrate Play Into Periodized Programs

If you talk to most coaches about their training for speed and agility, they’ll show you a litany of ladder drills and cone drills. The 20-yard shuttle is our modern bread and butter for teaching change of direction. Most coaches fail to realize the best agility training for your sport is your sport. 

Agility is not pre-programed. It relies on reaction to external stimuli and subconscious calculations to determine the best angles and timing. Unfortunately, for most sedentary youth there is some necessary re-teaching of how to change direction, accelerate, and move in general. These natural skills are lost to a world that rarely offers recess after fourth grade and where pickup games and free play have been replaced by video games and television. 

The best speed training is running fast. The best agility training is reaction and play, and the best mobility is animal-like flow. If we stay in tune with nature and encourage play and creativity, then our children will be both happier and far more athletic. Create an environment where youth continue to move, and allow our kids to scrape their knees while having fun. Let them play, chase, and react as they would in nature, and you’ll see speed and agility most sports coaches wouldn’t dream possible.

This doesn’t mean coaches can’t continue to systematically train mobility, change of direction, acceleration, and absolute speed. Rather, these lessons from Muck City should shape how coaches view periodizing their year:

• In the post-season period, I recommend games for mental recovery and a cross-training general physical preparation element.
• The early offseason is the time for rigid structure both in the weight room and field. This is the time for teaching of many qualities and how movement is done most efficiently. Add a lot of mobility work as well.
• After the initial offseason phase, implement competition and real-world agility. Utilize games and drills where movement is not programmed and the kids react to stimuli. Enter coach react wave drills, chaos movement squares, and games. Tag variations may be the best teacher of agility, short of a life spent chasing rabbits. Utilize this game often for its training benefit, as well as the joy and psychological release offered.

Jeremy Boone created a series of movement based games, which is a fantastic resource for any coach and should be implemented at every level. These games will model skills and isolate trainable components within the realistic context of a game. For younger athletes, basic body weight resistance work in the fundamental movement patterns along with these games may be all that is needed.

Money Is No Substitute for Movement

At the school where I work its common for coaches to complain of our lack of facilities compared to other schools in the region. I am among the guilty. But what our teams lose in convenience is more than made up for in our understanding of movement and our implementation of non-traditional resistance modalities such as sleds, sandbags, and farmer’s walks. These adaptations, born of necessity, have no doubt helped us build better athletes. 

Muck City is the poster child for making your obstacles your strength. While it’s normal these days for parents to anxiously seek out private coaches and gurus to help give their children every advantage, we can learn much from those kids chasing rabbits for survival. Maybe allowing our children to play and fostering natural instincts and inclinations is the better route. Let’s not forget that in the end, sports are just a game.

If we want our kids to be healthy, why are we teaching them the opposite?

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Understanding the Offseason for Youth Athletes

The post Chasing Rabbits to the NFL: Lessons From Muck City appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The answer to the problem? We need to be advocating and encouraging our young athletes to strength train. Here are seven reasons why this is so imperative.

Young athletes are sustaining injuries they never should because we are not properly preparing them for the sport they are playing at the intensity they are asked to.

The answer to the problem? We need to be advocating and encouraging our young athletes to strength train. Here are seven reasons why this is so imperative.

1. Physically Prepare for Training

Youth athletes are not simply mini adults. They are still growing and often lack coordination. They sit all day, and because of this may have inappropriate hip functionality, as well as a lack of posterior strength. In other words, they have musculoskeletal imbalances that need to be addressed before they lead to pain or injury down the road.

“[Y]outh need to work regularly with a prehabilitation and movement specialist (e.g. physiotherapist) and strength and conditioning coaches to ensure these potential injuries never become an issue.“

Youth athletes do not have the strength, endurance, or stability of their muscles and joints to properly or efficiently perform many sports skills. This means they are at high risk for poor form, improper technique, and training errors. In addition, because they are often doing sport-specific training for the first time and trying to meet coach and parent expectations, they may not know how to properly recognize injuries. Instead, they put a “twinge” or “pain” off as just being sore from their training.

Put simply, youth athletes aren’t physically prepared to jump into high frequency sport training right away. They need to prepare their body for their sport by working with specialists in strength and conditioning and prehabilitation to ensure they have the proper strength, endurance, balance, coordination, and mobility.

2. Prevent Overuse Injuries

This point is related to the above – youth have inherent musculoskeletal imbalances and lack strength and endurance (especially in the posterior muscular chain and stabilizing muscles). Because of this, if these athletes don’t physically prepare to train for a specific sport, it isn’t a question of if your athlete is going to get an injury, but when.

Our bodies are amazing and find a way to accomplish pretty much any task we ask of them. If one muscle is weak, another will take over. If one joint lacks mobility, you’ll usually see another nearby joint have too much. But this is precisely the problem.

These compensations become the norm for our bodies. The strong muscles get stronger and the weak muscles get weaker. We continue to compensate daily, only further exacerbating the issue. This leads to altered and improper movement, dysfunction, and pain. Left unchecked, it can result in overuse injuries that can halt our youths’ training and sport participation, not to mention their regular day-to-day life.

This is why youth need to work regularly with a prehabilitation and movement specialist (e.g. physiotherapist) and strength and conditioning coaches to ensure these potential injuries never become an issue. Regular check-ins are a must, especially when transitioning to a new or higher-level sport, at the beginning and end of the season, and after a growth spurt or puberty, as well as after any injury, surgery, or extended illness.

3. Decrease the Likelihood of Traumatic Injuries

Unlike overuse injuries, traumatic injuries cannot be predicted. These injuries don’t happen gradually, but in mere seconds – the torn ACL, fractured ankle, or dislocated shoulder.

But just because these injuries cannot be predicted, doesn’t mean they can’t be prevented. This comes back to ensuring athletes have the proper strength and stability of their muscles and joints. If the shoulder muscles are strong – the stabilizing muscles are on, firing, and working properly – there is less of a chance of the athlete dislocating her shoulder compared to if she had little strength there. If the athlete has excellent balance and strength in his foot and ankle muscles, there is less chance he will experience a sprain.

“This current model is not working. Instead, youth athletes need to consistently work with a team.“

Yes, we can’t avoid all traumatic injuries, but we can certainly work to make that our youth are strong and able to withstand the stress they will encounter while playing their sport.

4. Improve Athletic Performance

Working with professionals is imperative for not only injury prevention, but also to improve sports performance. Resistance and mobility training will have the biggest impact on the nervous system. You won’t see your young athletes putting on substantial size, but they will have the capability to get stronger due to a more functional nervous system.

Furthermore, by working with professionals, youth will work toward optimizing their mobility, stability, coordination, strength, and movement efficiency. Their speed, agility, quickness and conditioning will also improve. In addition, as athletes get older and their physiology evolves, a movement specialist and strength coach can work with them to teach skills that require a greater magnitude of mental focus and physical output.

Professionals know when and which techniques and exercises can be implemented and adapted to ensure the most effective movement and the greatest improvement in performance.

5. Improve Self-Confidence and Self-Esteem

Training properly will not only improve performance and reduce injuries, but will also enhance self-confidence, self-esteem, and body image. With a well-designed strength and mobility program, we teach youth athletes how to train properly and give them the confidence to do so. We show them what they can accomplish. They see what their body can do that it couldn’t do before. All that in addition to improved body composition from their training. The resulting confidence and self-esteem helps them not only in their sport, but in all avenues of life.

6. It’s Fun!

Mixing up training and adding in resistance exercises is and should always be fun. This way youth don’t feel like they are always practicing and playing their sport, but they know they are still working toward improving their skills. Keeping it fun and mixing things up also helps prevent physical and mental burnout, especially as youth athletes begin to specialize in their specific sports.

7. The Traditional Model Is Failing

The current model in youth sports looks one of two ways:

1. Youth are training for their sport with their coaches, but don’t work with a strength and conditioning or mobility specialist. They either don’t follow a resistance program or follow a program made as well as could be made by a parent or coach.
2. Youth do work with a specialist, but they see this person rarely, the time per session is finite, and though importance is placed on form, when these athletes are training with their peers in the high school weight room, guess who is loading up the bar?

This current model is not working. Instead, youth athletes need to consistently work with a team. Yes, a team – coaches, strength and conditioning specialists, and mobility/prehabilitation specialists who all work together and communicate with each other. This team can provide consistent advice, information, and support to the athletes so they can excel both physically and mentally.

Check out these related articles:

• Understanding the Off-season for Youth Athletes
• The Real and Present Danger In Overtraining Youth Athletes
• 7 Ways to Build Real Self-Esteem In Youth Athletes

Photos 1 and 2 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Photo 3 courtesy of Jorge Huerta Photography.

The post 7 Reasons Youth Athletes Need to Strength Train appeared first on Breaking Muscle.