IYCA - The International Youth Conditioning Association : The International Youth Conditioning Association

Selecting the Right Starting Position for Olympic Lifts (Part 2)

Young Athlete hang position olympic lift

Olympic Lifts and Foundatations By Wil Fleming Coaches everywhere, and a great percentage of coaches at that, choose to use some type of Olympic lifts in their training of athletes. Typically this Olympic lift is a power clean, starting from the floor. While this is appropriate for plenty of athletes, there are multiple variations in the starting position, that it can be hard to determine which is the right place to start. In Part 1 I discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the floor start position and the block start position. In Part 2 you will.. More »

Selecting the Right Starting Position for Olympic Lifts (Part 1)

Athletes Options For Olympic Lifts By Wil Fleming Coaches everywhere, and a great percentage of coaches at that, choose to use some type of Olympic lift in their training of athletes. Typically this Olympic lift is a power clean, starting from the floor. While this is appropriate for plenty of athletes, there are multiple variations in the starting position, that it can be hard to determine which is the right place to start. So lets take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of some of the variations in start position. Floor Start Position .. More »

Coaching Young Athletes – It’s Not Business…It’s Personal

Young Athletes Need Support By Dave Gleason The last month and a half I have been making more of a concerted effort to attend as many events that our AR Champions are involved in as possible. This includes sporting events, plays and concerts. I have quickly come to the realization that within reason – I need to do much more of this. Why? Quite simply the look on my young athletes faces when they see me, and the gracious comments from their parents, extolling how very excited their son or daughter is. The games, activities,.. More »

4 Levels of Youth Sports Training Business

Youth Sports Training Business Success By Ryan Ketchum Training youth athletes can be hard. It might be one of the most enjoyable experiences in all of coaching, but it can be difficult to gain traction in your community if you have no previous relationships with coaches or sports organizations. The toughest part, much like any other aspect of business, is getting started. Once you have a little momentum behind you all it takes is consistency to grow your youth sports training business at an incredible rate. For some reason it has taken me a few years.. More »

Non-Programming Elements of a Great Youth Fitness Program

Creating a Great Youth Fitness Program By Wil Fleming Non-Programming elements of a great Youth Fitness program That sure is a mouthful for a title. Maybe the meaning is quite self evident or maybe it is a little more veiled. Either way I think that these elements are essential to making your AR successful and helping you to develop great athletes. What do I mean by “non-programming” elements? Sets, reps, exercises, and their order are all the things that you put on paper when you are putting together their training program., those are the.. More »

5 Traits Of A Champion That Coaches Love To See

Youth Sport Coaches Want These Habits By Jim Herrick Do you want to make the team, get more playing time, or win a championship this season? If you do, stop worrying about ability and start focusing on habit building. Athletic Revolution coaches around the country work hard to instill Champion habits into all the kids who work with us, whether they play sports or not. We do this because we see how important they are to a young athlete’s long-term success on the field, in the classroom, and in life. Kids who focus on.. More »

Stretching Young Athletes with Bands

Young Athletes and Resistance Band Stretching By Dave Schmitz What age is good to start band stretching? Is it appropriate to stretch young athlete ages 10 to 13 with Bands? Are there precautions when stretching young athletes with bands? As a band expert I have never felt doing band stretching with athletes younger than 14 was an effective way to improve passive mobility because of the hypersensitivity of the nervous system to passive over pressure stretching. Anytime I attempted to introduce band stretching to this age group, I met with a great deal inhibition.. More »

Plyometric Progressions for Young Athletes

On the surface plyometrics are all about force production. For young athletes they are a great way to learn to produce force, apply it into the ground and propel their body in a new direction. The overlooked part of plyometrics, that needs to be considered is the role of force absorption in an athlete’s development. Learn more today!

Should Your Young Athletes Be Doing Power Cleans?

Young Athletes: Are Power Cleans with an Efficient Use of Our Time? By Jim Kielbaso There is a great deal of anecdotal evidence and personal experience that comes into play when strength and conditioning coaches select strength training exercises, speed drills or conditioning routines for young athletes. The risk vs. reward scale is a great place to start, but not the only factor that should be considered. As a professional, I believe it is my ethical responsibility to prescribe safe exercises. But, according to the thought processes I’ve been hearing lately, it seems like a lot.. More »

The Truth About Youth Pitching Injuries and Young Athletes

Youth Pitching injuries in young athletes

Youth Pitching Injuries: The Real Reason Why There are so Many By Mike Reinold This article that you are about to read is really disappointing. Pitching injuries in young athletes continue to rise despite research and effort designed to reduce these injuries, this is a problem. To quickly summarize what we have learned about youth pitching injuries, we know that approximately one third of youth baseball pitchers will experience shoulder or elbow pain during a season. We also know that youth pitching injuries increased sixfold in the early 2000?s with Dr. James Andrews at his center.. More »

Preventing Knee Injuries With Youth Strength Training Programs

Does Your Youth Strength Training Program Promote ACL Injuries? The good news about knee injuries these days, and Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) tears in particular, is that medical science has turned what used to be a career-ending injury into something most athletes can recover from in time. The bad news is that ACL tears are occurring more often than ever. Anyone involved in a youth strength training program likely knows at least one athlete who has had a severe knee injury in the past year. Why do these injuries occur? The ACL is a small.. More »

Damage Control: Reversing the effects of early specialization

Eraly Specialization with young athletes can lead to many issues

Damage Control: Reversing the effects of early specialization By Mike Mejia CSCS In last month’s newsletter, which you can access here, I wrote about why young athletes shouldn’t necessarily engage in sports specific training and instead, focus on developing more in the way of global athleticism. While certainly sound advice, for some it may come a bit too late. The unfortunate reality is that far too many kids have not only been specializing in a single sport from an early age, but many have also geared any fitness efforts solely towards enhancing their performance in said.. More »

Youth Training: Give Your Programs a Boost

Youth Training Program Boosting Tips By Ryan Ketchum Every so often you need to give your Youth Training programs a little boost. The numbers might be slowly declining, it seems like you cannot generate interest from parents or athletes and you don’t know where to go. Today I am going to give you three ways to give your youth training programs a boost of new athletes for the coming spring seasons. 1. Attend sport registrations- I was sitting at the doctor’s office the other day and picked up the local paper to pass the time waiting.. More »

Training for Power: The Top 5 Exercises for Athletes to Dominate the Game

Training for Power with Young Athletes By Wil Fleming My young athletes are known for explosive power, from middle school volleyball players to football players preparing for the combine all of them out class the competition when it comes to quick bursts of power. Recently I put together a presentation outlining my favorite exercises to do just that. I have shared a brief outline of the topics covered in that seminar in the list below. 1. Hang Clean and Snatch- You will notice that I did not say the Power Clean or Power Snatch. .. More »

Multi-Planar Warm-ups with Young Athletes: PNF in Your Movement

PNF Warm-ups With Young Athletes By Wil Fleming Ask coaches what their program should include and invariably the answer sounds like this “Strength, speed, agility, power and oh yeah warm-up“. The warm-up is always tossed in there, but not with much enthusiasm. All too often our warm-ups occur in singular planes of motion, typically sagittal or frontal, and for certain joints this will not do. The hip and shoulder, in particular require motion that does not only go through these single planes, and in truth requires more than just the addition of motion through the transverse.. More »

The Simple Math Behind Young Athletes Running Faster

How to Get Young Athletes to Run Faster By Latif Thomas If you want to improve athletic performance you have to make your young athletes faster. That’s pretty straight forward. So let’s break the process down in very clear terms. For the sake of argument, let us assume that an athlete’s one rep max for deadlift directly relates to how fast they can run. (It doesn’t, but for the sake of this argument, it will make things clear.) So, The Athlete has a max deadlift of 500 pounds. Therefore, if everything is done perfectly,.. More »

The Four Stages of Skill Acquisition For Young Athletes

The Four Stages of Skill Acquisition For Young Athletes By Latif Thomas We live in fast paced society full of impatient people who want results right now. This same impatience holds true for uneducated athletes, coaches and parents who want to improve their own speed, their young athletes’ speed or their child’s speed. Lately I’ve seen quite a few colleagues continue to try and stress the fact that when it comes to athletic development in general and more specifically speed development (ultimately they are both the same) we must take a long term approach if.. More »

Making Strength Training Fun for Young Athletes using Resistance Bands

Making Youth Fitness Training Fun with Resistance Bands A t least once a week, I am asked about youth fitness training using bands, and in most cases, all I can envision is kids being put through a grueling workout using big bands that literally throw them around like a human slingshot . OK, maybe I am a little off, but I see a lot of things on YouTube that scare me when it comes to training young athletes. So here’s a tip on how to have your athletes naturally enjoy training: If you really want to make youth fitness training.. More »

Hybrid Movements for Killer 6-13 Year Old Programming

Hybrid Movements For Young Athletes By Dave Gleason Creating fun, imaginative and challenging activities for 6-9, and 10-13 year old can be a difficult task. Keeping in mind that 6-9 year old athletes are still discovering movement and 10-13 year old athletes are exploring movement will help. Combining 2 or more ‘traditional’ exercises to generate new, hybrid movements will put your programming over the top! Lunge walks (monster walks) combined with bear crawls for discovering balance, systemic strength, contra lateral coordination and with a progression even reactivity. Log rolls and push up holds (progressed to push ups) will.. More »

Making Your High School Athletes Better

High School Athletes Programming By Wil Fleming Recently I gave some thought to how many questions arise when putting together programming for high school athletes. Questions about general strength training practices, how to prioritize training goals, and what to do for speed and agility are all important, but the most basic of questions that need to be asked by any coach is: What should be included in the program for your high school athletes? As coaches we are all probably very familiar with the elements of a successful high school program in their entirety,.. More »