That being said, this takes you away from the gym and any type of working out with your friends or teammates.  You now have to create the performance facility of your dreams at your house with everything you have around the house to use for training devices.

But, how can you do that???

Luckily, tonight at 8pm, Adam (if you need to ask who Adam is just unsubscribe from his list right now) will be discussing this topic on a Facebook Live talk.

If you go to http://facebook.com/fitnessplanning tonight you can hear all the ways you can make your house a performance training facility.

If you can’t make it, then read the list below of items you can probably purchase to keep you in shape:

• Jump Rope – This should be first and foremost. It is inexpensive and not only can you do conditioning with it, but you can help your speed and foot quickness.  You can go out in your driveway and use this.  I wish I could give you advice on a good jump rope, but I keep picking ones that stink.  Hopefully, your luck will be better than mine.
• Resistance Bands – There a couple kinds you can get. Mini bands (click the words to go purchase them at Amazon) can go around your ankle and you can do all sorts of leg work with them.  You can also get longer resistance bands that will help you hit almost every body part you have.  Plus they can be used for resistance speed work and plyometric jumping.
• Stability Balls – I feel you can order these anywhere. If you use these right, they can be your new workout bench.  You can do every body part using this ball and it helps your core as well as the muscle you are working on at the time.
• Agility Ladder or Cones – To save you money, just get some chalk and draw a ladder on the sidewalk. For your cones, take some old t-shirts and use them as cones.  Simple and done.  Moving on.
• Sliders – We loving using sliders. From core to legs, it is a challenging workout.  But, do not buy the exercise sliders.  They are way overpriced.  Go to a place like Bed, Bath, & Beyond and get the furniture sliders.  They are cheaper and work just the same.  Or you can use t-shirts on a hard wood floor.
• Resistance Weights – Depending on what you are doing and how strong you are, using a gallon milk carton might suffice filling it with water. Or get a bookbag and load it with some weight.  Think outside the box with this.

If you don’t have the money to get all the equipment you would really like, then look into these items.  It will not put you in financial straits and you can still have enough variety to provide you with a very sound, quality workout.

The post What You Need To Perform AWESOME Workouts At Home appeared first on Young Athlete Hub.

School sports are suspended or cancelled.  Club sport practices are cancelled.  Club tournaments are cancelled.  Showcases for high school athletes are cancelled.

Schools are going to be closed until May 1, minimum, which means another month of no sports.

What is an athlete to do if they can’t go to practice?

Obviously, they will be forced to sit around, get on the electronics, maybe do some online school work, and groan about missing sports.

They can’t go to practice and get better so they will obviously get worse right?

WRONG!!

I have said for years, you get better not by what you have to do, but doing things that is not required of you to do.

Meaning, is it required to go outside and practice your dribbling on your own?  No!

Is it required to do lifting for your sport to get stronger and/or faster?  No!

Is it required on an off day to take 500 foul shots to try and improve your free throw percentage?  No!

Point being is that back in the day there were no club sports making you play/practice 365 days a year.  Once you were done with your season, if you wanted to improve your game, you worked on it on your own.

And to be honest, I don’t think this is done nearly enough by today’s athletes.  They feel they are getting their work in by going to structured practices all the time.

GASP!!  The thought of actually going outside for a measly 30 minutes and work on your ball skills for soccer, taking swings off a tee, or hitting the tennis ball against a wall sounds outrageous.

In a time when you need to stay active, but be pretty much isolated from people other than your immediate family, seems to me to be the perfect opportunity to improve your game.

Your online homework will not take all day.  You do not have to go to a 2 hour practice or drive 30 minutes for a game.  You absolutely have the time to go outside and work on your game by yourself.

But will you??

This is the absolute perfect time to work on being a better athlete.  Think about all the factors working in your favor:

• You don’t have any other activity happening to take away from your energy and leave you rundown.
• You can probably go to bed at a decent time and get plenty of rest to recover from whatever you are doing that day.
• You can devote your energy for that day on the single objective you want to accomplish – strength training, serves, hitting off the tee, etc.
• You can’t really do anything else so you might as well do this right???

When you can’t rely on all those amazing coaches and their fancy facilities, it goes back to “old school” tactics.  You have to show some initiative and work on your game when it isn’t required of you.

The post You Can’t Blame “Not Improving” On The Coronavirus appeared first on Young Athlete Hub.

The simplest way to explain what it does is that it takes the data it collects to determine how much strain your body has had and what your recovery level is at the beginning of each day.

Strain basically means what type of intensity your body went through during the day.  If your job is demanding or if you worked out hard, could give you a high level of strain for that day.  The max is a 21.

Depending on how recovered you are for that day will determine if you should do an activity or activities that will give you a high strain score.

If you are in the green, you are ready to really push it.  Yellow is okay to workout.  Red means you should probably not do anything taxing.  You might need to rest.

I’ve been beta testing this with a few athletes and it is interesting to see how much sleep will affect your recovery – positively and negatively.  Take a look at this.

WHEN YOU SLEEP IS IMPORTANT

Athlete A had a Saturday and Sunday and during the day did little to no activity.  No practice, workouts, or anything.  Saturday’s recovery was a 68%, Sunday’s was a 63% with 5.5 or less strain both days.

But Sunday night there was a dance and sleepover afterwards.  Athlete A stays up until 3 in the morning and gets 6 hours and 8 minutes of sleep.  Recovery for Monday is 12%.  That is definitely in the red. Not good!

HOW MUCH YOU SLEEP IS CRITICAL

Athlete B starts Friday with a recovery of 94% and does a lifting workout that day.  Total strain for the day was 7.8.  Athlete B gets 7 hours and 50 minutes of sleep (not time in bed, but total sleep time) going to bed at a decent time between 10:00 and 11:00 pm.

Saturday comes and has a 95% recovery.  Participating in a track meet that day, Athlete B is ready to perform well.  Athlete B runs in 3 races, burns over 3000 calories (about double what Athlete B typically burns), and has a strain of 18.6.

WOW!!  The body is cooked.  Remember, 21 is an all-out max strain day.

Athlete B goes to bed early and gets 9 hours and 26 minutes of sleep time.  Because of that high strain the day before, the body needed the sleep.  Because Athlete B got that sleep, the recovery was at 81%.  Not the 95% seen the day before, but still in the green and still very good.

Probably could have done a workout that day and been fine, but Athlete B didn’t and the strain was 4.4.  A light strain helps with the recovery.

The problem is that night Athlete B gets 5 hours and 32 minutes of sleep and the recovery the next day is 76%.

How does the recovery go down on a day when the strain was light and Athlete B really did nothing?

The lack of sleep the following night did not allow the recovery process to continue.  Albeit 76% isn’t bad, you don’t want the trend to continue down.  Get the rest you need to allow the body to recover.

Knowing this data could really help your athlete compete to the best of his/her ability.  And it is probably as simple as going to bed at a good time and getting plenty of rest.  Easy huh!

The post I’m Amazed About How Much Sleep Affects Your Recovery appeared first on Young Athlete Hub.

When hearing anecdotes about Jeter, one of the recurring themes was how confident he was in his ability to get the job done.  He felt he was going to have success each and every time he was on the baseball field.

Let’s tie it to something even more closer to home.  I was at a track clinic this past weekend and one of the presenters talked about how much he tried to instill confidence in his athletes.  Not just so he had confidence in them, but so they could have confidence in their own abilities.

One of the ways he suggested they go about gaining this confidence is visualization.

He wanted his athletes to visualize their success and every aspect of what that success might look like.  Meaning, what does that athlete need to do to have a clean race.  Visualize what that looks like over and over and it will start happening.

Part of his reasoning for this was about a study he mentioned.  This study had two groups of basketball players.  One group shot a certain amount of shots each day for 4 weeks.  The other group spent each day visualizing the perfect free throw and them making free throws.

The group that did the visualization ended making more free throws when they finally tested.

How can this help you in your sport?

Visualize the certain skills you need to do for your sport.  Is it hitting a baseball?  Serving up the ball in volleyball or tennis?  Winning a race in track?

Visualize the what it will take to swing that bat effectively to get hits.  Visualize and feel how you will stand in the plate.  How you will pick up the baseball to figure out what type of pitch it is.  Making contact with that pitch and where it is being sent.

Do that over and over.  Do that before you go up to bat.  Envision the success you will have at the plate and it will improve your chances of it happening.

You can then take that visualization as far as you want.  Do you feel you will win the state championships?  Then envision what you will do to make that happen.  Visualize everything you can control and don’t worry about the things you can’t control (the weather for example).

If you can’t visualize the success yourself, then why should you have success?  Visualize what you need to do to make it happen and then do those things.

Will it work every time?

No, but it will definitely improve your chances of it happening each time.  And that is all we want.  The best chance possible to have success.

The post Why Should You Have Success If You Can’t Visualize It appeared first on Young Athlete Hub.

Sometimes, this can be structural and there is nothing you can do about it.  Meaning, the legs were developed this way and you can’t rebreak those bones to align them just right.

Other times, these mechanical issues happen due to strength imbalances.  In this case, it very well could be that your ankles are weak and can’t support the generated force needed to run at the high speeds.

If the ankles are weak, they can control where your shin points to direct the force you are trying to generate.  If the shin ends up pointing straight up due to the heel collapsing because of the weak ankles, then the force is going up rather than forward down the track.

The way to get the ankles stronger is through isometric exercises.  Ultimately, the goal is to direct the force through the big toe.

Sometimes you will see the foot land on the outer part of the foot and through the four other toes.  If that happens, the force tends to go laterally and you have to counter that by swinging the opposite arm to keep you going straight ahead.

If you can strengthen the big toe and train the body to have the forces go through the big toe, then the forces can go straight ahead and there is nothing to counter.  Your arms can just swing naturally to help drive the speed.

The question is how do you strengthen the big toe to get the ankles stronger?

The first exercise is to do what most people call a calf raise and focus on pressing down through the base of the big toe.  You also want to raise the heel up high enough to place a tennis ball underneath.

If you can hold that position for 30 seconds that is sufficient.  2 minutes would be the ultimate goal.  You hold it for 2 minutes, your ankle can handle the forces generated while running at high speeds.

If you can hold it for 2 minutes, then you can start adding some weight.  Either having someone push down on your shoulders or holding a dumbbell.

When that becomes doable, you might want to stand on the edge of a plate or step with just the big toe.  That is somewhat of a challenge.

Do that several times a day early on for 7 days and then transition to doing it before your practices and/or games.  This will reinforce the pattern to run through the big toe and allow you to develop your maximal speed.

The post Some Running Mechanics Can Be Fixed By Working On The Big Toe appeared first on Young Athlete Hub.

It is Heart Rate Variability or HRV for short.

What is Heart Rate Variability?

HRV can be described simply like this.  Your heart beats at X amount of times per minute.  The time between each beat is not necessarily the same.  There is an irregularity to it.  That is HRV.

HRV is controlled by the nervous system specifically the autonomic nervous system (ANS).  There are divisions of ANS – the sympathetic (fight or flight) and the parasympathetic (relaxation).  The demands of these two nervous systems cause the irregularity in the heart rates, thus creating HRV.

When these two systems are working together and in harmony, you can have a very high HRV number.   When one is dominating more than the other, the HRV has a more consistent heart rate and the number is lower.

For example, if a bear is chasing you, the sympathetic takes control to get you out of the situation.  But, other factors can tip the scales to one system being more dominant than the other – stress, illness, fatigue, or pain to name a few.

HRV can vary among individuals based on age, gender, fitness, health, and other factors.  Really, you are comparing your HRV with yourself over a long haul.  If you look back on the previous 7 days of HRV data and notice a dip in your HRV, one day could be an anomaly.  A few consistent days might mean something is happening to your body you need to be aware of.

How can knowing your HRV help your athlete?

By understanding what your HRV is typically like you can determine several things in regards to the training of your athlete:

• If in the above example, it does dip consistently over the course of a few days below your average, your athlete might be getting sick or being overtrained.
• If you were to see that dip, you would then know you might want to back off high intense training and get some more rest until the HRV comes back to the normal level it showed prior to the dip.
• Rather than guessing when to increase the intensity, you now have more data to go by to determine definitively when to increase the intensity because you know the athlete is feeling fresh.
• One study recently released findings that when you base workouts on one’s HRV adjusting to when HRV levels are at the baseline or above, you get much better performance results then when you just have preplanned workouts with no regard to HRV.

How to monitor HRV?

I recently wrote an article about the WHOOP band, but I think it is a very reliable piece of equipment to determine HRV.

There are other devices, but none of them you have on your body as much as this WHOOP band which can take all the data it records and really pinpoint with fairly good accuracy what your HRV is.

At some point, I will be putting this into my programs.  I’ll keep you posted how it turns out, but I think this is the next big thing for data geeks like me.

The post The New Indicator To How Hard You Can Push Your Athlete appeared first on Young Athlete Hub.

Let’s take my sport, track, for example because I’m not quite sure this works for many of the team sports.

I know there are track clubs out there and do make this work, but we live in a very fast paced society.  This society seems to be constantly doing things all the time and on the go.

The track clubs’ practice schedule might not be at the ideal time for the athlete.

From a track club’s point of view, it can be tough to find a track where you can secure practice time.  That can also be pricey if you don’t have the right hook up.

Let’s take a look at some of the pros for a virtual club coach specifically for a track athlete:

• It will probably cost the athlete a little less than what it costs to join an actual track club.
• You get workouts specific just for your athlete’s needs and abilities. Most track programs will have a designated workout for the distance runners or sprinters.  Not saying that won’t work for your athlete, but you can get it tweaked just a little more for your athlete’s specific abilities.
• Your athlete can do the workout when they have time. Maybe they have a summer job that isn’t flexible, you could do it before work.
• It’s easier to get on a track and do it alone as opposed to a whole team renting a track and carving time for just your track club.
• You don’t have to do the club’s summer track meets if it doesn’t work for your schedule. You can discuss with your coach what meets might work best for you.

There are some cons to this, so let’s take a look at those cons:

• You might not be able to get on a track as easily as you think.
• You don’t have teammates to run with to potentially push you during your workouts.
• You don’t have a coach there to motivate you during your workouts or correct technique issues right there on the spot.
• You might not be able to run on a relay as easily if this is something you desire.
• You might not have access to extra equipment if you are in a specialty event such as hurdles, high jump pit, etc.

What I learned having run a summer track clubs is that it is a different feel then running with your school.  You have to really have the desire to run summer track.

There are a lot of kids who don’t care so much about running as the summer schedule continues on.  If that is the case, it might be better to have a virtual track club so you can focus on your goals.

Plus, with today’s technology you can wear wearable tracking devices that would upload your workouts to a cloud that your coach would have access to.  The coach can easily make adjustments to your workouts based on what he/she is seeing without you really having to say anything.

This can easily be done with more individual sports such as golf, cornhole, or tennis.  The team sports obviously would be a bit tougher. Just want to see if you are reading this all the way through.

I may be off my rocker, but I think this could work.  If you disagree put your comments in the box below.  If you agree and want to possibly use me as your virtual track coach, put that in the comments box below as well.

The post Can’t Find The Right Club Team For Your Athlete… Try A Virtual Coach appeared first on Young Athlete Hub.

I did not pursue the Oura Ring because I just am not a fan of rings.  It is too bulky for me even though I was told the ring can be worn during workouts and not effect it too much.

Then I was told about the Whoop Band.  This is basically a tiny electronic monitor placed in an elastic bracelet you fit on your wrist.

It takes in an incredible amount of data that spits out something readable that is based on these three items: strain, recovery, and sleep.    How much strain was placed on your body and how much sleep do you need to make a full recovery and have an optimal training day?

There is an initial period needed to gather the data so your threshold can be determined.  It needs a good amount of time to establish your normal health patterns.  Once you do that, it is incredibly reliable on what your body needs to do to stay healthy.

Professional players are wearing this all the time to fine-tune their workouts.  Other pros such as Lebron James and Michael Phelps are using it to better optimize their training as well.

One individual was able to use the data and found out that if he does a 15 minute cycling workout a few hours before he goes on a plane ride traveling over two time zones causing jetlag, he would have a better recovery.

The theory is this.  If we can figure out exactly what activities put the most strain on your body and how much recovery you need to be back at 100% readiness for the next workout, we can create a much more efficient workout plan for you.

Think about it.  I’m a track coach.  Typically our standard plan is if we do a hard day, we probably will do an easier day the next day and ramp it up a little more the day after that before we do our next hard day again.  This is all on feel.

With this technology, if I do a hard day and the data is telling me that, then I have a couple workouts in mind for the next day depending on your recovery.  You will be able to provide various workouts that all reflect how much you can handle with that recovery in mind.

If I know a big meet is coming up, I can fine-tune my workouts so that the athlete is completely recovered from them and ready to go the day of the meet.

The Whoop Band also has a team community page.  I’m not quite sure how it works yet, but if my entire team is using the Whoop Band, I can go on our page and see the analytics for all my athletes.  You can personalize the workouts that much more with your team by seeing the reports for everyone.

This really could be a game changer for your sport.  It can dictate what you need to do in practices to make sure you are really fresh for your games.

If you are interested with your athlete getting the best quality of training, then click here to read about the Whoop Band.

The post This Technology That Lebron Uses Will Make Your Training So Much More Effective appeared first on Young Athlete Hub.

I’ve had some athletes that just can’t pick it up.  We end up just having them stand as opposed to continuing to learn it.  We just don’t have enough time to get it down and like most young athletes they have a zillion other things they have to take care of in their life.

To really do a good block start, you want to have your track athlete explode off both feet.  But, you want that force and burst to be caused by your posterior chain (primarily the glutes) and not the hip flexors.

You want that step low, long, and fast.  To keep it simple.

Before I explain the drill that will help your block start in track, I wanted to let you know if you did not see my blog post on improving your first step in soccer, take a look at it.  That same drill I discuss there will also help your block starts.

Alright, so the drill you are going to do with your tracksters is called a wall start.

I can’t take all the credit for it.  I learned it from Chris Korfist, one of the best sprint coaches in the U.S.  Having done it with my athletes, I think it will really help yours.

Start with your athlete standing against a wall.  Pick one leg up off the floor and place the foot flush against the wall.  Once the athlete is in position, give a command to start and he/she will push off the wall with that back foot and explode into a sprint.

Your sprint can be whatever distance you make it to be.  10 – 20 yards should be fine.  We only do 3 – 4 steps because we don’t have a lot of room where the wall is, but it still works.

It teaches the athletes to push off that back foot for an explosion.  Once they go onto the blocks and you discuss about smashing your heels into the blocks, they will get a much better start.

One athlete we were working with basically just stood up when the gun went off.  There was no explosion.  Doing these for a few workouts and she is much, much better out of the blocks.  We still have things to work on, but a lot better than the before we started doing the wall starts.

I took a video to show you what I’m talking about.  You should be able to click it directly on this page, or you can click here to watch it as well.

You don’t have to do a lot of these.  I like doing 3 or 4 then go into block starts.  You can switch legs if you want to balance them out.  In the off-season I might do this, but pre-season to in-season I’d stick with your back leg against the wall.

Give it a shot.  Let me know what you think in the comments’ box below.

The post This One Drill Will Dramatically Improve Your Block Start appeared first on Young Athlete Hub.

The first step is huge in sports, especially in soccer.  You need every advantage you can get to get to the ball before your opponent.  Soccer is typically played in an area of short sprints.  If it takes you awhile to get up to speed, by the time you get there someone else has the ball doing with it what they please.

The first step in soccer is comprised of reaction, explosiveness, and strength.  If the first step explosion isn’t natural for your soccer player, then it needs to be trained just like anything else in soccer.

So how do you do that?

I think one of the best ways is using a device called the prowler.  Something we have been using at our facility.  It is basically a sled that you load up with weight and depending on the apparatus you can push it or pull it.  It has handles that are 2 to 3 feet long sticking straight up in the air to keep your body in proper acceleration alignment as you push it.

The drill you can use for your soccer players is this:

• Figure out a weight that your athlete can push keeping his/her body in the proper accelerating position. Your body should be at a lean at about 75-80 degrees with no break in the hip.  Somewhat of a straight line from heel to head.
• You are going to push the sled for two steps – as fast as you can as far as you can move it. Just two steps.
• Time the movement and measure how far you get.
• The better and quicker you can move that sled, the better your first step will be.
• You can start with just the athlete moving on their own mark. Then shift it to where you yell go to work on their reaction as well.
• You can also shift it to a movement reaction. Stand next to the athlete and when you move they move.

We do this drill with other athletes in different sports.  If you are consistent with this drill and continue to work on it, you will naturally improve your first step.  This will give your soccer player another weapon in the arsenal to use.

The post Improving Your First Step In Soccer appeared first on Young Athlete Hub.