Engage Sports Blog Youth Sports Matters

Recommendations for youth sports strength training are affected by the debate for and against that exists among the medical community, sports community and parenting community.  The argument against strength training, especially for kids under 12 years old holds that strength training, especially weight lifting, will damage growth plates causing injury and abnormal bone development. More recent studies suggest strength training, if done properly, has significant benefits including improved performance and resistance to injury. In this post we present more details on these arguments and specific recommendations from the Council of Youth Sports and Medical Fitness.

This article will share techniques to improve breathing habits, which will benefit the youth sports and adult athlete alike.  Most athletes are unaware of their breathing patterns, except for when they are ‘sucking air’ at the end of conditioning drills. Periods of fatigue shouldn’t be the only time they pay attention to it.  Athletes and coaches should be aware of proper breathing through all of practice, following these techniques will ensure proper breathing throughout practice and games.

Without good movement skill, one will never become athletic.  Without being athletic, one will never be a great athlete.   What we learned as children serves as the foundation on which we build everything else.  If a kid can’t crawl well, why do we think that when we add speed or load when they are standing that those limitations are going to disappear?  Guess what – they won’t!  Training inefficient movement patters will lead to injury.  Use the instructions and images in this article as a guideline to help your players ‘weed out’ any dysfunction that exists in their movement repertoire. 

The push up is one of the oldest forms of strength training on the books.  Chad Estes, who is an area sales representative for Engage Sports and also a football coach and trainer, recently published an article on YouthFootballOnline.com on how to squeeze more results out of the push up.  Here is an excerpt...read the full article at: http://youthfootballonline.com/squeezing-more-out-of-the-push-up