The Importance of Trunk Stability for Young Athletes

The goal isn’t just to get them stronger, faster and more powerful but to give them a movement foundation that they can utilize for the rest of their lives.

Sure, there are sports which do require earlier specialization but most kids need to do more movement training than they do specific training! Here are some activities that young kids need to be doing regularly:
Running
Jumping
Skipping
Throwing
Bounding
Stopping and Cutting
Mobility and Flexibility Training

So when a young kid comes in to see us wanting to improve their strength, speed and agility we don’t just load them up with some heavy squats and deadlifts. The foundation of their program early on is body weight exercise and barbell lifts performed with a PVC pipe or broomstick.

We focus on skill acquisition, body awareness, and most importantly, the development of connective tissue in the body.

Below are 7 basic movement patterns that we work on with all our young athletes:
Knee Dominant Pattern: Rear Foot Elevated Split Squat, Goblet or Front Squat
Hip Dominant Pattern: Hip Hinge Pattern, Single Leg Deadlift
Horizontal Push: Push-up Progression
Horizontal Pull: Inverted Row Progression
Vertical Push: Overhead Press
Vertical Pull: Pull-up Progression
Core Strength and Stability

Exercises that integrate the entire body and develop trunk stability are critical for developing athletic potential. To improve trunk stability I like to throw in offset versions of any of the above exercises. Instead of a goblet squat, try an offset Sandbag/Kettle bell Squat. I also really like to get the kids doing carries with a dumbbell, kettle bell, or sandbag. The video below shows part of a workout I did today with Tom King ( 15 year old fast bowler) that I have been working with for the last 18 months.

How to do a Perfect Push Up

A lot of people think that the push up is just a chest exercise but when executed well it is more of an integrated total body movement. Our goal is maximise the result or adaptation response from every movement or exercise we do. We want to create as much power as possible with the move so it technique is very important.

Effective, Efficient and Safe Push Up Mechanics

Arm Position – Traditionally push up are down with elbows flared out at 90 degrees. By bringing the arm in closer to your side you shorten the lever so effectively you are covering less distance.

Elbow Position – Elbow should track over wrist to make for a much safer exercise. This is especially important for all your hitting and throwing athletes that don’t want to blow out their elbows.

Hand position – We want our shoulders packed so cork screw your hands into the ground

These things make it much safer on the shoulder and elbow joints and because you will be working at a mechanical advantage you can really engage more muscle and make your push up training far more intense by progressing to weighted push ups and several other push up variations that challenge the system slightly differently. In your warm make sure to include some glute and upper back activation exercises which will help you engage your lats and glutes to create more tension and stability through the body.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZTcZ3c_JWU&feature=plcp                            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO8J-oQ1oSc&feature=context-cha

Health & Fitness

The World Health Organization (WHO) defined health in its constitution of 1948 as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity".

Fitness is the ability to meet the demands of a physical task.

condution

One of the misconceptions in the sports world is that a sports person gets in shape by just playing or taking part in his/her chosen sport. If a stationary level of performance, consistent ability in executing a few limited skills is your goal, then engaging only in your sport will keep you there. However, if you want the utmost efficiency, consistent improvement, and balanced abilities sportsmen and women must participate in year round conditioning programs.

The bottom line in sports conditioning and fitness training is stress, not mental stress, but adaptive body stress. Sportsmen and women must put their bodies under a certain amount of stress (overload) to increase physical capabilities.

Body Rock

In this workout I am doing the following exercises:
Jump Squats With Diagonal Touchdown
The jump squat is an excellent cardio exercise and belongs to the plyometric group of exercises. Your legs will be working hard and you will feel the burn in your muscles. Try to complete 20 reps. I know its’s hard.

Start standing tall with your feet hip width apart.

Squat down until your thighs are parallel to the ground and rotate your upper body towards one side, reaching down towards the side of your foot with your hands. Try to touch the ground.

Push off of your feet and jump up reaching your extended arms overhead. Try to get your feet off of the ground as high as you can. Make sure that the landing is soft so land on the balls of your feet and not on your heels.

Skater

This exercise will improve your balance, strength and agility. You will be targeting your legs, butt and core. Complete 15 reps on each leg.

Bring the weight of your body on your right leg and extend your left leg behind you and across the right leg. Bend the knee of your standing leg and get low as much as your strength and balance allows you. Don’t round your back, keep your chest up and your shoulders back and down. Don’t go with your knee over your toes.

Stand up and tall again and keep balancing on your right leg. The toes of the left leg are touching the ground for balance. Extend your right arm above your head to create a straight line with your left leg and right arm that goes across your body. Keep your abs and your butt tight.

Bring your left knee up, pointing towards the right shoulder and reach your  right elbow towards the opposite hip. Really squeeze your abs.

Bring the knee down and extend the left leg again. Touch the ground  with the toes of your left leg for balance before you attempt another rep.

Reptile

Do 20 reps of this exercise total switching the leg. This exercise will target your core muscles, abs, obliques and you will be strengthening your arms and upper body.

Start in the plank position with your hand under your shoulders. Keep your abs and butt engaged and don’t arch your lower back.

Bring your left knee towards your left elbow and keep your eyes on the knee. Revers the movement and get to the starting position. That’s one rep. Now do the same thing on the opposite side.

One Leg Hop Kick

This exercise requires and lot of balance, coordination and flexibility, which might slow you down. Your balance will improve only through a regular practice so don’t avoid these type of exercises. Balancing exercises are great for building your core strength and abs are part of your core muscles. Everyone wants to have tight abs. Complete 20 reps total.

Start by standing tall with your hands up in front of your shoulders. Shift your weight on the outside leg and get ready to hop to the side.

Push off of the standing leg and jump to the side.

Make sure that your landing is soft. Don’t land on your heel, but on the ball of your foot first. Balance on the leg that you just landed on and try not to touch the ground with the other leg.

Bend your knee and bring the heel of your foot towards your butt. Try to get your thigh parallel to the ground. If you can’t bring it that high, then just do your best. Squeeze your abs, gluts and push your hips forward. Your knee is pointing to the side. Keep your hands up and elbows close to your body.

Point your toes and kick the leg out to the side extending your knee. Bring the leg down without touching the ground if possible and jump to the side repeating the whole exercise on the opposite leg.

This part of the exercise is probably the most challenging one so don’t get yourself frustrated if you loose balance. It takes some practice and patience. Instead of trying to get this done as fast as possible no matter what, keep focusing on your good form.

Agility with Endurance

So you've been training for a while and you've built a respectable amount of strength along with really good endurance. There is one problem. When you put them together something is missing and worse if you add something that takes a little coordination things start falling apart. So you go and work on agility, taking the recommended rest intervals and your coordination is increasing almost daily. You say to yourself I'm ready for anything now.
Then you put it all together and you find yourself getting winded and losing coordination rapidly. Darn it, you say how do I avoid this? Well think about the problem; you have the strength, you have the endurance, and you have the agility, so the problem must be that each have been trained separately. This is where agility/endurance training comes in.

You need to take agility exercises and train them back-to-back so that you have to use skill/coordination while under a certain amount of fatigue. Note you don't want to do this if you haven't done agility training before, because all you'll end up doing is locking sloppy neural patterns in to your system. You can set agility/endurance workouts up in countless ways. Pick a few agility drills set them all up ahead of time and go through them one right after the other. If you start getting too sloppy stop for a second or two and breathe then continue. Gradually increase your pace. Maintain good form, notice I said good not perfect you don't want to be sloppy but don't obsess over small mistakes. Correct them the next time. If you put sandbags, kettle bells, clubs or medicine balls into the mix you are adding the strength factor. Of course you could use barbells and dumbbells, but the above are easier to implement into the workout. Some really fun and convenient things to use are agility ladders, cones and hurdles. Here is a workout my partners and I have been using lately.

Agility/Endurance 1:
Ladder/Sprint/Ladder - Set up two short agility ladders with 5 yards in between. Step one foot then the other in each square as fast as you can. When you come to the end sprint 5 yards, you'll notice this is hard to do because as soon as you accelerate you have to decelerate and repeat the second ladder. You jog back to the start and repeat until you have done it four times. After the forth run-thru go to:
Hip Lines over Hurdles - Starting from the side swing your lead leg over and as your foot hits the ground LET it propel your other leg over use the force of that foot to propel your lead leg over the next hurdle. You will look like a Rockette dancer in Vegas. We use five hurdles set at three-foot heights. Down and back the other direction is counted as one and this is also done four times. Next repeat both the:
Ladder/Sprint/Ladder and
Hip Line Hurdle
Immediately go to:
Medicine Ball Granny Toss - Take a medicine ball (we use my 13.2lb ball) and with arms semi-straight squat down exhaling and explode your hips up shooting the ball forward as high as you can. Quickly catch it and repeat until you have done ten reps.
Cone Spin-Turns - Set a cone up then place one five yards away. Now place one five yards further. So now you have three cones forming a straight line. Next place a cone five yards to each side of center cone. Your cones should look like a big "+". From first cone sprint to center touch cone then spinning left shoot to the right cone. Touch right cone spin right and shoot to end cone. Repeat to other side.

Perform 5 each side.
Carioca Sprints - Sprint sideways crossing in front then behind lead leg when you reach 50 yards smoothly continue but face opposite direction. You will have carioca sprinted 100 yards with fifty facing one way and fifty facing the other. Repeat this until you have done three.
Star Jump - Squat touching tops of feet explode into the air forming a star or "X" while in mid-air then land in start position repeating until twenty reps are done.

Finish off with some Tornado Ball or another core exercise that takes agility and endurance and you are set.

Now if you don't have the time to do agility training separate from your other types of training you have some other options. The first is to do some agility training as a warm up. I prefer to do this after or in with my mobility drills. I often use balance training with a Bongo Board (TM.) or other balance type equipment. Whether you use balance dominant drills or some other coordination drill is totally up to you. Which ever you perform, take at least five minutes and work on agility drills that you would like to master. Agility drills when used as a warm up should not exhaust you, but should help you master the drills for later when you choose to add the endurance factor. After you have become good at some chosen drills you may decide to try out the next way to incorporate agility training into your routine. Adding an agility drill into a circuit will help you to train agility while working on strength, power, speed and flexibility. I recommend placing the agility drills first in your circuit. This way you can work the drill fairly fresh without being totally exhausted.

You want agility with endurance not endurance with sloppy coordination. An example would be to perform a set of zigzag hops (sometimes known as crooked stick hops) then break into a sprint (50 yards is a good distance) to a pull-up bar perform a variant of pull-ups then drop down and perform some version of push-ups. Fast walk back to the zigzag stick take a deep breath and repeat as desired. By this time your legs should have recovered enough to repeat in good form. You will have done agility, leg work, pull work, and push work. All of this gave your core work as a fringe benefit. Of course you can replace any of the above exercise examples and create a plethora of circuits.

Now that is just one of millions of workouts you could perform, the main thing is to do many so that your body gets used to performing skill while fatigued. You'll notice that the next time you need to "synergize" (my word J) you will be able to perform without feeling like a tin man. So go out there and Synergize to Energize! Most of all have fun!
James Smith is the founder of the Animal Ability strength training board.

Sample Agility Exercises

 Drill #1 - Figure Runs
Set out a course according to the diagram below. Cones are used to mark out a series of numbers in varying sizes. For large groups, split the team into groups of two or three and have each player run around the number or figure. Each player performs the figure once before moving onto the next figure. Soccer and hockey players can dribble a ball around the cones while football and rugby players can run with the ball to make the drill more sport-specific. Set out as many figures as you want and vary the heights so players are required to work over varying distances.*


 Drill #2 Agility T Drill
Set up a series of cones similar to the diagram below. The working player starts by sitting down cross legged. On the start command they run to their right and back, run backwards and back an then to the left and back at full speed. A server (yellow) can be added to throw a ball which the working must catch and throw back or volley back etc.


 Drill #3 Sprint Lateral Shuffle
Set up a series of markers similar to the diagram below. Starting at the first marker sprint to the second marker and side step to the third marker. Continue until the end. Rest and repeat in the other direction so side steps lead with opposite foot.



 Drill #4 Box Drill

Mark out a square approximately 10 meters/yards by 10 meters/yards. Place a cone in the center of the square. This is the starting position. Each corner is given a number or name. The coach or a training partner calls out a number or name at random and you must run to the corresponding corner and return to the center. As a variation two players can use the square at once. One player is labelled A and the other B. The coach calls out two numbers. Player A must run to the corner corresponding to the first number and player B to the second number. This drill sounds complicated but its easy to implement and its excellent for getting players to concentrate.


 5-Count Ladder Drill
1. Start with your feet hip width apart at the bottom of the ladder
2. Step out to the right of the first square With your right foot immediately followed by placing your left foot into the first square.
3. Bring your right foot along side your left in the first square then step into the second square with your left foot immediately followed by the right.
4. Count these first five steps in a 1-2-3-4-5 manor.
5. Reverse the sequence by stepping out to the right of the third square with your left foot.
6. Repeat for the full length of the ladder.


Agility exercises are usually best performed in late pre-season training and during the in-season. Because they shouldn't leave you feeling tired you can perform a short, sharp agility session the day before a match or competition. This will also help to improve your mental and physical alertness as the game draws closer.....