Fall Youth Athletic Development Checklist

With summer wrapping up and the chaotic yet serene routine of Fall approaching, I wanted to share a few best practices to set your kids up to develop athletically this fall:

1.       Enroll them in a new sport, preferably one they haven’t tried before, but certainly not the same one they did in the spring. Playing multiple sports allows kids to develop a robust athletic foundation that will serve them later on in life when they become more competitive. Beyond the athletic advantage this gives kids, trying a new sport is also an opportunity for them to make new friends, overcome new challenges, and potentially discover something they really enjoy.

2.       Try a new active hobby or individual sport. If you haven’t tried it yet, I recommend climbing. Climbing, gymnastics, and martial arts are three of the best individual sports/activities you can enroll your kids in to develop a strong athletic foundation because they challenge the foundational athletic skills that most team sports do not, such as upper pulling, grappling, and spatial awareness.

3.       Sign them up for our Fall session of our Little Athlete Academy. In our academy, we combine all the amazing attributes that team sports develop with all the amazing attributes that those aforementioned individual sports/active hobbies develop, and put them together to give your kid all the athletic skills they need to succeed in sports and life. The best part is, kids don’t even realize they are exercising because they are having so much fun.

If you’re interested signing up for our Little Athlete Academy, click here.

At Home 5-Minute Workout for Your Kids

Parents,

I want to share a quick 5-minute workout that your kids can do at home on their own to jumpstart their day. This routine is perfect for them if they are glued behind their screens and you can’t get them up and moving. It also doubles as a great warmup for them prior to a sports practice to get them physically and mentally prepared to train.

The beauty of this routine is that your kids will love it, the exercises are simple to grasp, and require no equipment.

If you are looking for a full-fledged youth athletic development program for your kids, then I strongly encourage you to explore our Little Athlete Academy. In our academy, we help kids 12 and under build a strong athletic foundation with our proprietary PLAY training methodology so they can maximize their performance and succeed in their favorite sports. Click here to learn more.

Three Reasons Your Child NEEDS a Youth Athletic Development Program

1.       Because they spend too much time sitting down: at school, behind their screens, in the car, etc., and not nearly enough time moving.

2.       Because enrolling in a program will not only impact their physical well-being, but it will also lead to better behavior, better performance in school, and a happier, healthier, more confident kid.

3.       Because they spend too much time developing sport-specific technical skills, neglecting fundamental mental movement skill, coordination, and athletic development.

If you want help building this athletic foundation, check out our Little Athlete Academy, where we help kids aged 5 to 12 do so in a way they undeniably adore.

Athletic Skill Development MUST Precede Sport-Specific Skill Development

I was speaking with my mentor the other day, and he brought up an interesting fact. Of the hundreds of thousands of players who have played in the Little League World Series, only 58 have made it to the MLB. That’s a fascinating stat. These players are the best in the world at their age, yet so few ever make it to the biggest stage. When you dig a little deeper, you can see the answer becomes pretty obviously pretty quickly.

Elite players require expertise in 3 areas:

·       Athleticism

·       Sport-Specific Technical Skills

·       Sport-Specific Tactical Skills/IQ

So often, players bypass the first skill to focus on the second, neglecting critical windows of opportunity for essential athletic development that they can’t get back later down the road. This is what happens with those who play in the Little League World Series. They are ELITE technical players who have sacrificed their athletic development in favor of skill development, leading to an inability to keep up athletically with their peers as they grow.

Unfortunately, this has become the norm in our country. Kids are specializing earlier and earlier in one sport, and missing these critical windows of opportunity for profound athletic development to focus on developing technical mastery in one sport. To make matters worse, many are being encouraged to do so by sport coaches who just don’t see or understand the damage they are doing to the long-term health of the kid.

So my message is this:

If you want your kid to develop into a happy, healthy, competitive, and successful athlete, focus on developing their underlying athletic skills that they need to have success in sports and life during their formative years, and THEN focus on mastering sport-specific technical skills.

If you do this, your kids will not only have more success in their sports, they will also be happier, healthier, and set up to live an amazing life.

If you want help developing these skills, consider our Little Athlete Academy as your one-stop solution. We help kids develop these foundational athletic skills, and do so in a way they absolutely adore. Learn more or inquire by clicking here!

What Do Kids Gain From (good) Youth Athletic Development Programs?

Successful youth athletic development accomplishes a few things. First, it prepares children for the physical demands of life. Kids should be able to play like kids where they can play outside without worrying about a lower body injury, have the balance to ride a bike, the strength to go swimming with friends, and the confidence to try new physical endeavors.

Now, as a bonus, these skills just so happen to be the same skills kids will need to succeed in sports. The kid who always wins king of the hill is the same teenager bulldozing people on the football field. The kid who can throw and catch gator-skin dodgeballs becomes the star baseball player. The kid who is untouchable in capture the flag becomes the athlete who succeeds in any invasion sport they try; the physical tools they develop as kids become the foundation for future athletic success.

Lastly, and far more importantly, active kids who participate in an organized youth athletic development program get hurt less, get sick less, behave better, and perform better in the classroom. Beyond that, those who participate in a good youth athletic development program develop the confidence they need to become leaders amongst their peers. Many youth athletic development programs are simply little leadership academies masked as athletic development programs.

If you want access to this kind of program that yields these kinds of results, our Little Athlete Academy is only a few clicks away. To make sure we are the right fit for your child, we are giving all first-time participants the opportunity to try us completely FREE for one week, eliminating the risk associated with signing up for a long-term program. Simply click here to start your child on their athletic development journey!

P.S. The sooner your child embarks on their Little Athlete Academy journey, the sooner they'll see enhancements in strength, agility, and overall athletic performance. But it's not just about the physical advantages; they'll also experience increased confidence and a newfound passion for fitness. Enroll your child today and watch them soar, thrive, and lead the pack!

Spatial Awareness

In the sporting context, spatial awareness refers to the ability to feel the position of the body in space. Any athletic movement requires a baseline level of spatial awareness. Everything from standing up and walking, across the spectrum to flipping, diving, and tackling all require varying levels of spatial awareness. Elite athletes have a very high level of spatial awareness (think NFL receivers making leaping catches), while toddlers who are just learning how to walk have very little.

As we explore movement, our spatial awareness develops and improves. The more movement challenges we are exposed to, the more it will do so. Unfortunately, as kids continue to get exposed to fewer and fewer movement stimuli, their spatial awareness is not naturally developing as it once did. As such, we see it as our responsibility to develop this fundamental physical skill.

All of our sessions challenge our athlete’s current movement skills and gives them the foundational skills they need to be successful in sports and life. Pop your head into any session, and you’ll see our athletes running, jumping, sprinting, cutting, dodging, crawling, rolling, catching, throwing, laughing, and playing. All of these skills that kids used to develop by playing multiple sports, we develop through play. If you want to start developing these skills in your kids, check out our current programs.

Athletic Development Before Sport Skill Development

One of the biggest problems facing youth sports today is early specialization. Not only does early specialization lead to burnout and overuse injuries, it also deemphasizes the importance of athletic development in kids. Sport specific development is extremely important, but it has to be preceded by athletic development in order for it to translate to the field. In today’s youth sport landscape, this rarely happens.

If you want your child to have success on the field, court, or ice, help them become a good athlete before they try to become a great player. Doing this helps your child to build an athletic foundation that will translate from sport to sport, keep them healthy, and master one of the three key components to success on the field. The earlier this starts, the more they are able to maximize their athletic development.

If you want to jumpstart that process, and do so in a fun way designed specifically for kids, take a look at our current services.

What Happened to Youth Sports?

Growing up, youth sports were all about the enjoyment and holistic development of the player. Rec programs boomed, offering sport after sport and program after program for town residents, exposing kids to a wide range of movement stimuli and athletic experiences. This allowed them to passively develop their athleticism, coordination, confidence, and underlying physical literacy. Beyond that, because sports were fun, we developed a love for activity that many of us still have today. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. Due to societal pressure to win, the landscape of youth sports has changed dramatically.

Today, we as a society put too much pressure on our kids to win. For many, sports are no longer fun, holistic development has made way for results on game day, and early specialization runs rampant. This has led to a generation of kids who are physically illiterate, underdeveloped, and have a negative relationship with activity.

Imagine a world where this is no longer the case. Kids would love sports and activity as much as we did, they’d forego time behind a screen to play outside with their friends, and they’d have the athletic foundation and confidence they need to not only succeed in sports but to do normal kid stuff like ride a bike or go for a swim.

This is the kind of world we want to live in and are doing everything we can to make it happen. We put the fun back in youth sports, helping kids develop this underlying athleticism in a way where they learn to love activity. Our athletes jump, hop, skip, shuffle, laugh, smile, duck, dodge, roll, catch, throw, balance, tag, and play their way to improved athleticism, better health, and a positive relationship with activity.

Check out our current programs and see how we can help your child! We hope to work with you soon!

How to Become a Great Player

Many parents want their kids to succeed in their sporting endeavors, and why wouldn’t they? Success in sports leads to happiness and popularity for their kid, helps them gain confidence, avoid ridicule, and could lead to better opportunities down the road. But have you ever stopped and thought about what actually makes a great player and how to get there? Too often, children blindly chase this idea of “greatness” without a solid plan or understanding of what they should be focusing on, putting in hours upon hours of work with no noticeable improvement in their play. In my experience, it’s because kids are typically trying to improve the wrong skill set.

To succeed in any sport, it requires a combination of three skills:

·       Sport-specific technical skills (hitting, fielding, dribbling, shooting, etc.)

·       Athletic/physical skills (speed, power, strength, conditioning, etc.)

·       Sport IQ/understanding (tactics, positioning, decision making, etc.)

Too often, athletes invest all their time into the first area, while neglecting or investing little effort into the other two, even though technical skills don’t matter without a solid athletic foundation and tactical understanding. How often do we see kids at the field kicking/throwing a ball around? Now compare that to how often you see kids sprinting, jumping, or playing tag-based invasion games all out, not very often, right? This has only been made worse by specializing early in one sport, where they no longer get the athletic development they desperately need from playing multiple sports.

The key to seeing consistent improvement in their play is to develop and master these three skills.

To maximize these skills, all three must be introduced at a young age so that a solid foundation can be built. Athletes get introduced to their sport-specific technical skills very early on, but hardly get introduced to any kind of focused athletic development training or sport IQ training at this same age. Here at Southern Maine Athlete Academy, we focus on helping children build this athletic foundation (just like their sport coach helps them build their technical skill foundation), so that they can maximize their development as a player.

If you want to give your child the athletic foundation they need to succeed in sports, you’re in luck! Simply explore our academy and sign up using the provided registration page to give your child the athletic foundation they need to maximize their development and help them succeed in their sporting endeavors.  

Early Specialization: What it is and how to avoid it

Early specialization is exactly like it sounds: specializing in 1 sport too early. At some point, yes, athletes will likely have to specialize in one sport if they’d like to develop into an elite-level player, however, for most, that shouldn’t occur until they go to college. As youth sports have become more and more competitive, kids have been put under immense pressure to win. This pressure has forced them to forego multiple sports in favor of year-round training. At first glance, this sounds like a great way to master the sport, more practice time should equate to a better player, but in reality, early specialization leads to mental fatigue, burnout, and overuse injuries, not to mention kids failing to develop physically, socially, and mentally as they should.

This mindset of relentless commitment to a sport stems from our societal pressure to win, and is fueled by youth sport coaches who rely on one sport for year-round income. 30 years ago, coaches coached multiple sports and shifted seasons with the players. In the fall they coached soccer, winter basketball, spring baseball, etc., however, as the youth sport coaches have begun to specialize, so too has the pressure they’ve put on players to commit to one sport year-round.

The easiest way to avoid early specialization is to adopt this old-mindset: when the seasons change, so does the sport. When it gets cold, it’s time to shift to a winter sport. When the snow melts, it’s time to get back outside and switch to a spring sport, and so forth and so on. Don’t fall into the trap that youth sport coaches want you to: year-round training is not going to make your child better at their sport. It’s going to leave them mentally exhausted, prone to injury, and physically inept.

If you’d like to join a program that combats early specialization, give our Little Athlete Academy a try. Our holistic approach trains kids like kids and develops the physical literacy and athleticism they may be missing out on by playing one sport year-round. Even if you are a multi-sport athlete, our academy will enhance your athleticism and help you succeed in your sporting endeavors.

3 Ways to Develop Athleticism in Kids

When we talk about athleticism in kids, we are mostly referring to their coordination and physical literacy. Kids need the physical competence to play outside with their friends, ride their bikes, go for a swim, etc., normal kid activity. Every parent wants their kid to have the ability and confidence to do these things. Further, every parent wants their kids to succeed in their sporting endeavors, and these same physical skills are the foundation to success in sports.

With that, here are 3 ways to develop physical literacy and coordination in kids:

1.       Go play outside with them. Catch, hide and go seek, tag, kickball, basketball, soccer, it doesn’t matter. All these activities help to develop athleticism in kids, and you being out there actively engaging with them will make them happy and help them develop a positive relationship with activity.

2.       Try a new sport. Pick any sport your kids haven’t tried yet and sign them up for a league, camp, or clinic. Playing a new sport will expose them to new movement stimuli that their body hasn’t been exposed to yet, and will help them develop new physical skills. If you’ve tried every sport, try an active hobby like ice skating or rock climbing.

3.       Sign them up for one of our programs. We help kids develop these underlying physical skills so that they can live normal kid lives and have success in sports, while developing a positive relationship with activity. Many say it’s the most fun they have all week, and by participating, they are setting themselves up to thrive in every aspect of their lives.  

That’s it, 3 ways to develop physical literacy and coordination in kids so that they can live happy, healthy, and active lives. If you want to leave it us, take a peek at all of our upcoming programs.

Why Good Youth Sport Coaching is Important

Good coaching in youth sports is extremely important, but not necessarily for the reasons you think. Sure, a good coach will teach kids the fundamentals of their sport and put them in the best position to succeed. They may find and maximize their players’ individual strengths while hiding their weaknesses. But in reality, good coaching is important because they create an inclusive and fun environment where kids want to go; an environment where every kid can thrive, succeed, and develop confidence in their abilities.

This type of coaching creates a generation of kids that are active and enjoy youth sports. With the sedentary culture we have adopted, physical education continuing to be cut in schools, and childhood obesity numbers on the rise, this has the potentially to legitimately change lives. Not to mention that active kids feel better, move better, behave better, and perform better in the classroom. Unfortunately, for many, youth sports have become over-competitive, with team outcomes and accomplishments outweighing player development and the experience.

When we work with children, we do our best to create that fun and inclusive environment they want to go to, while developing the underlying physical skills they need to become competent movers. These are the same skills they need to do simple, normal, fun kid activities like playing on the playground or riding a bicycle, and are the same skills that will allow them to succeed in their sporting endeavors.

If you want to work with us to provide your kid with that kind of sporting experience, check out our current services! We hope to work with you soon!

What Happened to Youth Sports?

One of the reasons I enjoy working with kids is much is because of the constant effort and energy they bring to every session. They are eager to do well and teeming with excitement each time they show up to train. A coach has the opportunity to either enhance or crush that excitement during an athlete’s most formative years. If the coach makes training boring or puts too much value on the outcome at too young of an age, then that excitement is quickly replaced with boredom, a lack of engagement, and a negative relationship with that sport and activity is fostered, causing athletes to be excluded or drop out far sooner than they should. Unfortunately, this has become common practice in youth sports, as many coaches now value winning over development and a competitive team over player enjoyment.

Youth sports should be all about creating positive movement and athletic experiences so that children develop their athleticism and a positive relationship with sports and activity; sports should be fun for kids. Youth sports have become more intense and competitive than they were ever intended to be. Coming from someone who hates to lose, I can understand developing a healthy competitive spirit in kids and teaching them the value of competing hard, but it should never come at the cost of kids hating or being excluded from sports. Nobody remembers the results from their 1st grade soccer games and landfills are littered with past Little League Trophies for results long forgotten, yet we have come to treat winning in youth sports as the only reason to play. Instead, we should focus on providing these kids with positive movement experiences and the physical tools they need to live happy, healthy, and active lives.

The Problem with Early Specialization

One of the many problems facing youth sports today is early specialization. Youth sports were originally designed to be fun, expose kids to a variety of athletic/movement stimuli, and give them positive movement experiences so they can develop a positive relationship with activity. Unfortunately, the model has shifted to one of extreme intensity and competitiveness, putting more pressure than was ever intended on young athletes to perform, succeed, and win. This has led to the need for kids to practice, develop, and specialize in one sport way earlier than they were ever intended to.

This is a problem because being exposed to many different sports is one of the best ways to develop the foundational movement skills they need to be successful in sports and life later down the road.

Beyond that, early specialization also leads to:

·       Boredom

·       Increased dropout rates

·       Missed critical windows of opportunities to learn other skills

·       Increased risk of injury (due to the repetitive nature of one sport and the lack of a well-rounded athletic foundation)

Thankfully, our Little Athlete Academy is designed to combat early specialization and put the fun back in youth sports. Our athletes balance, grapple, jump, tumble, throw, kick, react, dodge, climb, and play their way to physical literacy and coordination.

Don’t believe us? Check out this short clip from a previous program and see for yourself: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn8HArCvbNS/