TV: A Conditioning Tool? - Part 2

Idea #2: Super Abs (without the fancy machinery)!!

Another very easy game to play is to do abdominal (ab) work during commercials, or even during shows themselves. Your child can watch their favorite show or game while doing some very simple ab work. Let me give you some options:

• Regular situps. This is one that's probably easiest done during commercials. For these, your child can either place their feet under the couch, or even have a parent sit on their feet while they do their traditional situps. However, I'm not really a big fan of traditional situps. I find them very hard on their backs and not really as effective as some of these other approaches.

• Ab Crunches. I like ad crunches over regular sit ups because you can more easily watch TV while you use the medicine balls. Watch the vide below.

• Ab Crunches with Medicine balls. I really like the use of medicine balls because you can easily increase or decrease the weights and the resulting level of effort. See the video below for one of the different ab drills you can do with medicine balls.
  

Best of luck as parents coaching youth!!

TV: A Conditioning Tool?

There is probably no bigger destroyer of athletes than TV (maybe video games would rank #1, but at least video games are somewhat engaging). The one-way nature of TV viewing does nothing to help in a child's physical development (and given most of the programming on TV, probaby nothing to help in a child's mental development either).

However given that the average child spends 2 to 4 hours a day watching TV, it is a huge missed opportunity to leverage that time to help with a child's physical and skills development. But how? Let me share a few ideas over the next few postings.

Idea #1: Push Ups By The Bunch

This by far is the easiest thing to do, and can be quite productive in developing both strength and discipline. Here's the game that we like to play at our house: during a commercial break, drop and give me 20! Or maybe it's not 20 initially, but start with 2 and then progress to 4 and then 6, etc. If on average each TV show has 3 to 4 commercial breaks, over a couple of hours you will get quite a few pushups completed.

My 15 year old plays this game while watching ESPN Sports Center or a game on TV. And it's not unusual that by the end of the night that he's done 150 to 200 pushups. And I've got to tell you, I can see the difference in his body and he can feel the difference when he's out playing his sports.

Here's a simple video that explains the basics of a pushup




Best of luck as parents coaching youth!!

Picking a Coach - Part 3 (and Final)

In the earlier two posts, we talked about how important it was to (1) pick a coach who really understood the sport and (2) could communicate effectively with your son or daughter. What we want to cover in this third and final post on this subject is picking a coach who can communicate effectively with you, the parents!

Rule #3: Pick a Coach Who Can Communicate with YOU!!

While at first blush this might appear to be the lesser of the three rules, I've found as a check-writing parent that this is #1 with me. It is very frustrating to have your children get emotionally committed to a coach, only to find out that that coach is not able to leverage you as an extension of your child's training program. Missed appointments, confusion regarding charges, and double-booking lessons fall more on the administrative side of things. While being a PITA (Pain In The Ass), they really don't substantially impact your child all that much.

I'm actually more concerned with a coach who can not (or will not) communicate effectively with the parents the skills and drills they are teaching, and not effectively leverage the parent as an extension of the training program. Let's face it, while your child might spend 1 to 2 hours a week with a particular coach (and even that's quite a bit), they are going to spend 1 to 2 hours a day with you on the topic.

Kids won't improve dramatically by spending more time with the coach learning new skills. Kids will make dramatic progress if they can spend 30 to 60 minutes a day working on their own to perfect the skills that they have been taught. And as a parent, that means knowing enough about the skills and drills to help re-enforce what the coach has been teaching -- becoming an extension of their training and development program.

So let's review some questions that you should ask about the coach:

• Is the coach receptive to questions from the parents? The coach should not only be receptive, but should encourage questions. In fact, I've seen coaches actually get the parents involved directly in the drills. There's no better way for the parents to learn the drills then to do them with the child (physical abilities not withstanding).
  
• Does the coach share any documents or guides with the kids and parents about drills and skills? The more that the coach has documented, the better. And it does not need to be high-quality material. Photocopies of well-worn documents work just fine. You, as a parent, just need enough material so that you can remind your child how to do the drill.
• Does the coach take videos and make them available to the parents? This is very helpful when you want to review specific skills and drills with your child. In fact, I'd argue that no modern coach should be without a video system. How they use it? Well, that's a topic for a separate posting...

Smart coaches understand how to leverage parents as an extension of their programs, and that creates a win-win-win with everyone: the coach gets his point across, the kid learns more, and the parent gets to continue to be a parent. Doesn't get much better than that!!

By the way, if you have any ideas or suggestions for this list, please feel free to reply to this post. That benefits everyone!

Best of luck as parents coaching youth!!

Picking A Coach - Part 2

This is part 2 of my “How to Pick a Personal Trainer” blog. In the first part I talked about making sure that you’ve picked a trainer for your son or daughter who really knows what they are talking about. In summary, watch them work with others, check references and don’t be afraid to try different trainers to see which ones are the most knowledgeable. In this part, I want to talk about how to pick someone who really can communicate with the kids.

Rule #2: Pick someone who can communicate with kids.

My kids have worked with several coaches and trainers over the past 15 years. And I will say right now that the difference between those that can actually communicate with kids and those that can not is HUGE!! No amount of intimate knowledge about the sport or subject can overcome the inability to effectively communicate. If the coach / trainer can not effectively communicate with your son or daughter, cut your losses and walk. There is just no way to overcome this difficulty. Here are some questions to ask to see if their message and training are getting through to your child:

• Is your child having fun? No amount of knowledge or communication will be effective if your child is not having fun. The minute that this becomes a “job” for them, then it’s time to re-evaluate the situation.

• Is your child engaged when the coach / trainer talks? Are their eyes tracking the coach the whole time or are they distracted by the activities around them? A good coach / trainer not only can cut through all the other distractions, but also should be smart enough to pick an environment where the child won’t get easily distracted.

• Is the Drills-to-Talking ratio 90% or higher? Some talking is necessary to explain the benefits and to communicate how to do a particular drill, but kids should be doing, not listening. There is nothing more boring to a child and their parent than a coach who doesn’t understand when to shut up.

• Does the coach have several different drills to teach a skill? Doing the same drill over and over can make the sport drudgery for the child. Ask the coach for examples of the different drills that they use to teach and reinforce a particular skill.

• Do they know when to push? Good coaches understand when they can push a child without causing too much discomfort. They are able to read the body language to understand when the child is ready to be pushed.

• Do they know when to be gentle? As important as pushing (and maybe even more so with young kids) is knowing when to call it a day. On some days, nothing seems to work. The child had a bad day at school or a fight with a parent or is just plain tired. On days like that, the coach should be able to read the situation and adjust accordingly – lots of easy drills where success is easy to attain and lots of fun drill

Best of luck as parents coaching youth!!