Ohio State Buckeyes and dead lifting

My daughter Avery isn't 2 years old but she is already a big buckeye fan and knows how to dead lift.  People wonder why Ohio people love the Buckeyes so much but it is taught from such a young age, it just can't be helped.  People also wonder why Ohio has an extraordinary amount of great powerlifters, it's because our kids learn how to lift early.  So here is a video of my daughter wearing her scarlet and grey cheer outfit and doing some dead lifts.  Obviously she is too young to really lift any weight as she can't understand directions but it boggles my mind how parents are scared to let their kids lift any weights in a gym.  Yet these same parents don't think twice when their child is jumping out of a tree, carrying a laundry basket or even carrying around their backpack all day.  These everyday activities place far more stress on the spine than picking up a 10lb weight, yet for some reason their is a negative connotation around weights.  If I do nothing else in this life if I can turn around the illogical stigmatism's about lifting weights then I will have accomplished something very good.  Because proper weight training in young children instills essential motor patterns and improves nervous system function so that our children don't get hurt when they start with competitive sport.

JL 48'' box jump

This is a video of me doing a 48'' box jump today.  In the picture you can see that my hips are at or a little above Stephen's head.   Stephen is 6'2'', which means my hips were at about 74'' or so.  I should be able to land a 65'' box, but because I have had 7 knee surgeries my knee flexion is very poor and I must land box jumps with mostly straight legs.   This shows how important mobility is for athletes and the ability to box jump high as well.   We work a ton on mobility with our athletes and ourselves because being strong isn't very helpful if you cannot use it properly in competition.

CAAT Program

My 20 month old daughter knows what a squat is and we work on pushing her knees out when she squats, the same as I do with my 20 year old athletes.   Teaching the proper movement pattern for these young children ensure that they are successful with these movements as they age.  If a child learns how to use their hips to create force for kicking, throwing and/or punching then they will be successful in any rotational based sport.  Teaching these basic patterns are essential to a child's success in sport and that's why we developed our CAAT (complete athletic ability training) program.  In this program for 6-11 year olds we work on correctly establishing basic movement patterns that will transfer into greater athletic ability as the children age.  Many parents put children in organized sports on a year round basis but most of those sport coaches don't understand correct movement patterns or how to teach them.  This leads to the state of our children today who have poor overall athleticism but have very high sport skill due to the time spent practicing actual sport skill.  I've seen many children who could juggle a soccer ball like a pro but can't run or jump properly so they don't excel at their sport because of the lack of overall athleticism.  Don't let your child fall into this trap and enroll them in our CAAT program so that they have the tools they need to succeed in any sport they choose.

Great Ab exercise!

 

Here one of our young wrestlers is doing inverted abs.  This is a very advanced and difficult exercise.

 

Selecting a Strength & Conditioning coach

Choosing a strength and conditioning coach for yourself or for your athlete can be a daunting task.  How do you know who will help them improve and excel and who will just keep them the same or worse yet, get them hurt.  As a parent I understand that we want the best for our kids, it's just that sometimes we don't have a way of judging what's best.  The first place to start is by selecting someone who is an actual strength and conditioning coach.  Just sending your athlete to a personal trainer will not get them the results that their hard work deserves.  I mean you wouldn't take your Ford to a Chevy dealer to get fixed would you, then why give your athlete to someone who is not qualified to handle them.   Next, realize that your athlete working hard is not an indication of a good program or strength coach.  You could literally hire a bum who is begging for change and offer him a steak dinner if he makes your athlete run till he pukes and I bet he'll get the job done.  Does this mean this bum is a great strength coach or that he has a great program, of coarse not.  A good strength coach realizes that recovery and periodization are part of an athlete making continual, year-round gains.  So don't judge a strength coach on if they are making your kids work hard, judge them on the results at the end of the program.  Lastly, ask the strength coach when they train themselves.  I would never have my athletes do something that I had not done myself, yet these "personal trainers" who don't ever lift a weight are telling an athlete how to squat.  I'm not saying that the strength coach has to be a world class athlete but if they don't practice what they preach then how good of examples are they for your athlete.

So to sum up:  1. Hire an actual strength coach, not just a personal trainer                                  2. Killing athletes every workout isn't a good indicator of a good strength coach, results are.    3. Never hire a trainer or strength coach that doesn't train hard themselves