What it takes to be an athlete

Do you know what makes a good athlete?

A lot of people seem to recognize when they see an amazing play in sports that the person performing the play is an amazing athlete.   But what does it take to get that person to be able to do those things that amaze and captivate us.  Simply put, the person must possess enough of the requisite motor pattens to be able to solve the spacial problem with their body and be able to do so quickly that it looks natural.  Yes, when a defender avoids a blocker and makes a great tackle, they are just solving a spacial problem with their body.  Being able to do this and do this quickly is what refer to as a great athlete.



 

So how do you make one of these athletes.  It first starts with the acquisition of  a diverse set of motor patterns.  One of the biggest problems in sport today is that youths are specializing in sport so young that they aren't exposed to a wide array of motor patterns and thus have a limited set of patterns to solve these spacial problems or another way to say it "they are limited athletically".   Sure they look good if they are playing against the same level of the sport they are used too, but what happens when they go to the next level.  The speed changes and the play changes which requires them to solve different spacial problems, and they can't do it, so they aren't good at their sport any more.  To acquire a diverse set of motor patterns an athlete must participate in a wide array of activities and/or be in a structured program that understands and helps develop these crucial patterns.

Here at the Spot Athletics we expose our young athletes to as many motor patterns as we can in hopes that we can help engrain a diverse set of patterns in which they can dominate their chosen sport as they age.  On top of developing this diverse set of motor patterns we also strengthen the muscles they need to perform them.  Most importantly we also strengthen the nervous systems which controls how these patterns are used.  Through various plyometric and neural patterning drills we are able to get our young athletes to think and react to a diverse set of spacial problems much quicker.  What this all means is that our young athletes look much better in their sports and in general movement (athleticism) as well.  This is just another example of how The Spot Athletics uses it's vast knowledge of how athletes are built to make our young athletes into future champions.