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developing athletes at practice

9/12/2023

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“The best athletes have the most potential to be the best players.”

An insufficient amount of time is spent during sport practices on specific, individualized athletic development.  In my opinion, the best athletes have the most potential to be the best players.  I do not think simply playing sports maximizes athletic development.  I think proper instruction of sport fundamentals and mechanics utilizes and enhances athleticism, but a strong foundation of athletic training pre-season and during the season is the springboard to elite player development.

Prior to, and possibly including 8th grade, I think all players benefit from playing multiple sports.  During and after 8th grade, playing multiple sports in school may or may not be the best option for those athletes who desire to be elite in a given sport. (See, Sport Specialization – A More Holistic and Realistic Perspective – April 2022)  One of the factors which would definitely assist a player becoming elite in a sport is requiring all coaches in those sports to prioritize athletic development in their practice plans.

I think there are several reasons why many coaches do not do this.  Many coaches prioritize winning games and championships and they are currently able to do so without training athleticism.  Some coaches do not know why the best athletes have the most potential to be the best players.  Those coaches may also lack the ability to look at their players and see the athletes, i.e., to mentally remove the implements out of the player’s hand and just recognize the flaws in the movement of the athlete’s body.  They may not realize that the solution to flaws in the fundamentals of their players may not be in doing more sport skill drills, but may need to be first addressed as an athleticism deficiency in the player’s body, i.e., mobility, flexibility, stability, strength, power, speed or agility.

Many youth coaches do not have the education and training to teach the specifics of body movement even if they wanted to do so.  Of those who do, most probably do not know how to program such training into their practice plans in a logical, kinetic, and ultimately, a sport-specific manner.  Leagues should give them this education and training and should require that they use it on every team and, in every year, in a progressive, league-directed or supervised manner.

Many high school athletes erroneously assume and rely upon the playing of multiple sports year around to exclusively develop their athleticism.  Most of the time, these players would improve much more by, for 4-5 months, doing non-traditional sports such as martial arts 2 days per week and training 3 days per week with a nationally certified strength and conditioning coach who is a movement specialist with a proven track record of training players in the athlete’s sport.

It is essential that coaches actually teach athleticism every day with the same individual attention to detail, monitoring, and accountability as they do with the sport skills.  Coaches must train preparation, anticipation, and reaction, as well as, action.  When doing these things, coaches and trainers must frequently integrate the use of the ball used in the player’s sport into the exercise.

Here are the aspects of athleticism that can and should be trained as a part of every practice:
  • Body mobility, flexibility, and stability including ab/core development;
  • Body movement, coordination, and synchronization in all planes of motion with an early and continuous emphasis on running form, agility, and explosiveness.  Specifically, from the first year in youth sports, players should be taught to get progressively better at crawling, walking, marching, skipping, running, bounding, sprinting, backpedaling, jumping, hopping, and shuffling.
  • Strength training to learn how to push, pull, squat, hinge, and carry beginning with body weight exercises and progressing to using bands, kettle bells, med balls, and weighted implements of all types.
  • Speed, agility, balance, and Plyometrics using speed ladders, discs, cones, hurdles, boxes, jump rope, and Bosu Balls.
  • All improvement should be individually assessed and periodically objectively verified, e.g., through technology or, at the least, with a stopwatch.
  • Breathing before, during, and after exercise and competition.
  • Visual acuity and mental focus and toughness
When leagues and coaches prioritize training athletes in every practice in every sport, the quality of play will increase dramatically, as will their goal of winning games and championships.

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Goal Setting

9/2/2023

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“Set S-M-A-R-T Goals – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Trackable – and begin with life skills.”

The process of teaching is a matter of establishing a progression of building blocks leading from the most basic step to the mastery of the skill, for sport and for life.  A coach must set goals to accomplish the desired outcomes.  Most coaches do not set specific goals prior to the season for how they are going to teach the fundamentals of their sport and do not establish any goals at all with regard how they are going to teach life lessons within the game for beyond the game.  And when a coach or player are setting or accomplishing goals, or teaching or learning a skill, it is the process that is important.

If you ask a coach or a player what their goals are for the season, most often you will hear result-oriented goals.  They will talk about winning games and championships, batting averages, hitting for power, on-base and fielding percentages, etc.  This result-oriented focus will not lead to the best results because good process leads to good results.  Master the process and good things will happen both in sport and in life.

Coaches and players will rarely talk about setting goals for teaching life skills, being a better mentor or a better teammate.  The absence of these goals will result in a hollow sport experience.  These coaches and players will lose in the ultimate game – coaching and being Champions for Life.

Here is an example.  This year, a Rookie Ball coach asked me for help with his initial practice plans for the baseball season.  My response was, “Please show me your goals for the season.”  The reason I asked him this was practice plans are developed from the end-of-the-season backward, form the end of the week backward, and then from the end of the practice backward to the beginning.  In other words, to plan where you are going, you need to know where you want to go – today, by the end of the week, and for the season!  Specifically, you need goals to develop the coaches and team members as people, athletes and players.

In response to my question, the Rookie Ball coach said he had some goals, but he had not written them down.  This was his way of admitting that he had not really given the idea of goal-setting much thought.  When I asked him to send me a list of goals for the season for his team, what I received were things such as: “Have each member of the team get a hit and make a “baseball play” during a game”; “Have the team end an inning by getting three outs rather than just the inning ending by the other team batting through the order or reaching the five run limit”; and “Have each member of the team get a hit off of coach-pitch and not have to use the tee”.  You see the pattern?  All of these things are result-oriented goals.  They do not address the process by which the goals will be achieved.

Similarly, when the coach sent me his practice plan for the first practice, it merely included the usual list of hitting and fielding drills.  The drills had no purpose other than “to teach the players how to hit and field a ball properly”.  No thought was given to the building block progression for teaching the players the process of hitting or fielding.  For example, instead of just having three stations for hitting balls off of tees and soft toss, it would be much more productive to have an assistant coach at each station teach one basic skill such as how to grip the bat, how to properly load into the batter’s box, how to establish an athletic, balanced stance, etc., one station, one building block principle at a time in the proper order.  The mastery of this process and building blocks will lead to the desired results.

It is equally important to have on the list athletic, Baseball IQ, and life skill goals and the process by which the coaches were going to achieve them too.  And always begin and end with life skills!  

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    Author

    Adam Sarancik is the owner of Elevate Sports Academy which mentors student-athletes in physical conditioning, nutrition, career and college counseling, and sport skills.  He has spent most of his adult life coaching youth ages 8-22 in baseball, soccer, and basketball.  He is a favorite speaker at and director of coaches' and players' clinics. 

    In baseball, Adam’s teams have consistently won championships at every youth league and high school level.  In administration, he has served as league founder, board member and coaches’ and players’ clinic director many times in his 40+ year coaching career.
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    Adam is a frequently published contributor to the ABCA publication Inside Pitch, Collegiate Baseball News, and the Coaches Insider, Coach Deck and Sports Engine websites.  He is also a favorite guest on national podcasts for coaching sports. 
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    Adam is known for his comprehensive and innovative practice plans and for consistently developing championship teams and players who excel at the next level. 

    He earned his Bachelor of Science degree from San Diego State University, his J.D. degree from the University of San Diego School of Law and his Masters of Arts in Teaching from Western Oregon University.


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