Fostering Emotional Resiliency and a Growth Mindset in Young Athletes
“Everything that occurs is not only usable and workable, but is actually the path itself.” —Pema Chodron At Olympia Fitness + Performance, we train athletes who have ambitious goals relative to competing in high school, college and beyond. We support them in their athletic development, and also help them to develop emotional competency for the long haul. What does that mean? Often the ability to manage the disappointment, frustration, and deep sense of loss that comes with perceived failure and making mistakes. Stop and think about this fact for a moment: The
Conditioning Training For Performance
Strength and conditioning coaches occasionally direct the majority of their focus on their athlete’s movement quality and strength development while mistakenly letting their conditioning take a back seat. I’ve also noticed that within the industry we’ve developed a habit of referring to ourselves as just “strength coaches”. Perhaps because it’s simply easier to say, but we need to remind ourselves that we are strength and conditioning coaches. We cannot view the conditioning aspect of training as supplemental because then we’d be doing our athletes a huge disservice. It’s no secret
Stop letting your core training go to waste!
Good form is always the most important thing in exercise. It’s more important than your range of motion, it’s more important than how much resistance you can use, and it’s more important than whether or not you finish all of your reps. If you can’t maintain proper form then an exercise becomes useless in the sense that it simply reinforces bad movement patterns. When someone doesn’t understand what an exercise should feel like and you tell them to move a body part from point A to point B, their body
Knee Injuries and Female Athletes
The last thing any athlete or parent wants to hear is that they need a whole year to recover from a serious knee injury. Too often young female athletes suffer from knee injuries that sideline them for a good chunk of time and take them away from the joy of playing their respected sport. Sadly, female athletes are more prone to knee injuries than their male counterparts. There are multiple reasons for this and they include anatomy, core stability, and conditioning. So what can young women do? Should they avoid participating
Exercise V. Training – Athletes Must Understand the Difference
There's an old motto in the world of athletics "the best type of ability is availability". High school athlete's account for an estimated 2 million injuries and 500,000 doctors visits every year. According to the CDC, more than half of all sport-related injuries are preventable. So what’s the real issue here? If you ask me, based on observation and talking to young athletes, they’re either not putting enough effort into taking care of their bodies or they’re getting training advice from a friend or a sport coach who isn’t qualified
Injury Prevention: Why Do We Work on Single Leg Balance?
Successful single-leg balance can be defined as your ability to maintain upright body posture without having to step down or grab onto something. In more scientific terms, it refers to the ability of your central nervous system to keep the body’s center of mass within safe boundaries above the base of support (your foot) during or after perturbation. Perturbation is commonly defined as a disturbance of motion, course, arrangement, or state of equilibrium. Some examples of disturbances include an unstable surface, body contact with another athlete or an unexpected obstacle, or
3 Exercises for Improving Your Hip Hinge
In part one, we focused on the hip hinge as it relates to deadlifting and athletic performance. In part two I’m writing for the average gym goer; Those who aren’t young athletes, but want to reach a high level of fitness without getting hurt. To review, a hip hinge is the ability to move the hips without allowing the low back to flex along with it. The failure of the hips to move can often be the chief culprit for low back pain. We typically see tight hips in those
3 Exercises That Your Athlete Must Avoid At All Costs
When training an athlete of any level and age, the number one goal is to ensure that they don't get hurt. Whether it's on the field or in training, an injury that keeps an athlete off the field makes them less valuable to their team. Training to prevent injuries on the field is a little more complicated than avoiding training injuries because of the uncontrolled nature of competitive sports. The weight room however, is a controlled environment, and a controlled environment is a much easier place to prevent injuries. It
Deadlifting Part 1 – Why You Shouldn’t Deadlift Until You’ve Mastered the Hip Hinge
Out of all exercises in existence, the Deadlift might be the purest display of full body strength because it stresses just about the entire musculoskeletal system from head to toe. There’s something about pulling heavy weight off the ground that gets us feeling all macho-like. The Conventional Deadlift begins by flexing at the hips and gripping the bar with an overhand grip (setup), and moving the hips from flexion into extension while keeping a neutral spine. There are several variations that work the body differently, like the Romanian Deadlift, Hex
Athletes Improve in the Off-season
Golf is a sport, but many people don’t think of it as being “athletic”. Whether it’s because there’s no running involved, or because many people indulge in adult beverages while playing, for some reason it’s not viewed in the same light as many other sports. For those who really want to improve though, they should view it as any other athlete would look at their sport. For many people the cool weather comes around and they immediately put their clubs in the basement, not to be seen again until their