Field and Court Athlete Agility
Knee Injury Prevention So why am I getting hurt? Welcome back, nerds. This blog will focus on the agility field/court athletes with lateral movements that include (but are not limited to) soccer, football, rugby, field hockey, basketball, and lacrosse. These sports are specifically called out because they often have non-contact knee ligament tears that can occur due to either muscular imbalance, muscle fatigue leading to joint instability, or improper/lack of prehab. Muscle imbalance just means to strengthen all the muscles around a joint. SO don’t just focus on your quads - do
Pacific Ridge School Athletes Develop Community and Character
Developing Healthy Student-Athletes at Pacific Ridge School by Macaroni Kid Carlsbad According to non-profit Common Sense Media, teens consume an average of nine hours of entertainment media per day, with tweens averaging six hours. With that kind of online connectivity, it’s important for adolescents and teenagers to develop healthy physical, mental, social and emotional skills. School athletics can help build all of these, and the best environments are those in which students are supported by athletic and academic mentors, along with their peers. The athletic program at Carlsbad’s Pacific Ridge School is
Importance of Proper Youth Training Protocols
Training the youth athlete effectively takes thought, adherence to science-based modalities, patience and always a bit of fun! With the proper type of programming, training youth athletes can produce measurable results rather quickly, while still maintaining a safe environment that leads to building a foundation of efficient movement skills for the future. Many of us have heard the theory that strength training for younger children can lead to stunted growth and ultimately hinder their sports performance capabilities in the future. While there are definitely some exercises and training protocols that have
Science + Perspective When Training Action Sports Athletes
I'm not a huge fan of terms like "skate specific work out" or "strength and conditioning for surfers." At the end of the day, action sports athletes require improvement of the same physical qualities that conventional athletes require. Qualities such as strength, power, flexibility, and energy system development. For example, a skateboarder may not need a 400-pound deadlift, but he can absolutely benefit from improvements in strength. It's not just his or her muscles that get stronger. The integrity of ligaments, tendons, and bone density improve. This means when high impact landings occur,
The NAKOA Experience: FMS
Would we be allowed to jump in a car and drive along the freeway at 80 miles an hour without having obtained a driver’s license and/or understand the rules of the road? How about deciding to just start your Ph.D. with no Masters or bachelor’s degree? Dream on… So, how about loading a new client with a 200 lbs barbell compound exercise with no understanding of their current movement literacy? This type of coaching is not only unrealistic, it is dangerous. Insert -> NAKOA Experience <- here! Our NAKOA Experience is an hour-long introductory session
5 Mobility Exercises for Injury Prevention in Runners
To understand what joints/areas need the most mobility, you must first understand the different planes of motion: sagittal, frontal (coronal), and horizontal (transverse). Sagittal is the movement of a limb forward or backward (i.e. shoulder flexion, hip extension), the horizontal plane is the rotational movement of a limb (i.e. shoulder external rotation, lumbar rotation), and the frontal plane is the movement of a limb side to side (i.e. hip abduction, side bending). When it comes to running, the most prominent plane of motion is sagittal because the overall translation of your
A Letter to a Skinny Long Jumper
Since Track & Field holds a very nostalgic, special place in my heart, I am going to be educating through a series of excerpts from an imaginary letter to my high school self (I know that sounds weird, bare with me). Yo buddy, It’s YOU from the future. Since you weren't good enough to actually BECOME a pro athlete, you are doing the next best thing and TRAINING them. That means you NOW know how AWESOME Coach Herzog and Coach Barry were for our Track team, but how many individual things YOU