I don't teach athletes how to jump...

It never fails that people want to know how much their athletes vertical leap will improve IF they enroll our training programs. If they don't like the answer they get they usually brush me off and head off looking for somebody that will give them the answer they are looking for.


So in reality many parents are simply asking a question of my ability. But a parent or coaches concerns about my ability should not lie in whether I can improve their vertical jump, but whether I can keep them injury proof. Here is why.


I WON'T TEACH YOUR ATHLETE TO JUMP, UNTIL THEY KNOW HOW TO LAND.


If a skydiver can't land, should he really be jumping out of a plane?


The majority of non-contact knee and ankle injuries come from improper foot placement during deceleration/landing or from inadequate joint stabilization during landing. Either way, the problem is during the landing.


I have been researching hamstring strains in sprinters and even in those cases, the hamstring is never injured on the pull through, but rather is injured immediately after the heel strike following the flight phase.

Soccer Player Cutting

So if you want to keep your players safe, teach them how to land. Teach them how to decelerate and teach them that having a high vertical leap, possessing a fast shuttle run and having a lightning quick T-test is only a result of proper deceleration training - the same type of quality training that we focus on in our "Bullet Proof Your Knees" Soccer Camp.


We are starting tomorrow and still have a handful of spaces available. The camp meets on Tues/Thurs from 4-5pm for 6 weeks. For only a $120 investment, your athlete will come away more agile, quicker, and most importantly, with a much lower risk of non-contact injury!


For more information send me an email at aaron@pairmarotta.com.

What your squat says about your injury potential

A squat is the most simple of movements. But at the same time it is the most complex. And because it is the most complex, how you squat tells a lot about how your body is working. 

http://www.elon.edu/images/e-web/athletics/strengthconditioning/sc9.jpg

Each joint has to control force from a handful of different muscles pulling on it in different directions. A simple way to envision this is a telephone pole being held up by stabilizing lines to keep it straight up. If one of those lines were to be released, what would happen to the pole? It would lean into the direction that still has the lines attached.

The same thing goes on in the joints of the body. However, because the knee is the joint of two long bones (femur, tibia) it is particularly important that this joint has muscles pulling with equal force in each direction. The squat tells us all we need to know about how a player controls the motion at the knee and the hips.

However, for many youth soccer players, equivalent strength isn't the case. Often times the quadriceps are the strongest muscle acting on the knee while the hamstrings and gluteal muscles of the hip have the greatest input into controlling the lateral motion and rotation at the knee. 

ACL tears are most common in female soccer

The knee is meant to flex and extend forward and backward. However, there is very little room for movement from side to side or for the tibia to rotate under the femur. The gluteal muscles and hamstrings help control these motions. However, so many soccer players are not strong enough in the gluteal or hamstring muscles to prevent excessive movement in these planes of motion.

This is how the dreaded ACL sprain/tear occurs. A combination of the femur shifting forward on the tibia, the tibia rotating outward under the femur and the knee caving inward towards the other knee. It's what I call the Perfect Storm. The reason this is the perfect storm is that it is the most vulnerable position for a player to be in. At that point, the player has the least amount of muscle recruitment and control over what happens next. And inevitably, knee injuries will occur.

So how can you prevent this? Well the first step is to TRAIN your players on what the position of vulnerability looks like. After that you need to develop strength in the muscles that prevent these three motions from occurring. The final step is to train them how to change direction and decelerate effectively to keep themselves out of this position. Click on the picture to the right to read about how a promising soccer player's season and possibly career was cut short due to this nasty, but PREVENTABLE injury.

Knowing the types of exercises and skill sets to train to prevent ACL injuries are what we do here at Pair & Marotta Peak Performance. "Bullet Proof Your Knees" is a 6-week soccer pre-season program that focuses on developing hamstring and gluteal strength properly align the knee in a high speed movement. The "Bullet Proof Your Knees" camp starts Tuesday, August 30th and will run every Tuesday and Thursday from 4-5pm. For more information, email aaron@pairmarotta.com or visit www.pairmarotta.com/fitness.