First thing in the off-season...

Poor nutrition will minimize off-season gains

High school and junior league football seasons are either over or coming to a close. So now its time to start thinking about what to do in the off-season. Most people immediately think weight lifting. But there is something else that if not taken care of, will quickly reduce off-season performance:The first thing that needs to be done is to evaluate what your kids are eating.

Sure everybody wants to talk about sports training and weight lifting to get ready for the next sports season. But in honesty now is the time to look at the nutrition habits of your athletes, and even your family.

Here are some simple rules to follow when putting together a weekly menu for you and your young athletes.

4 days of lunch done.

1. Make sure your kids eat a breakfast of grains and protein. A quick and easy breakfast for them is to have some Wheaties, Cheerios or All-Bran with a sliced up banana or some berries tossed in for some sweetness.
2. Have them take their lunch to school. One thing you can do to spice up their lunches is to grill 4-5 pieces of chicken on Sunday afternoon and then they have a great source of muscle building, fat burning protein to take to school. Chicken is so universal you can do make a laundry list of great lunches using grilled chicken. 
3. Have a bowl of fruit sitting out around the house and challenge your family to eat it all before the week is up. Fruit is not meant to last weeks on end. So you should be shopping for fruit on a weekly basis.
4. Have mixed nuts in a small bag that your kids can take to school and munch on. Kids should be eating every 3-4 hours. If they have a healthy snack on hand they are much more likely to eat a healthy snack rather than the junk that's floating around their school.
5. Buy your kids an BPA free water bottle to take to school. Water is essential for the body to function. And most kids aren't getting NEAR enough. Again, if they have a resource on hand, they are much more likely to use it.

These tips will help ensure your young athletes stay well nourished during the day and are also fueled up when game time arrives. 

Check the link to the right for the "Athlete Nutrition BluePrint" from physical therapist and strength coach Jeff Cavaliere. He's put together an awesome program that will put your athletes on the path to success.

Sponges and Pruning

How many parents want their young athlete to better than any other player in his or her age group?

Probably a lot of you. When your young athlete outperforms the competition, it is definitely something to be proud about.

However, if you child isn't the all-star on the 11U team, don't worry. THEY'RE 11!!

Don't try to turn your young player into a college athlete right now, because they don't have to be. At Pair & Marotta's Peak Performance Camp we had a pretty wide variety of athletes coming in. Most played baseball, some played soccer and a few played football.

Many played the same sport year round and other played multiple sports throughout the year. And the one thing that myself and Brian both noticed -

The kids who played more than one sport were by a sizeable difference, the better athletes.

Why is this though? Parents dump a lot of money into club teams and making sure that their child is playing the same sport year round. I mean if they want to get better, shouldn't they play more and more?? Not necessarily.

At a young age kids are like sponges, both mentally and physically. This is the time when we should be flooding them with different stimuli to make sure that we are building connections between the movement of their limbs and their brains.

What also happens at this time is a phenomenon called "pruning". You can look at pruning as the "use it or lose it" stage. If a child does not build bridges from their locomotion nerves to their brain, the body will "prune" the connection site because it is not needed based on minimal usage.

After this very sensitive time, if the nerves are not used and the skill is not regarded as important enough to maintain, then it is often very difficult to retrain the skill.

All in all, it is very important to present a wide variety of stimuli to young athletes and to start with very general movements before specific movements. This will ensure that as athletes grow they maintain movements that are needed as the foundation for more sport specific movements that will be refined as they get older.

Be sure to expose your young athlete to a wide variety of movements, sports and games as it will not be detrimental (contrary to popular belief) but only serve to make them better ATHLETES as they mature.