I don't know why I love you, but I do...

A few weeks ago I let the cat out of the bag and told you that although exercise is great for increasing strength, flexibility, cardiovascular health, ability to focus, energy production and heart health, it isn't your best bet for fat loss. What is? Lets say it together:

CHANGE MY EATING HABITS.

Great. Now that we are all on the same page lets look at what your priorities should be for fat loss

1. Nutrition
2. Interval training
3. Strength training
4. Traditional cardiovascular training

However, the something that should be included in the nutrition component is psychological training. Many people have psychological issues surrounding food and eating. Often they are emotional eaters who eat to feel better, or eat when they are anxious or perhaps even eat when they are bored. This doesn't even begin to mention how culturally we are conditioned to celebrate anything and everything by EATING.

I miss the days when people would have a dance party, or a slumber party or some other get together that didn't revolve around food. But now we celebrate Columbus Day by eating (okay, so maybe that's a bit far fetched, but not too far!) But I digress.

Take this next week to evaluate your eating habits. JOURNAL YOUR FOOD INTAKE THIS WEEK! See what times of day you eat, what types of foods you eat during the day and if there is any dramatic event that is associated with poorer choices in food.

Just make yourself a spreadsheet with the following labels across the top: "Time, Food, Quantity, Event?"

Then every time you eat something, put the time, the food, the quantity and list if there was any type of event or occurrence that may have led to the eating. If there was no event, then simply put which meal during the day it was for. If it was breakfast, type/write "breakfast". If it was snack, type/write "snack" in that column.

If you know why you are eating, you can get a better idea of how to control it and be the type of person who eats to live rather than lives to eat.

Have a great week off. The "Recovery Week Challenge" will be up Tuesday morning when I return from my motorcycle racing weekend!

Why am I doing this?

I've said it many times before. And I am going to keep saying it no matter how much parents don't want to hear it:

Developing movement skills, and thus athletic ability, is like developing any other skill - It takes time and there is a process. Just like there is a process to learning the rules of language.

So here at Peak Performance, we emphasize teaching skills through drills. Far too many sport coaches, whether they be volunteer or "professionals" are busy simply running kids through drills without teaching them the one thing that matters, WHY AM I DOING THIS DRILL?

You really have to make a conscious effort to teach kids how to move. So if you simply ask them to do a ladder drill. Yeah they will probably be able to do it, but if you can't teach them how it carries over to their sport, then you're simply making a "ladder" athlete (a kid who's great at ladder drills). And last time I checked, there wasn't a trophy or scholarships given out for being good at ladder drills.

At Peak Performance, we emphasize the big WHY. We want our athletes to know why they are doing a drill and what skill it is they are developing.

We want you as parents to know as well. So if there is ever a point that your young athlete comes to you and says, "we did such and such drill today...but I don't know why," PLEASE send me an email. I want you and your athletes to know what it is your kids are doing and why it is your kids are doing it.

Our Movement First Program will be starting on August 30th. This is for athletes ages 8-12 and the time is from 6-6:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sign them up today!! The cost is $48. And trust me, this will be one of the best things you could do to develop their movement skills and thus, athletic ability!

Youth Sports Development

When people think of youth sports development, they often think of sports skill development such as improving their golf swing, curveball or jump serve.

But if you want to actually develop a young athlete, improving their movement is a MUST.

How can anybody possible think that a 14 year old who has minimal hip mobility, a tight upper back and a weak core can possibly hit a curveball by "working" on his swing? Take a step back and see what the is the basis of the swing?

Movement.

Teach kids to move more efficiently, with fewer biomechanical restrictions and you'll clean up the swing in a hurry without even working on the swing!

Our Summer Speed, Strength & Power Camp just passed the half-way point. Within the 2 different groups, there are 2 different groups split on ability level/age. Each group gets a slightly different workout. The youngest group is focused on exploring movement, learning what their bodies are capable of. The oldest group is refining movement and learning HOW to workout on their own. The other two groups are essentially one step ahead of the younger group.

This is the spectrum that needs to be followed. This is DEVELOPMENT. The younger athletes we are working with will one day be at the level of the older kids. But there is no way in heck that the 8 year-old's in our groups will be doing the same workouts as the 18 year old. The 8 year old is different than the 12 year-old, who is different than the 15 year-old who is different than the 18 year-old.

Train smart, train hard, train MOVEMENT FIRST.

Another success story of a Peak Performance athlete...

Over the course of the year I get quite a few updates about the players that we have trained. This year has been exceptionally well as we have had 4 of our seniors accept offers to play their respective sport in college.

However, today's update is about a high school softball player who will be playing for the Central Cal Intensity club softball team this summer. Cheyenne Rodriguez has been coming to us for a year and a half now. I first met Cheyenne at a New Year's Baseball/Softball Camp that we co-hosted at the end of 2008.

She signed up for our In-Season Baseball/Softball Program in January of 2009. She continued into the fall of 2009 and trained all the up to the start of softball season. Cheyenne has been one of the hardest working PLAYERS in our program! She has become one of the more explosive hitters on her team, consistently hitting the ball hard in every time she is up to bat.

We have worked to develop the connection between the amazing rotational power of Cheyenne's hips and the limitless potential of a strong core, to develop an amazing swing. This has been a work in progress. It wasn't a weekend camp, it wasn't hitting balls in practice over and over. It was teaching Cheyenne how to develop power and transfer through her core to her arms using medicine ball rotational hip throws, cable chops and single leg pushup's. Then those movement skills were carried into her sport skills.

So how well is she doing?

Cheyenne LAUNCHED a massive HOME RUN this weekend in an NSA tournament up in Madera, which saw CCI take the 18u championship!

Cheyenne and the rest of the CCI 18u team will be training at Pair & Marotta Peak Performance this summer to continue to develop every part of their athleticism. Most of the team was able to make it in for the past 3 months of our In-Season Baseball/Softball training program and we saw an amazing change in their leg strength, core strength and foot speed. But it must be learned over period of time.

Our Speed, Strength & Power (SSP) Camp can do just that for your players this summer. Speed and power training is a must in the competitive sports of today. Great players will only get by on talent for so long. But a combination of talent and movement skill training at our SSP camp will ensure a better athlete that has fewer injuries and better outcomes in competition.

This years SSP Camp starts NEXT MONDAY, June 7th. It's not too late to register! Sign up today and make sure you are one of the 20 athletes that invests 48 hours this summer training to be a Peak Performer!

Endurance Training: Do we really even need it?

Many people are unclear on the benefits of endurance training. And that can be partly attributed to the fact that most people automatically think 10k run or running a marathon. That's just the notion that endurance training brings up.

But in the past few years to many coaches have gotten away from anything associated with endurance because the thought is that it isn't "fast-twitch" enough for sports. But endurance training takes on many forms.

There is cardiovascular endurance, which is what most people think of. This is the ability to produce a high rate of energy through aerobic metabolism for a prolonged period of time.

The next is muscular endurance. This is where the concept of endurance gets tricky because most kids DO actually need endurance. Actually we all do. Endurance of postural muscles to maintain spinal stability can greatly reduce back injuries and chronic pain. Also, low weight, high rep muscular endurance training is often necessary for teaching proper movement patterns such as squats, pushups, lunges, etc.

The third is psychological endurance which is essentially what we call mental toughness. But this cannot be pounded into kids. It needs to be cultivated and trained just like other parts of performance.

Cardiovascular endurance is the one type of endurance that although great for the heart, lungs and circulatory system, can have negative muscular effects if done incorrectly. Running is the basic cardiovascular endurance exercise. But it certainly isn't the only.

Instead we can do a body weight circuit of pushups, squats, bear crawls, lateral lunges, sprint and repeat, for a period of 5-6 minutes. This would train muscular endurance as well as cardiovascular endurance without overtraining the way jogging does.

It is this type of training for youth athletes that we do at our Summer Speed, Strength & Power Camp. This performance camp has a junior group and a high school group. Both groups get endurance training but only in the appropriate methods, and durations to improve performance. In addition, a stronger core with more muscular endurance WILL improve sprinting, agility and quickness.

Sign your young athletes up by filling out this form and dropping it off at Pair & Marotta Physical Therapy at 5337 Truxtun Ext before next Friday! Let your youth athletes open next sport season with a refined set of athletic skills that will truly set them apart from the competition!

Conditioning: What exactly is it?

Conditioning is often thought of as simply post-training misery, often in the form of running and running...and running.

But when I give you this new definition of conditioning, it may very well change the way you coach or train.

Conditioning is simply the body's direct response to stimulus. The body will respond by adapting to the stimulus presented.So if you run and run and run with minimal rest or at a given speed, you or your athletes will get very good at running and running and running at that speed.

This might not be bad for endurance athletes. But think about the effects on athletes that need to sprint or sports that have specific work:rest intervals. What will this do to them?

If you're a baseball or softball player and your coach has you running laps around the diamond for 12-15 minutes, this is going to actually DECONDITION you. Yes, that is right. This will take you out of condition for your sport.

Baseball and softball requires bursts of sprinting followed by often long rest periods. So a better alternative would be to have athletes run a single, or a double followed by up to 8 times the duration of getting to the base.

So for example, if it took a player 8 seconds to run a double, their rest period should be upwards of 1:00. This may seem too long to some of you coaches. You're might calling me a liar, or some other adjective.

But slow down and think about it. If we want our players to get good at running fast, then we need to make sure they run their fastest. Will a player be able to run faster if they know they are going to have to run a 1/4 mile or if they only are running 60 yards?

You don't have to run once and then done, but have them run their double, rest for 1:00 and then repeat up to 10 times. This really won't be that tough because having 10 players running from home to 2nd will allow that first runner to rest almost a minute before the last runner pulls up. Then send them from 2nd to home. Repeat 5 times and you've got 10 sprints in 10 minutes.

So just think about the effects your training will have on the "conditioning" of your athletes. They will get better at whatever it is they do. If you want them to be weak, keep them from lifting. Want them to be slow? Make them run long periods of time with minimal rest.

Want them to be fast, agile and powerful? Send them to our Summer Speed, Strength & Power Camp. This camp will make ANYBODY faster, agile like a cat and lead them in the right direction for optimal sports performance. Don't wait, spots are filling up quickly!

Athletic Development: The Right Way

What is meant by the word "Development"? What is it to "develop" something? We can develop idea's, we can develop products, we can develop human resources.

But whatever the context it is used in, the word "develop" has one component of it that is always true: Development takes TIME. If you have ever heard the phrase "research & development" it is a long, arduous task that can take decades in some cases.

Athletic development is no different. It doesn't occur overnight. Although some parents, coaches and players want development to occur at the blink of an eye.

At Pair & Marotta Peak Performance, there have been quite a few young athletes come through. Many come for a summer and then go on their way, upset that their vertical didn't improve by at least 12" or that their bench press didn't improve by 80 lbs.

However, there have been a handful of kids (and parents) that have seen the light and understood the concept of athletic development. They have understood that it takes time, that lasting progress is a slower process.

I had the pleasure of watching one of these young athletes this last Friday. His name is Matt Packer. Matt first came in during our Summer Speed, Strength & Power Camp 2007. Matt was smaller than other guys his age, and in fact smaller than some guys 2 or 3 years younger than him. But Matt and his dad Dave realized that long term success wasn't going to hinge on whether Matt was hitting home runs during his sophomore year in high school, or having a vertical jump of 36" by the end of summer.

Instead they took that long term approach. Since June of 2007 Matt has been coming in faithfully 3 times per week during the baseball off-season and usually once or twice per week during the season. He was seeing a hitting coach once a week and just keeping his sights set on the long term goal of just getting better.

This year Matt has started each game at 2nd base. He's been hitting the ball hard on a line as well as the occasional double off the wall. His work has paid off with a very consistent season. Then it was Friday against Centennial that Matt's YEARS of hard work were got the ovation he deserves.

Matt hit an opposite field 3-run home-run in the 2nd inning of Stockdale's 16-4 win at Centennial. Matt had a stellar day going 2 for 3 with four RBI's and a walk.He's one of the rare kids who always shows up with ready to work. And it's paid off. Matt will be playing baseball in college.

So to the parents and coaches of young athletes, remember that you are developing athletes. You are not training professionals. Take the Development route and long-term success is guaranteed.

But short cut the development process and all bets are off.

Congratulations to Matt on his first high school home run and a spectacular outing against a top team and top pitcher!

To enroll in our Summer Peak Performance Camp, send me an email and get your Athletic Development started!