The demand for high expectations can set anyone up for failure, especially for youth athletes who are not mentally tough or not accustomed to being pushed into a level of discomfort, like tryouts.

For some, participating in strenuous activities brings a stressful sense of urgency in the form of stage fright, headaches, continuous perspiration, numerous trips to the bathroom (all forms of anxiousness, nervousness, and scared feelings) performance anxiety equating to the pressure to perform.

The expectation of performance and fear of failure cripples athletes at all levels due to the worthiness of impressing a coach, parent, siblings, scouts, and teammates, often sometimes sabotaging their performance due to a lack of confidence.

Developing concrete yet consistent strategies to counteract mental setbacks can help athletes have a better experience while succeeding in their sport. In addition, assisting an athlete in identifying various triggers can help change how an athlete performs. For example, some strategies might come from practicing with those (parents, teammates, or friends from an opposing team) willing to participate, or mindset strategies that will help the athlete focus on the task and not comparison.

More importantly, talking to experienced athletes who have been in similar positions should document a consistent strategy, a plan of preparation “drills and exercises” to encourage success. Furthermore, having a plan is vital in keeping yourself calm and focused, which will enhance your capabilities despite your feelings.

Concentration, calmness, and confidence also can help one avoid the traps of focusing on the wrong things before and during the tryouts. Instead, focus on what you can control, and things might come to you easier because nothing can be achieved without practice.

Here are several tips to help anyone have success during tryouts.

Get a good night’s sleep; at least 8 hours.

Athletes that train and participate in games should sleep about an hour extra, when applicable.

Make Film study a priority.

A visualization mindset is a vital tool used by highly successful people.

Drink plenty of water, consume fruits and veggies.

Water is most healthful; more importantly, athletes can stay hydrated by adding fruits and vegetables.

Get a massage or stretch therapy.

Massages improve an athlete’s range of motion, soft tissue function, athletic performance, and decrease delayed onset muscle soreness, in addition to stiffness and fatigue after a performance.

Hit the weight room; it breeds confidence.

Exercise will certainly boost your self-esteem.

Don’t focus on your competition.

Focusing on your competition prevents original ideas and creativity. As a result, you are missing out on the best athlete you could be.

Know your weaknesses.

Knowing your weaknesses is equal to knowing your strengths for success.

Pay attention to what’s going on.

Distractions often derail individuals; therefore, directing your attention to your priorities will allow you to accomplish the unthinkable.

Listen to feedback.

It’s not uncommon to hate constructive criticism; however, criticism can be your best lesson. It’s a sign that someone loves you and cares.

Be coachable.

Coaches love coachable athletes; it improves their willingness to learn, takes your ability to the next level, and helps you attain achievable goals.

Understand The Power of Self Talk

Self-talk can assist in correcting negative thoughts and coping during difficult tryouts. Self-encouragement can go a long way before and after. It allows one to accomplish obtainable goals.

Have fun!

Always have the mindset to learn and increase in established mental abilities.

CLICK HERE to learn more about mental health in sports or HERE for more about tryouts.

Multiple elements are involved in ball security. You need a strong and fatigue-resistant upper body to keep a firm grip on the ball when massive defensive opponents paw at you. The most important muscles are in your fingers, hands, forearms, lower biceps, chest, shoulders and core.

Of course, you also need good technique.

Over the years, there have been various techniques like rice pinches, plate pinches, football holds and advanced grip training. I believe training with a balloon takes ball security drills to the next level.

Why Train With a Balloon?

The beauty of the balloon is that you can squeeze it forcefully so your entire upper body is tense and your nervous system is firing on all cylinders. But if you’re not careful the balloon will naturally squeeze its way out of your hands. So you need perfect technique. Do your favorite drills with a balloon, then try them with a football. You’ll notice how your ball security improves.

Here are the key points you need to focus on when performing ball security drills with a balloon.

For other skill positions, you can use the balloon for specific drills as well; you just have to use different drills to make it work for you.

1. Keep the balloon locked into your body while maintaining a high and tight position with the nose of the balloon pointed up and hugged tightly. This is important because the balloon will try to pop out due to the consistent perturbations of running and contact.
2. As you were taught in Football 101, squeeze down with your thumb and index finger and up with the bottom three fingers.
3. To secure the balloon effectively, use your palm, securing the surface of the balloon.
4. Tuck the balloon against the inside of your biceps and keep good pressure against your chest. The balloon will not pop.
5. Support the balloon-like a baby. Keep your elbow at an acute angle so the ball is tight against your chest.

RELATED: 

• Strengthen Your Grip on the Football with 7 Moves
• Improve Ball Security With Grip Training

A common practice for many faceoff athletes is to aggressively get the ball, which is the mindset most athletes need to gain. The lacrosse athlete has been taught to snag the ball in their pocket to control where it will go on the field. The faceoff player can win the ball forward or backward to afford their team the best opportunity to scoop up the loose ball and possibly score.

The faceoff should be a massive, chaotic scramble, where players encompass wrestling, basketball, and football techniques to constantly box, push, and control their opponent’s body and stick to aggressively check the opposition and dominate the loose ball among the turmoil. Although it is tough to judge which team will come out with possession of the ball, using a straightforward exercise at the end will ensure success on your faceoffs.

What makes faceoffs more exciting is the benefit of the Long Stick Middies (LSMs), that can get involved using their speed and aggressiveness with the ground ball battle until possession is established. Great faceoff athletes, coupled with a great wingman, in that of a good LSM, can lay a firm foundation for successful faceoff contenders and bring intimidation to start at the youth level.

There are several strategies for winning the faceoff in lacrosse; therefore, following the guidelines will improve your chances.

Have a Plan

Although your coaches might have a specific faceoff style, please follow that; as you practice, it might be best to have your unique style for effective results. Decide on implementing both strategies for winning the faceoff. Furthermore, communication is vital, so your teammates know what to expect, so they can react and learn how to react. Finally, having a plan allows you to beat your opponent.

Your Grip Strength is Weak

Once you have decided on your plan of attack, it’s now to accompany it with the appropriate grip strength. If you draw the ball out in various directions, having a solid grip enhances your stick stills and gives you the advantage because your opponent might not have adequate grip strength. Therefore, to improve grip strength, there are various ways to work on it (direct exercises, exercises using fat grips and wrist roll exercises, and indirect exercises squeezing tennis balls, etc.), where the forearms are targeted through various exercises that provide a holistic approach to practice and the game.

Have a Power Position

Before getting into the faceoff circle, you should be mentally ready and strong. Therefore, when you get down into the circle, work to maintain balance by staying low, using quickness, and staying aggressive. It would be best if you had adequate leverage to win.

Mental Focus

If you focus on the goal, your opponent’s stick, or anything else, you will lose the faceoff.

Speed Matters

As soon as the whistle is blown, the athlete must react quickly to be the first player to the ball; urgency. Athletes can train their reaction and reflex of speed through various speed training techniques or by a qualified professional to build self-confidence. It sends a strong message to everyone that lacrosse is an aggressive sport, and you are ready to win.

Apply Leverage; It’s An Art!

Whoever uses their entire body as leverage and generates more torque (force) than their opponent will ultimately be the one to win the faceoff battle. A good strength and conditioning program can teach athletes how to utilize every muscle to gain an advantage over their opponents.

Don’t Be Soft!

Your attitude as a faceoff athlete can shift the game’s momentum. For this reason, as mentioned above, those more aggressive athletes would typically win the faceoff.

This strategy demands a certain kind of mentality. But unfortunately, this mentality can only come with aggression, strength, and explosive exercises developed in the weight room. Unfortunately, one exercise many faceoff lacrosse athletes lack to develop strength and power is dynamic sled exercises; however, there is one sled exercise that builds explosiveness and toughness, which is the sled push forward and backward.

The sled pushes forward and backward and loads the lower body (glutes, quadriceps, and calves), not the spine. As a result, the sled trains your legs for power and explosiveness. Additionally, the sled propels you forward, which helps you dominate your opponent (as seen in the video).

If you don’t have access to the sled, you are out of luck!

Video 1:

Video 2:

In addition, crowd culture in a competitive social media environment for young athletes encourages creativity through repackaged athletic modalities that everyone can see. With the rise of new training modalities, athletes look for scholarships and friendly competition with friends, and their social media influence encourages the creation of short stories to express and engage varying audiences.

Through various clicks, intensive interactions push ideas based on mainstream athletic environments. Therefore, branding content and developing a visual portfolio allows one to share their craft, exchange ideas, fine-tune their content, and compete against other athletes in a visual world. In the competition process, new talent emerges, and their content is highly attuned to audiences for success.

To create success for today’s young athletes, a visual athletic portfolio showcases creative skills and abilities; images of high-quality and visually appealing fields of work. Undoubtedly the portfolio allows teams to see if they are interested and how you stand out from other athletes, what good impressions they have, and find new opportunities and connections.

Furthermore, with this robust visual portfolio, coaches and employers are interested in seeing examples of your work, which is valuable; consequently, your play must also speak for your portfolio representation.

What’s Included in an Athlete’s Visual Portfolios

A visual portfolio can include various types of content, such as school design projects, training videos, games, friendly photos, family, training, school, and team activities.

Many schools have yet to require a visual portfolio. However, they do look at one’s and their parent’s social media content. They often check for hate speech, explicit content, foul language, drug use, illegal activity, negative online presence, or badmouthing of their parent’s job or the athlete’s teams, coaches, and officials.

When creating a sports portfolio, the goal is to have twenty or more pictures covering action, news around your sport, the game, and athletic milestones. Furthermore, this portfolio should show only specific sports images and videos that are reactionary to daily circumstances.

Therefore, please ensure your visual portfolio is a collection of images showing a complete body of work, helping you stand out from your competition.

Here are a few key elements that every good visual portfolio should have:

1. Outline the content you are trying to show;
2. Tailor your content to the audience to whom it will benefit;
3. It should be well-organized, easy to navigate, easy to find, and grouped systematically;
4. Your visuals should be high quality, well-lit, and in focus;
5. Skills, talents, and extracurricular activities of the athlete should be shared;
6. Address what will be focused on;
7. Your content should efficiently navigate the videos and photos;
8. Update content daily to engage everyone with fresh content.
9. Use the correct hashtags;
10. Tag your current club and future schools.

To summarize this article, it is vital to have a visual portfolio to present effective content over a long time. By putting together a well-crafted visual portfolio, you can show potential athletic directors and other parties of interest a snippet of who you are as a person and athlete.

Injuries in Youth Sports

Recently, the injury prevention rate in young athletes playing sports, looking to go pro, or participating in sports out of their coaches’ demands and parents’ obligations, has resulted in more than 3.5 million injuries yearly. When researched additional methods, more significant injuries are concussions, sprains, and strains from recreational sports (https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=sports-injury-statistics-90-P02787); unfortunately, some injuries require surgery. Also, when considering long-term sports involvement, young athletes have undergone years of intensive Training by qualified and unqualified pro sports athletes and parents. This has led to positive gains but harmful, repetitive micro-traumatic effects.

How to Develop an Injury Prevention Plan

To prevent the effects mentioned above, qualified professionals, well-read parents, and athletes should agree with and participate in an Injury Prevention Strategy Plan or template to put a band-aid on this drastic cut. This guidance will aid in reducing the athlete’s risk of injury, limiting prolonged exposure to the physical stress of Training and practicing a sport, which is an integral part of injury prevention training.

When developing an Injury Prevention program, the nature of the warm-up specific to the sport should be considered, which involves quick and twisting motions that stress joints; target specific imbalances, loosen the tightness of highly-trained muscles, and develop the flexibility to prevent the overuse of the muscles.

Strategies for Developing Injury Prevention Techniques

Additionally, the below guidelines should be used when analyzing strategies to develop injury prevention techniques.

• Proper screening. The Functional Movement Screen (FMS) does not work for every athlete or their sport;
• Identifying the risk of activity and developing protective factors;
• Make a note of preseason, in-season, and post-season techniques and considerations;
• Increasing external means of temperature through passive stretching;
• Increasing temperature by working the body parts similar to activity;
• Increase muscle and tendon suppleness that stimulates blood flow and coordinates athletic movements;
• Improves nervous system function and oxygen utilization;
• Increases the dynamic, static, and PNF methods of stretching;
• Develop a training program that maximizes strength and targets specific muscle groups;
• Stay hydrated to prevent dehydration;
• Focus on balance techniques;
• Focus on education;
• Focus on sport-specific skills, which allows qualified individuals to develop well-thought plans;
• Ensure there is correct supervision for the specific activity;
• Target past injuries to prevent future reoccurrence;
• Include data collection methods;
• Include weekly reporting forms to monitor numbers of injuries along with practice and games injuries;
• Qualified athletic trainers are a priority;
• Proprioceptive Training – improving motor function of movements and increasing proprioceptive and sensorimotor information through activities such as the dead bug, bird dog, cone pick-ups, planks, bear crawls, and balanced activities.
• Maintaining a practical management load perspective by analyzing the athlete’s training, practice, and games workload that elicits a physiological response due to the external risk factors, fatigue, and fitness adaptations based on training events.
• Make sure coach, parent, trainers, and athletes are all on the same page;
• Analyze injuries by gender, and develop a plan to prevent those injuries.

How an Injury Prevention Plan Can Help You

Research has proven that an effective injury prevention plan and techniques can significantly improve performance in athletic events. An injury prevention plan should address vital mechanical stresses to the musculoskeletal system imposed by an athlete’s activities. Parents should remain knowledgeable on injury prevention techniques, but they should also be aware that when their child participates in additional sports and does not take time off, they are at an even greater risk of injury. Therefore, parents should work with qualified trainers, coaches, and their kids to use the tips above for a well-rounded injury prevention program.

As the above can contribute to the athlete’s overall success, unfortunately, many cannot accelerate, decelerate, reach speed, or top speed because they mindlessly move through reps, whether in the weight room or on the field. Therefore, this article refers to the counterintuitive aspect of training for speed, explosive, lateral movements, acceleration, and deceleration, which are pre-emptive for athletic performance.

Tempo training focuses on building work capacity through various light and intensive runs based on the athlete’s training age and the resistance, if any, used. If trained correctly, this would allow one to run at faster velocities with relatively short recovery periods (anaerobically), conditioning the body to adapt to working at rapid intervals and limiting recovery time.

When looking for endurance, extensive tempo work (aerobic) promotes general fitness development and recovery. Extensive tempo runs are performed in-between high-intensity training sessions on dryland (soft) surfaces (i.e., natural grass) in configurations and over distances that allow for easy implementation on a weak playing field.

For coaches and athletes, following high-low training days coupled with low-intensity tempo days throughout the week – provides a good fit for building the extensive work capacity of speed and power athletes while building recovery mechanisms before any additional training days based on the sheer volume of work performed.

While not exhaustive, tempo training on dryland can be performed in the form of medicine ball variations, shot put throws, and backward throws for the distance between specific yardage, which provides a more comprehensive yet effective low-intensity workout. Additionally, creating distances of yardage based on the particular sport ensures effective and efficient running mechanics that remain adequate for strength and efficient fatigue, pre, during, and post-season management.

Sled tempo training allows the body to handle yet adapt to measurable loads over varied distances to improve biomechanics, first step explosiveness, acceleration, and deceleration. In addition, this training can aid in preventing injuries around the major joints and muscle groups.

Here are Five Sled Tempo Training Exercises For Success:

When considering sled tempo training, below are five variations (please determine your set x reps based on training age and level) used for technical purposes, strength, speed, and explosiveness.

A hip harness should help the athletes drive their hips forward, power production, and express strength through speed. The shoulder harness is sufficient; however, it can limit the explosive movement and drive phase of sprinting.

(1) Weighted Sled Drives

• Set up cones five, ten, to fifteen yards apart;
• Maintain forward lean at 45 degrees while putting force into the ground, accelerate through the first five to ten yards;
• Maintain technical efficiency after ten yards to accelerate again;
• Focus on extension through the movement, driving the knees, and keeping arms straight forward, driving for proficiency;

The goal is to overload the athlete to fire up the nervous system, which will not affect one’s performance. Therefore, if performed on practice or game day, keep the load light so it will not affect performance. On a training day, the reps can stay between one to five, with the loads varying.

(2) Acceleration – Deceleration Run

• Load the sled up with 10-20 of body weight;
• Set up cones five, ten, fifteen, or 20 yards apart;
• Set up in a 3-point or regular athletic start;
• Explode through by driving explosively for the first ten yards, or whichever is comfortable;
• Decelerate the next yards at high efficiency with the thought of accelerating again.

The goal is to accelerate out quickly and drive through to the deceleration as hitting the positions.

(3) Build-Up Runs

• Keep the sled empty or load it up 10-20 of body weight;
• Set up a cone distance from 5 to 40 yards apart;
• Drive explosively through the start phase and maintain an exaggerated jog (as if you are about to start running). At the second cone, pick up your speed; at the third cone, increase the speed the same as the fourth cone, then begin to decelerate for the next five to ten yards.

This variation builds strength endurance properties and lactate tolerance to enhance their overall endurance performance.

(4) Backward Runs

• Keep the sled empty or load it up 10-20 of body weight;
• Set up a cone distance from 5 to 40 yards apart;
• Follow the same guidelines as above.

(5) Lateral Runs

• Keep the sled empty or load it up 10-20 of body weight;
• Set up a cone distance from 5 to 40 yards apart;
• Keep your center of gravity low, and stay athletic. At each cone, please build up your speed as you reach the designated yards.

Using the sled allows the athlete to harness any bad form (running with anger or excitement), to maintain efficiency and quicker times as if one did not train with the sled.

Please note that excessive intensive tempo workouts can result in extreme fatigue, overtraining, blunted recovery, and central nervous system disruptions if the volume is too high or sessions are not. Therefore, please do not automatically reject a common practice that has led to good results and progress because it does not fit someone’s narrative.

For more articles on sled tempo training exercises, CLICK HERE!

Athletes and their trainers should implement a unique, balanced approach that creates a significant buoyancy effect that could aid in unilateral training and dynamic movements in sports. This type of training for the future (specifically for the younger athletes), which many have implemented, is to implement low impact, rehabilitation, and recovery methods of the ankle, foot, knee, hip, and shoulder coupled with progressive compound and explosive movements aiding the athlete for preparation for the highest levels of competition.

Meeting the multidimensional nature of sports today and increasing athletic ability, a therapeutic approach should meet the cognitive and practical sport-related stressors regarding the demands of one’s sport. Although not new, dune training can be a coping resource to meet the sport’s lower and upper body, conditioning, and recovery demands. Studies regarding dune training improve motor skills, grace, and balance, presenting a bounce back feedback, minimizing muscle pain, ligaments, and tendons, and aiding post-surgery rehabilitation.

Sanddune training has several additional benefits for all athletes, including:

• Prehab and rehab (Therapeutic Approaches), which can limit and prevent injuries;
• Targets coordination, balance, and mobility issues experienced by young and elite athletes regarding their training and level of play;
• Allows the athlete to work through instability issues;
• Increases myofascial release;
• Manipulates high and low intervals to mimic training on sand and incline intervals;
• Increases firing of the lower body from the toes through the entire posterior chain;
• Maximizes proper foot mechanics and ankle stability for support;
• Adds complexity to different exercises once the basic movements are mastered;
• Creates constant tension in the quads and hip;
• Encourages hamstring development and hip extension strength;
• Benefits the recovery process after injury and on active recovery days;
• Although not directly similar to sand, the use of this tool will help those athletes accelerate and cut with the proper foot planting, providing reactionary feedback to adverse circumstances with more precise foot planting and more explosiveness when running;
• Lessens the training impact through appropriate feedback to the brain sensory receptors;
• Great for plyometric exercises, keeping them low impact;
• Increasing resistance to running on sand requires more energy than running on standard surfaces; therefore, this apparatus, over time, will assist the athlete in improving quickness, building explosiveness, maximizing the demand for the training exercises, which translates to the field;
• Stabilizes joints in the ankles, knees, hips, lower back, and core to continually compensate and adjust during movement.
• Alleviates compressive forces on the joints during running, jumping, and walking via limiting overtraining;
• Develops the high-knee motion critical to the acceleration phase of sprinting, keeping positive shin angles–where the ankle is behind the knee–necessary for acceleration.
• Activation of the glutes, hamstrings, and quadriceps taking energy and stress away from those suffering from lower body injuries;
• Encourages barefoot training;
• Promotes in-season and off-season benefits;
• Offers a higher energy cost and lower impact training stimulus compared with traditional team sport training venues such as grass, which, if done consistently, will assist in training adaptations to standard surfaces;
• Limits muscle damage, muscle soreness, and decay in performance capacity relative to exercise intensity;
• Due to the fact many young athletes are playing multiple sports, more so elite athletes playing longer seasons. This tool can aid in resting tendons, where tendinopathy is common in consistent and higher-level competitions.

Please understand that this tool does not replace sand training, aquatics, or therapeutic practices. However, this tool can benefit and meet current sports performance needs if applied cautiously and carefully.

Coach, effective tools, courses, and classes are considered practical choices for success, but if I can be honest, my successful endeavors led me to check everything off the hypothetical coaching checklist below:

Coaching Checklist

• Getting a degree in Exercise Science;
• Work with athletes at every level, including college;
• Earn several certifications;
• Start your own training business;

However, that did not matter because I fell, and hopefully, I can help you improve.

Diminishing Character

Today coaches interact with various athletes, generally from different societal norms, where their character is diminished rather than built up, creating, continuing, and having athletes an unsafe learning environment. Although athletes need to be held accountable and challenged due to the passiveness of today’s society, coaches are using a variety of bullying tactics in the form of fear, humiliation, and disrespectful behaviors “curse words in every sentence” as their way of “teaching” athletes.

Some coaches also push athletes, shamingly at all levels, to continue to play when injured, killing athletes’ fun and passion for their sport.

Help Them Grow

However, not all is lost for you as a coach, where the primary goal is to teach and help them grow as individuals to become better people on and off the field. As growing into a mature coach, I learned how to be a good human, teach athletes how to have a positive impact on the world, and use their sport as a tool for showing a positive way forward.

For most, the constant winning outcomes are entirely the first, where the teaching of valuable life lessons (playing as a team) and sacrificing individual needs for the betterment of the group, handling adversity & failure, mastering obstacles, working hard towards an established goal, believing in yourself, having great character, and following the rules.

Coach, it’s obvious you have the most impactful relationship, generally developed over time based on the encouragement cultivated for success through social media, which creates an arena of influence, making your coach’s role even more beneficial due to the blue check of societal norms.

Therefore, a successful coach employs motivation, encouragement, and problem-solving techniques to understand and address the athlete’s culture, style of living, communication, and sincere thoughts requiring emotional intelligence to articulate critical thinking skills to express the realism between life and sports.

Critical Thinking

More importantly, critical thinking is an excellent tool; you as a coach can create to explore a variety of environments and organic outcomes based on performance attributes taken from cognitive behaviors, asking questions, and developing conclusions from sources in a training and real-world environment.

In the end, becoming a successful coach isn’t an end goal; it’s a lifetime of mistakes, critics, sleepless nights, lack of encouragement, no assurances. However, your impact as a coach has a lifetime impact on athletes as they grow into every aspect of life through trust, influence, and recognition will drive athletes to do amazing things manifested through the person and authentic relationships that last for life.

Coaches/athletes (during the pandemic) should develop and agree upon a thorough training program. This training program should encompass fun, injury prevention, maintaining and developing stability through mental preparation, speed, power, and explosiveness to address and prevent common weaknesses that can sometimes hinder one from becoming an all-around athlete.

With the exploitation of glamorous training tools, the use of medicine balls affects coordination areas of the central nervous system. The medicine ball makes it easy to replicate a specific sport movement, especially for novice athletes to elite athletes looking to maintain a technical perspective within their training regimen. Implementing medicine balls and their sizes also improves muscular power, speed, and explosiveness – all aspects of power development related to sports performance.

There is a potent formula of precision and accuracy when training with a medicine ball, allowing the athlete to generate as much power as possible to execute their sport effectively. With varying sizes of a medicine ball, its use has developed into the advancement of motor skill training through cueing and vocal commands to manipulate learning of how loading patterns work through increased demands on coordination, core strength, movement through multiple planes, the measurement of velocity through the manipulation of one’s limbs and body composition and effectual power output according to one’s age and sport.

Simple Medicine Ball Workout

When considering medicine ball training, below is a simple medicine workout (please determine your set x reps based on training age and level) that can be used for technical purposes and, or speed:

Underhand Medicine Ball Throws For Height And Distance

1. Stand in a tall posture and hold the medicine ball in front of the body at waist height;
2. Descend into a squat, keeping the torso upright, arms extended, and ball in front, which will generate force from the lower body;
3. Explode vertically from the knees and hips, accelerating into a squat jump movement and maintaining an extended arm position through the jump. You will know if you produced enough force if you leave the ground;
4. The throw’s trajectory can be vertical or slightly forward, particularly if passing to a partner.
5. The feet can extend off the floor at the end of the throw, mainly if it is a mighty effort; make sure the ball does not hit you when it falls back down.

Backward Medicine Ball Throws For Distance

1. Start by standing facing away from the direction the ball will be thrown;
2. The starting position is with the ball in both hands, held above the head, with arms extended. Start by swinging the ball down between your legs while flexing the knees.
3. The ball up and back over the head (optimally at about 45 degrees).
4. The athlete can fall backward after the ball is released. Three attempts are allowed.

Medicine Ball Slams

1. Stand tall with feet in an athletic position, and hold the medicine ball directly overhead with the arms fully extended;
2. Bend forward at the waist and drop the torso athletically to develop tension in the arms and shoulders;
3. The ball should be driven to the floor with the arms extended and target a spot on the floor, and when the ball bounces up, catch it or let it bounce from the ground in the air
4. Repeat the downward throws for determining sets and reps;
5. To perform Rotation throws, perform them the same way as the medicine be done the same way.

Medicine ball jumps for Height and Distance

1. Perform the same as a squat jump and an explosive squat jump for Distance.

Medicine Ball Push-Ups

1. Perform a pushup on a medicine ball.
2. When programmed correctly, medicine ball training reveals athletic development and can help in athletic performance.

This aspect of film engages current and improves future communication, which tailors strategies for success. For this article, incorporating visual content gives athletes (young and old), coaches, and parents confidence and a slight advantage during tryouts, practice, and competition. Unfortunately, some parents, coaches, and athletes are uninformed regarding the benefit of watching film and the cognitive neuroscience behind learning new plays.

Analyzing game film allows the athlete and coach to correct mistakes and prepare for training sessions or the game. This is why Kobe Bryant talked about understanding his opponents through film and critiquing himself, knowing his opponents would know as well through his weaknesses.

Studying film by watching sports, practices, and playing some “sport” video games allows the athlete to process information and relay it through multiple resources, especially play. Research outlines that 93 percent of all human communication is visual. Humans process visuals quicker than text and skim the content they read online. Additionally, forty percent of learners comprehend better with visuals, and with the rise of homeschooling and advanced technology, unfortunately, the percentage has increased.

If the application is correct, film study is not tricky; it should be analyzed through various communication styles, i.e., verbal vs. non-verbal gestures, illustrations, various movements, and diagrams based on learning styles and techniques learned.

Analyzing and teaching film study enables a new way to teach athletes, which can be incredibly helpful in achieving success. While there are varying film study methods, the best way to demonstrate it is by having athletes watch the play executed first through slow motion, screenshots, and then actual game speed. Building through this method allows the athlete to tap into the science of modeling the behavior to increase overall awareness.

Here are some approaches in breakdown film:

1. Analyze the different angles of the athlete’s sport;
2. Allow critical thinking to figure what happened and how to improve;
3. Re-engineer the training process to achieve success at each position;
4. Encourages process theory of how the game takes place in every aspect;
5. Motivates from wrongful motives and encourages success by an aspect of what can be achieved.
6. Puts ownership on the coach and athlete of what can and should be done better;
7. Encouraging communication and relationship between the coach and athlete could be missing, which is a significant key to success.
8. Creates efficiencies for positive and negative trends;
9. Requires the athlete and coach to do their job from what is actually seen respectfully;
10. Allows the creation of an Individual Development Plan (IDP), Progress Reports, and other progressive tools for growth and success;
11. Enhances the understanding of an individuals and teams performance;
12. Encourages and develops body mechanics, motor learning, and physical attributes, which varies daily;
13. It gives the strength and conditioning coach and training staff a bigger picture of how the training program must be changed and training modalities manipulated;
14. Allows the coach to address various problems and creatmultipleus action plans moving forward;
15. Observes how movements are executed and create a movement improvement plan, which is effective for each athlete;
16. Although the comparison is unwise; it allows the strength coach to enhance the athletes training plan, more in-depth to the training competition;
17. Encourages successful measures for increased athletic performance;
18. Analyzes and prevents current and future injuries;
19. Changes the mentality of how the game is approached, good or bad;
20. Encourages physical mentality and preparation;
21. Increases fundamentals and body adaptation for increased athletic performance and coaches’ coaching style.

Taking your game to the next level requires an attentive discipline that deals with various critical practices and game approaches, a sort after art form that serves as a medium to improve mental and physical gameplay.