Youth Athletic Performance Training Guidelines

I often get questions from parents concerned about the safety of their children
participating in a sports & conditioning program to enhance their athleticism and on
field play. What I tried to do in this article was narrow down 10 general guidelines
that your child should adhere to for most youth athlete conditioning programs. 

Although each sport varies in its particular program design these 10 general
guidelines apply across the board.

Youth Performance Tips:

1. Stay off the machines and work full range of motion exercises & Olympic
lifts. (ie. power clean, back squat, front squat, deadlift, lunges, overhead squats,
romanian deadlift, split squat, presses, rows, pulls, etc.)

2. Stick with dumbbells and body weight exercises in the beginning to keep
both sides symmetrical

3. Incorporate full-body exercises to stimulate maximal neural responses (squat
press, deadlift to curl, step-up to press, single leg/arm deadlift to row, etc.)

4. Keep the rep range above 10 except for power exercises (cleans, vertical
jumps, etc)

5. Add in no more than 60-80 reps of plyometrics if they are not in the middle
of a growth spurt

6. Order of exercises: Warmup-Power-Speed/Agility-Strength-Endurance

7. Always incorporate some type of PNF specific warm-up before beginning a
workout ( medicine ball, multi-directional lunges, etc)

8. Keep cardio to interval based strength and agility work, sprints, and fartleks
(stay away from long runs)

9. Use T Sprints, Line Sprints (suicides), Hexagon jumps, and 20 -100 yd sprints
for speed work

10. After you find their 10RM only increase weight by 5-10% a week after their
form is perfect

Oh, and everyone can have a little fun too…