As the title suggests, the vast majority of my training in with youth athletes, as such the learning style and method to teach has to be totally different when compared to a more professional athlete. These are the biggest things I've learnt so far.
1) Go Easy on Theory
Kids really couldn't care less about the shin angle during your take off and transition to maximum velocity, kids don't care why I want them to jump high. Just because I find the reasons I program in certain activities interesting, doesn't mean kids do. If they ask why, I certainly tell them. But for the most part, I just say "I promise doing this will have you smashing your competition" and thats enough for them.
2) Teach the drills, but don't expect perfection.
With runners, there are a number of tried and tested drills that everyone from Billy Bob down to street, to Usain Bolt uses to maintain correct form. With my kids, every session we do the drills, I reteach those that forgot but I don't expect perfection. We run through them 2 or 3 times, then move on. I will also concentrate on only 1 section of the drill to cue them on each session. This week I was emphasising the hip lock on the A Drills, next week i won't mention the hip lock but I'll concentrate on ankle flex. Keeping it simple. Once the kids progress, they will get it eventually, but for now I don't want them to hate the drills.
**3) You must be flexible. **
The session last night I had planned on doing more finishing techniques, but as we ran through the different parts I was getting questions on stride length on the take off. Thats perfect, the kids showed interest so the last thing I'm going to do is brush over that. We ditched everything else and just worked on starts and building speed out of the blocks. They were engaged the entire time.
4) Keep it fun.
The last point here is you have to keep it fun and challenging. I don't mean have them run until they puke. But once we've covered everything we need to, lets reinforce what we've learnt with some more challenging games. For example on the beach on sunday we had an awesome headwind. So I pulled out the parachutes and had the girls sprinting into the wind. They were being pulled all over the place, they were wrecked after it, but the smiles on their faces were huge and they asked if they can do it again next week. The last thing you ever want when working with youth is for them to leave bored. Being wrecked and can hardly walk is perfectly fine, but they have to leave happy.
I hope you're found this interesting, if you're interested feel free to follow me on Instagram @invictus_strength_coach
