I am in very early talks of developing and implementing a youth athlete summer “speed camp” for Mid-June to August this summer. (Dates pending) for the local athletes of this area. I don’t have much info now, however it will be based around youth athletes, most likely high school engaged in various team sports.
In properly setting this up and given the experience of the athletes, how would you guys set this up in terms of programming, assessments/evaluations, equipment, etc?
I have been brainstorming a bit but I’d be willing to bet that most if not all would highly benefit from a CF style GPP phase for 4-6 weeks before moving on to a basic SPP for 2-3 weeks, then re-testing.
As far as equipment goes, I was thinking probably medicine balls for various throws and drills, cones, a short hill for starts… Again not much info right now but this thread will be on-going once I get additional info and things finalized.
I’m looking forward to it! Any help would be appreciated, especially if you have previous experience running camps, etc.
First, don’t test. Unless it’s for combine kids who are testing, it’s not worth it. Just train them and they’ll be happy. Since I stopped testing I’ve never had a parent or kid come up and ask about testing times etc.
Sometimes I’ll have them run 10s or 20s and time them.
Using much of the GPP drills would be most of what you would need with young kids.
My two best pieces are med balls and the Isorbic. I can get about 6 kids per isorbic. I am indoors, so being in cali, a hill would be great. I use hills in the summer.
Cool, thanks for your input. Only reason why I thought of testing was to gauge progress. But I can see why it could be detrimental too. There are some pretty good hills around this area but depends on where the camp is held…
I could go on and on about the negatives of testing. Honestly, kids know who is fast, who jumps highest etc.
I use a lot of med ball work. The majority do very little if any in their previous expereinces with other coaches and teams etc. All CF’s med ball stuff is great. Most have never done any of it before. Keeps thing unique for you too.
I agree about the testing stuff, maybe long term stuff perhaps but something 6-8 weeks probably not worth testing.
And yeah I had definitely been planning on using all the CF med ball throw series’ with the athletes. Hope it is held somewhere with a track so we can use the high jump/pole vault mat for med ball exploisve throws, jumps, etc.
Thanks for your help so far, ESTI, any other advice or input, ideas, etc would be greatly appreciated.
I have been running them for 12 yrs or so every winter and summer. First, a lot depends on the group size. I do intensive camps with less individuals for high level athletes(high school and collegiate football mostly). These camps have maybe 8-15 athletes. The acumen is based a lot on Charlies type of template. It’s easier to make finite adjustments with this group size. I do camps with 25-40 kids for younger individuals. Much of this is just learning basic warm-ups, proper mechanics, and developing work capacity. I time the older kid’s because they need to know where they are for testing and to gauge progress and map training. The younger kid’s I find get demoralized too easily by times. Like ESTI said, they know who is fast. That being said, I like to make them run in two’s as the competition seems to keep them more focused. This is just my experience. I may pair them up with a runner of similar speed or one slightly faster to push them to keep up. We have had a lot of success with this format. It’s great to have kid’s from 3rd and 4th grade through college. Not only is it nice from a planning stand point, but it’s very gratifying to see what was once a little kid grow into a collegiate athlete and young man and know that you have had much influence on his/her life. Hope this helps out.
Thank you for your input. I believe the age range will most likley be 13-17 or 18 but again I have no clue until we market it and get people signed up which won;t be until May or so.
I appreciate the words and advice speedcoach and ESTI, I may PM you for more questions if you don’t mind.