Putting together an intelligent elementary school Physical Education program.

Other Sports
1

This year I will be teaching Physical Education to students probably ranging from grade 1 to grade 6. The great thing about Physical Education is that nobody takes the curriculum seriously, thus I can basically do whatever I want this year.

Using the Edmonton seminar as inspiration, I would really like to put a good program together that will hopefully benefit all students. Often those who don’t play sports get left behind because there is little to no intelligent and progressive general fitness work built into Physical Education classes.

One of the most common things I see is teachers rushing from one sport which is currently “in season” to the next, with zero focus on the fundamental building blocks that improve a child’s athleticism. I would like to create something measurable so kids can see their progress. I don’t think they should be afraid of a bit of hard work either. I don’t see anything wrong with banging out a bunch of body weight exercises even if you are ten years old, as long as you can see the numbers rising over time.

It’s great to incorporate games whenever possible, but I’d like to incorporate lots of general fitness work, speed work, and some power development.

Now I know I can’t ignore each of the sports as they come up, but building a base of fitness that continues throughout the year seems more important than just teaching kids how to bump a volleyball. After all, if you’re a kid who gets no physical fitness work at home, you won’t be fit enough to get to the ball in the first place.

Does anyone have any resources or ideas they’d like to recommend? I am very open to ideas, and will happily share what I come up with to those who are interested.

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Look at page 5 of CF’s Edmonton download giving ideas of which events, frequency, etc. to use for kids as this model could be applied to programming for PE.

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In 2005 through 2007 I was paid via grant money through the school district to completely re-write the PE curriculum for the high school I was coaching at, at the time. The PE program had around 300 students in it.

I created a test battery that included the basics that the students were evaluated upon semi-annually and in addition to those I added my own in order that the collective of all assessments covered speed (short sprint), power (med ball throws and standing broad jump), relative strength (calisthenics), anaerobic-lactic, and aerobic ability on the track.

Once all of the data was collected I crunched the numbers and created curves; from those I created three classifications of physical preparation based upon speed/power ability, strength ability, and lactic/aerobic ability.

I wrote three piece meal programs for the three training groups and constructed a high/low training week M-W-F high, T-Th low.

Some students tested well speed/power wise but poorly aerobic and vice versa; so some of the groups had different individuals in them depending if it was a high or low day.

I worked with the highest level students and the head of the PE department and the head football coach worked with the other two groups.

I limited the amount of ‘games’ to Friday and these typically consisted of various relays that I constructed involving different types of locomotive efforts interspersed with calisthenics as well as med ball throw relays.

The bulk of the training consisted of power speed drills, various jumps and med ball throws, calisthenics, basic weights (only for the high group), and different track workouts-A lot of mechanical instruction.

Bottom line, no different than remedial vs AP math, the students were performing training loads that were appropriately challenging for their level of physical preparation in any given domain and the results were remarkable.

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T-slow, get the book “Children and Sports Training” by Jozef Drabik. It’s great.

I don’t have any experience in this area but here are a couple of general considerations/questions with training kids:

  1. Is it fine in some cases to program consecutive CNS days? If their physical preparation is low then it is likely their CNS capacity exceeds that of the muscular capacity (i.e. they don’t have the ability to overtax the CNS) so do we have the oppurtunity to program consecutive CNS days providing the breadth of exposure is not high?
  2. Anaerobic-lactic loads: As has been said by Charlie, Number 2 and James in the past on this forum it is not smart to make young kids overdo exercises that accumulate lactate. It can lead to Left Ventricle Hypertrophy.
  3. Right to left shift: As you already talked about, increase general fitness before trying to rush to increase specific tasks. I think some coaches see some kids doing well in a certain sport and encourage them to then focus their efforts on this sport (specialize) when what is needed is multi-lateral development.

As I said I’m not an expert, but hope this helps.

5

Thanks for replying James! Your program sounds really intriguing. I would have really liked to see it in action, it sounds highly effective.

I teach in a Kindergarten to grade 8 elementary school, and historically the Physical Education teacher has basically introduced whatever sport was coming up in the competitive calendar in gym class, which means you have a bunch of kids playing a bunch of different sports rotated sports throughout the year without building any general strength, power or speed work into the program.

Gymrob, thanks for the lead on the excellent book. I just ordered it, it looks very promising.

Also, I need to gather some evidence regarding avoiding overdoing lactate work. One of the only things that virtually any idiot teacher / coach can do is make a kid tired, thus if they’re going to make a kid do anything strenuous, overdoing the lactate is very common. This needs to stop, and if I can start slamming people with evidence, it will be very, very helpful.

At this age level, I know that tons of general work is needed, and I don’t have a lot of time to work with- probably two 40 minute periods per week (which lines up nicely with the twice per week, one hour workouts suggested by Charlie for the age group I work with in the Edmonton download graphs, thanks for the reminder Pioneer).

My worry is this; if I just work on general fitness and don’t teach any of the basic sport-specific movements (e.g. volleyball serve, set, bump) then I worry that kids who can’t afford to do any extracurricular sports will be disadvantaged when it comes to trying out for school teams. Should I not worry about this? Or creatively work some basic sport-specific movements in at various times of the year?

Thanks everyone for the thoughts, all are appreciated. I will gladly share what I come up with, as I’m sure feedback will make it much better.

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I also work with kids, from 10 to 14 years old at the moment. Two girls just turn 14 who show pretty good potential and sometimes I’m really not quite sure even at this age about progression of certain things. I don’t want to get results NOW quickly. For sure we need to stay usually with basic things and don’t give exercises which they aren’t able to do with proper form. For sure kids physical abilities differ sometimes a lot even if biological age is the same, so even basic program might be a bit modified for the same biological age. Am I wrong?

I wish to add as well what is not a good idea to include in the program for young kid generally speaking. Please correct me where I’m wrong

  1. There is very low percentages of workload working in high intensity zone over 15sec, most work of a higher intensity would be done under 10sec, usually 3-7sec

  2. No point using heavy weights.

  3. No point to give much fast sprinting for kids who show very bad form. Better look how this could be improved by strength training and other training means.

  4. Don’t give an exercise which can’t be done with proper form for particular kid. Look at alternatives and make progressions from there.

What could you add? Then we could move on what we are left with, how to progress and ect.

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Sorry T-Slow, I think there is not much place for my questions b/c you are asking exactly about Physical education program. My questions are more towards kids who prepare for sprint events mainly.

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Linas, don’t be silly- no need to hold back, all ideas are welcome! I coach the track team at my school (of course!) so anything relating to kids that is track-specific is more than welcome as well.

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Fine points have been shared thus far by all. Keep in mind that my age group was 14-16.

Regarding the contraindication of lactic loads on pre-adolescents, this stems from the stress that these loads place upon the myocardium. The physiological environment can, at the extreme, cause premature thickening of the left ventricular wall.

While the adaptation is preferable in post-adolescent endurance athletes, due to its contribution towards increasing stroke volume, it can be impairing to pre-adolescents; particularly those who are white fiber dominant and have no future in endurance disciplines at any high level.

Drabik’s text is excellent as are Charlie’s recommendations depicted in the graphs pertaining to the proper loads to introduce to athletes based upon development.

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There are some really great ideas in Tudor Bompa’s total training for young champions. To be honest though, when I had a group of 20 kids aged 9 through 14 and the program they loved the most was the one Charlie helped me put together (not sucking up just being honest). I also incorporated a gymnastic warm up on top of the speed work. I found that the best female athletes were always former gymnasts. So when my kids had the chance to do a recreational gymnastics program with Teodora Cepoi (Silver medalist in 76 oly games) I went to the classes and pretty much poached her warm up routine. The kids loved it they were all pumped up after wards and looking to train more. I had 1 day of isorobic runs or partner resisted runs (10-15m) and one day were they did chase games wearing a sparq break away belt and EFE/FEF runs (10m/10m/10m) . We did med ball throws and always finished with running A’s and abs and push ups. That was enough strength end to make them feel almost lactic… It was a hit!! Another thing I did was to have a good attitude and make them feel like you have confidence in them.

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Hi gymrob, I got the book in the mail today. You are correct, it is terrific! Thanks for the tip!

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T-Slow, No problem. Glad you like it. I should say though that I first read about this book from James Smith in the past so we have him to thank.

Btw here is an excellent piece on the PASM which I think may interest you: http://www.elitefts.com/documents/TomMyslinski.pdf

Enjoy!

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Hi Jay, I have been thinking about this warmup routine. Do you think you could share the basic outline with us here? It sounds really good.

I ordered Bompa’s book, thanks for the tip!

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Thanks for another interesting resource! I’m going to read through it tonight. I’ll get back to this thread as I try to pool some ideas and will report back.

Last year with my track team, I felt like I was trying to build kids from scratch during a six week season. Now I realize I was basically building a foundation from scratch on sand. The kids had no general fitness, and minimal foundational movement skills related to speed, power, or strength activities, despite the fact they can bump and set a volleyball and execute a layup. Six weeks can’t do much in that case! Interestingly enough, gymnasts were my best athletes.

The idea this year I think the idea will be to build the agility, balance and co-ordination appropriate for the age group, but upon a foundation of general fitness, speed, power and strength. Then when it comes time for individual sports, we aren’t just teaching a bunch of weaklings to sprint, play volleyball, soccer, or basketball- they should be able to run, jump, and throw.

Since I’m in control of the physical education curriculum and it’s not like parents come to breathe down the gym teachers neck about what he’s up to, I can do whatever I want. This should be an interesting year if we can get everything organized into a CF program school-wide. Angela, you can expect to hear from me soon! :slight_smile:

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Here’s a recent article by James Smith which might help. http://www.jtsstrength.com/articles/2011/09/14/super-child-part-i-early-childhood/

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easy local stretches.

after some stretches sit in a butterfly grab your feet and roll on your erectors back and forward side to side. Dont know how to explain it but you roll around like a weeble wobble :slight_smile: on your back and glutes. Sounds stupid but it really loosens your hips and back.

I cant find my note book but off the top of my head it was the following (in order)

walks on toes with hands out to the sides at shoulder height. Legs should be straight and come up to hip height or higher. 2x10m

walks with jumps. take one step jump up and bring both of your legs up in front of you and side ways (like a side split) 2x10m

walk and take a hand stand then come back to a standing position every few steps 2x10m

forward roll to stand or forward roll to hand stand then roll forward and stand up. 2x10m

cart wheels 2x10m

I think there were a few more but you get the general idea…

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Your going get some really good stuff from that book. I dont know why all these “youth speed coaches” read it instead of the watered down verkoshansky work outs they pass around :slight_smile:

Anyways good luck man. Those kids are lucky to have someone doing this for them.

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Thanks for the reply on the warmup. I guess it would require a lot of mats, so I will have to modify it a little bit since most of our mats are on a cable covering the rock wall that was installed a few years back (nice!) that nobody uses.

I’m definitely going to take advantage of the rock wall, but until this point nobody has had a clue how to incorporate it. I’ll send some pictures when I can.

As a sidenote, I have ordered Bompa’s “Total Training for Young Champions” as well as “Youth Strength Training.” I’m not so sure the second title will be any good, but I’ll check it out and report back.

Thanks to darkhorse for the James Smith article link too! I have a Physical Education conference coming up in a month, it will be interesting to see if anyone there has the remotest concept of how to train kids for measurable athletic improvement.

Taking a look at the atrocious movement skills of my grade 3 and 4 students, I’m starting to see that the key movement skill that needs to be taught is how to run. Some of their mechanics are shocking! Everything else is a distant second. I will try to start putting together a long term plan, and will report back with what I come up with.

On another positive note, it looks like I will be heading out to Michigan to visit the very talented ESTI this weekend. I’m sure he will have some valuable input to add!

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You’re welcome. You will def need some mats for the gymnastics stuff.

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Window of opportunity to develop feedforward control system is between ages 4 and 8.