Early Specialization & Plyometrics

We’ll talk about creating better youth development structures and what you need to know about plyometrics in this episode of Yo Jay.

QUESTION #1 – With the “Win Now” culture that parents and coaches have created. What is your approach to educate parents, youth and coaches that hurrying up the process, specialize too early, and games to early are not the best why to develop a child?

This conversation boils down to where are the elite kids going to come from and what is the best plan to develop these kids in place.

Taking a 5 year old (plan for the 13 years of their life – playing as many sports as possible that are a rotational sports i.e. baseball, soccer, tennis)

Its so important for young athletes to get a broad spectrum of sports to learn things like leadership, team building skills, and for most sports you won’t really know what kind of athlete they have the potential to be until they are 15, 16, 17 and 18.

From research that was done they found that putting your child into Marital Arts really was very helpful to learn self-worth, honor, and how to protect themselves. Soccer – is the best team sport to put your child in at a young age. Gymnastics is great as they will learn how to move their body.

QUESTION #2 – What’s one of your favorite plyometric exercises for golfer?

Any kind of plyometric exercise will make your body more explosive. Teach those muscles the game of golf. Sprints, bounding, forward and back bounding – all of those exercises will aid your athlete more.

Rotational Plyometric Exercise – see at the 9:30 min mark.

With the 180 or 360 degree jumps you are bounding, rotating, loading.

With Plyometrics make sure the time from landing and moving into the opposite direction is very quick – taking time in between the landing and take off is NOT plyometrics.

We are training that elastic component of your muscle and that is what plyometrics will do for you.