We focus on teaching the athletes proper techniques to help their overall athleticism. By developing athleticism, we cover all the positions and movements encountered during a practice or competition. We focus on bodyweight movements first, covering the basic mechanics of jumping, running, and landing so when the athletes encounter a similar position during a competition they already have the correct movement pattern to produce the maximal amount of force. To increase injury prevention we also focus on strength exercises throughout the full ranges of motion to help develop the muscles fully, as to not over shorten or overstress the muscles that are most commonly injured depending on the sport.

With knee injuries being fairly common, especially in adolescent girls, we make sure to teach the girls how to recruit the proper muscles during the movements that could put added stress on the ACL if done improperly. By teaching the athletes to recruit the proper muscles, we teach them how to move without added stress to the knee ligaments this helping prevent the ACL and other knee injuries. By teaching them in practice, we are able to have carried over into the games so they don’t get out of proper position and put their knees and ACLs at risk.

We focus on both of these during our sport and speed sessions. General athleticism is what will help the athletes when they are reacting to a ball or a play during competition. We want all of our athletes to be well rounded and able to move well throughout normal sport-specific positions like throwing or hitting mechanics for baseball or softball, but also have the proper positions when they react to a ball hit to their left or when they have to jump to catch a line drive. Sport-specific exercises are those that can directly be transferred to the sport, such as box jumps for basketball players, med ball throws for baseball and footwork, and agility for soccer. All of these types of exercises would help further the athlete’s development in a specific sport.