B.E.A.S.T. Camp Fall 2011:
Camp was a huge success! Thanks again to all the parents who brought in their children to let me teach them about movement strategies, ways to increase their strength, and just have fun. Stay tuned for news for upcoming camp dates and times. Enter your email address on the left side of this page to automatically get updates on future classes and dates,
Thanks again,
Ed Deboo, PT
What is B.E.A.S.T. camp? Field and court sports, such as basketball, soccer, lacrosse, volleyball, and tennis have components of athleticism that can be dramatically improved with training. B.E.A.S.T. camp trains these 5 essential components of athleticism:
Balance, Explosiveness, Acceleration, Strength, and Technique
Boys and girls ages 10-14 under the guidance of a licensed Physical Therapist will skip, jump, squat, learn acceleration and deceleration techniques, jump rope, play competitive games, improve foot work, somersault, improve reaction time, and just plain work hard!!
Current state of youth sports: As many parents know, early specialization in just one particular sport is becoming common and is often encouraged by well meaning coaches to give our children an advantage over the competition. It is a widely held belief that children who focus year round on one sport will excel and surpass their peers who only casually play the sport. I would agree completely with this statement for a minority of the children, not the majority. As a Physical Therapist, I’ve worked with numerous children who have a great passion for a sport at age 11 and then have completely abandoned the sport by their late teen years. The three main reasons: burned out, repetitive strain injuries and the fact that it’s “just not as fun as it use to be”.
My view of youth sports: As parents, our main focus with sports for our children should be to help them develop “athleticism” by introducing them to a variety of motor activities, both simple and complex, to help them solidify proper movement patterns while their central nervous system is still “plastic” and readily adapts to new stimulus. By exposing our children to multiple sports and activities, we are helping to nurture their motor development. As we age, our quality of life is directly related to our level of physical activity. Just to clarify, I’m not against children having a “main” sport that they love and would willingly play year round. As parents, we need to understand the benefits of taking some time off from their main sport and expose them to different activities. The best athletes in all sports are almost always the most athletically diverse.
The more sport specific the athlete is, the harder it is for them to acquire new and complex motor skills outside of their current skill set. Exposure to multiple complex motor activities will not only make you a better athlete in your sport of choice, but it will sow the seeds for a lifetime of health through physical exercise by reducing injuries.
Youth sports and injury rates: There are over 40 million young athletes across the United States that participate in organized sports. This also leads to about 3.5 million reported injuries per year. Some injuries are unavoidable, but other serious injuries can be minimized through the proper training and the correcting of faulty movement patterns.
For example, did you know that a young female athlete is more than 4 times likely to tear her ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) of her knee when compared to a boy of similar age and size? This type of injury usually requires surgery and research studies have shown that the reconstructed knee will more than likely show “advanced degenerative changes (arthritis)” by the time the athlete is in their 30’s. Many theories have been proposed as to why females have a greater injury rate: poor trunk and motor control, asymmetrical landing from jumps, quadriceps dominate movement patterns, and weakness of their gluteals.
All of the above risk factors can be minimized through proper training.
“Training” versus “Practice”: With early sports specializations comes the emphasis on “practice” for the particular sport. In the context of basketball, practice can be defined as your skill building with dribbling, rebounding, plays, passing, etc.
What is lacking is the emphasis on “training” which can be defined as the essential components of most sports: agility, footwork, balance, strength, coordination, acceleration/decoration, and change of direction. “Training” makes you a better athlete, regardless of your sport.
Thus the birth of ….
B.E.A.S.T. Camp
For additional information and to download a registration form, follow the link below. Class size is limited, so register early if you’re interested.
Official Beast Camp Registration and Waiver Fall 2011
Thanks,
Ed Deboo, PT