Relevance of Golf in the Fall!

So here we are the last week in August!  This weekend I watched some great golf played by the World's best golfers and some ridiculous baseball played by 12 and 13 year old kids.  I, as many of you, am excited about a few things coming up this fall. College Football kicks off this weekend, and the next weekend is professional football, followed shortly by the push for the playoffs in baseball leading to the world series, one of my favorite sporting events all year.  Which begs the question.  Can Golf compete with that?  I know there are guys like me who are sports junkies and will watch whatever is on television but come on if you had the choice to watch the Eagles and Giants play or watch 3 hours of Golf?  I'm not saying that golf is not a great sport because I love to play and love to watch it.  I'm just saying that at this point in the year football is king.
    When it comes down to ratings, revenues, and profitability then American football still has the top spot.  So I pose the question to you, is professional golf grasping at straws and spending extra money to get the same group of "loyal" followers or are they relevant in the sports landscape this time of year?

Little League!

What a time and place to grow and live! The memories I have from little league baseball are amazing! You can't replace the sense of accomplishment in seeing your family so proud of you. You can't beat the experience, that hopefully every kid enjoys at some point, of a "suicide" after the game. Now, I'm talking about a drink that is every fountain drink, that isn't diet, all mixed together in one cup. The thing is in today's game doesn't it tend to get a little over the top. I mean, how many times do you remember in little league throwing 85 pitches? What 10 to 12 year old kid needs to throw 85 pitches in one game? And then of those 85 pitches why are 40 of those pitches curve balls? This may just be my beef with little league and all the exposure of a young kid playing competitive baseball. The problem is now that most of these top level baseball players at age 12 who are playing in about 100 games of baseball per summer are either doing nothing else all year long or they are burned out by the time they are 16.
Now I understand there are people who are prodigy kids and they are all well and good, but you aren't going to get your kid drafted into the major leagues at age 14. The thing about baseball is that knowing how to do everything right is far more important than playing 100 games a year. My father always told me it was good for me to be active in almost every athletic competition. It is good for a young kid to have a chance to play football, basketball, soccer(football), and baseball (and any other sport not named here). It is good for them to be well rounded. Most of the major division 1 athletes and professionals in almost every sport played other sports and many still actively train and play, at least in recreation. So, instead of deciding at age 9 what professional sport your child is going to play let them pick it out and let them enjoy little league. It will be the time of their young lives, I know it was for me.

Leadership and Learning are very much the same

I found a blog post earlier today that talked about when everyone starts new things they are ignorant.  And the truth is they're right.  When we start something new we are ignorant and are fooling ourselves to think otherwise.  When we first start learning to play baseball for instance we have to be taught how to do everything.  We need to know how to throw and catch.  Then that evolves into catching fly balls or fielding grounders and being able to judge that as the ball comes off the bat.  Next we need to be more fluent in our attempts to do that, and we throw in being able to hit a ball thrown from a person and not just fed into a machine or lobbed to us from our dad.  We have to work on batting stances, proper swings, balance, timing and positioning.  Then base running and signals come into play, as well we begin to play situational baseball and needing to know what to do with the ball when there is a runner on 2nd with 2 outs and the ball is hit into the alley.  How do we respond?  In order to grow to this point we have learned from whoever was willing to teach us and that is the trick.  We must learn the right things to do and grow into leaders on the field by spending time to know what to do and when to do it.  No matter what stage of athletics you are in right now this will help.  You will not succeed until you know what to do and many times why you are doing it.

Raising the Athlete!

In today's world it is incredible how early many people have their kids trying to do "major league" things. So what is the right thing to do? What can we do with our young athletes to prepare them without tearing them up? Fundamentals! Fundamentals my friends! There is nothing that changes about fundamentals. They are something that your young athlete will never not use. It is far more important for an 8 year old to know how to throw properly and far less important for them to be effective at throwing curve balls. It is coming up on football season and if you think there is any sport that is less about fundamentals you would be wrong. The best athletes in the world may be good, but without proper technique they are gobbled up as they get into higher ranks of football. If you have a lineman teach them to "fire off" the line and find their opponents chest with there hands and head. Teach them to avoid looking for their eyes, and to avoid standing up straight. As they get older, into their preteen ages and early teen ages, work with them on flexibility, agility, and explosiveness while still recognizing that their fundamentals are still important. The same is true with quarterbacks and receivers, fundamentals in route running, footwork, hand placement, stance, release point, etc., are the things that they will use for their entire careers. Also, if you can teach a young kid that you build on basics and grow from there through time, perseverance and hard work they will be better equipped for life circumstances.

Traditional Weight Training vs. Emerging Training Methods

There has been a lot of hype coming out with all the new types of workouts hitting the market. All of these programs offer something different and want to appeal to a certain crowd of people but is it right for what you want to accomplish? Well let's take a look at them and see what they can do for you. Let's start with traditional weight training. With proper instruction and balance to a traditional weight training regiment along with speed training you will definitely be able to see increases in strength, size and explosiveness. The advantages of doing a traditional weight training method includes the number of different exercises possibly allow for the workout to be customized slightly to motions you are more comfortable with while still targeting the desired muscle group, although the training time to see the results may be prolonged slightly the results are more consistent, and depending on what results you are specifically looking for there are a number of exceptional sources for information online that an help you obtain your desired results best of all they are typically free to access online. Now the emerging training methods, such as P90X or the insanity workouts, use body weight exercises to increase strength, flexibility and endurance. Most of the exercises are designed to sculpt and tone muscles though a series of exercises that take advantage of high repetitions with little to no added weight. The advantages to these training methods include typically quicker results, improved flexibility, and they are designed to be full body workouts, so no muscle group gets left out. The emerging training methods typically are a specialized program that unless you spend the money and buy the materials to help you learn new ways to use the workout for better results. Now for most athletes especially those in competitive team sports typically traditional weight training is the best choice because the vast amount of information to help you change the workouts ever so slightly to make sure you are getting the desired results. Also it does allow for better control over which phase in the training cycle you are in so the trained athlete can be peaking at the optimum time for his/her sport of choice.