U13 - Fitness Session #3 with U10,U11,U12,U13

Tonight we had our third group fitness/agility session along with our group of teams.  The u17 boys were not there this time.  We had 60 players out from the 5 teams that were there.  Only one of our players was missing as he was at basketball.

I made one main switch being that we reduced to 10 stations from 15 and did 3 circuits.  We started off with a 12 minute run and five 40m sprints as usual.

Three new exercises were inserted this week this week.  Hopefully changing exercises will keep the circuit fresh to some degree.   One of the dads, who is a local high school football coach, introduces them to a new push-up every week.  Our hope is that they find one they like and use it.

As long as we include components for fitness, speed, agility and core strength we're heading in the right direction.  We want to use LTPD as a guideline for what we do and ensure we continue to develop each player's ABC (agility-balance-control).

A nice change tonight was that all the coaches were able to watch our kids as the parents were manning all the stations.  We have parents coming in their athletic attire now and that's great to see, showing the boys that they are part of the action.  We even had a parent doing the stop watch and whistle timing the stations.  That freed me up to pay closer attention.

The coaches are happy with how this is progressing and the parents are giving us useful feedback.

Next week I want to each team to start keeping track of how far their own players run during the 12 minute run.   And we need to keep spotters around the track.  Last week nobody stopped during the 12 minute run, but tonight we had a few that created an impromptu "shoe-tying station", as coach John called it.

I also need to rethink the organization of the whole thing.   The stations are arranged along 50m of the track and it's worked OK, but there has to be a better way.  Coach Paul mentioned that doing it on the tennis court might be a good idea, to keep everybody contained and out of the way of the track club that is also there.

Over and above the fitness and agility training, the comradery between teams has been the most enjoyable part.  The coaches get along well and the kids can see the chemistry between us.

A view of some of the stations from one end of the track.