Parents usually have good intentions when it comes to supporting their son or daughter in playing sports, but they often lack the education and awareness of the things that will help their child-athlete the most. Coach Jeremy Frisch has a list of 15 hints and recommendations, all of which will make a difference in your child’s growth in sports. Use some or all to enrich their athletic experience as they grow, and only start specializing as they draw closer to adulthood.

Plans and procedures create professional guardrails to improve performance and athlete safety. Coach Greene shares how to transition new athletes to your university program and collaborate successfully with the athletic performance staff.

Despite your years of education and experience, are you actually prepared to be in charge? In examining his own mistakes, Coach Carmen Pata provides a template for other coaches to follow to become not just a qualified head coach, but a leader for their entire staff and team.

This anthology collects articles on SimpliFaster that highlight best practices for training with the Sprint, Quantum, and Syncro from 1080 Motion. Including work from Carl Valle, Chris Korfist, and Cameron Josse, the blogs compiled in this post showcase a wide range of methods and strategies for applying resistance and assistance in speed training, as well as how to program movements with variable resistance and loading. For coaches, physical therapists, and high performance professionals, we include relevant information on data collection, research, and conceptual foundations for the training systems.

Soccer continues to advance in both talent and popularity in the U.S., but there is still work to do. Coach Eric Udelson details various issues that hinder the athletic development of youth soccer players and provides potential solutions for this critical part of American soccer’s future.

Hand-supported movements are a great way to achieve more load when athletes need more stimulus. Coach Wayland explains how bilateral and unilateral movements with hand support let athletes express intent and force development not attainable with heavy standard unilateral work.

Athletes widely use caffeine to enhance performance and often drink coffee to consume their caffeine before training and competition. While it’s clear that caffeine enhances performance, it’s less clear that coffee does. Coach Pickering explores how coffee compares to caffeine and the practical issues involved with drinking coffee as your source of caffeine.

When all external factors are taking into account, what should a coach do if their young athletes aren’t improving at a successful pace or seem to be sliding backward in development? Coach Noah Kaminsky presents five tenets to guide coaches (and parents) in healthy and safe youth athletic development.