How to staff your sports camps?

Through the polls and surveys I have been sending out the past couple weeks, I have found out something very surprising. Half of the coaches and trainers on the Sports Camp Empire email list have not run a camp before. Now this isn’t a problem at all, we all have to start from somewhere but the surprising thing is most of the coaches that haven’t started a camp yet, have been wanting to do it for years. Each year, they have the intention of putting on their first camp and then something gets in the way. I am finding that these coaches and trainers are lacking ACTION.

The reason for not taking action is different for each person but the ‘reasons’ are fairly simple to overcome. Well, the real reason is the lack of confidence to take the leap and actually put it on the line and just run the camp. Taking a leap of faith and doing something new, that you haven’t done before is difficult but very rewarding once you pull the trigger.

My goal is to try and help you overcome the obstacles for running your very first sports camp. I will let you know everything you need to know so you will have no more excuses.

And if you are already running sports camps and clinics, you can take these tips and techniques to grow your camps even bigger and take over your local area.

Alright, let’s get started.

Finding staff to help support you to run your sports camps is a very common question that came up in the survey.

This is a pretty easy fix and shouldn’t be used to hold you back and shouldn’t be your excuse that prevents you from putting on your first camp. But I will show you ways to staff your camps.

A quick note before hiring staff, don’t give technical skills to any inexperienced staff. The training of staff will come in a different post as it is a completely separate topic.

TOP 7 Ways to Staff Your Sports Camps

1). Former Athletes

A great way to staff your camps is to hire former athletes that you have trained or have been to many of your previous camps. The great benefit of this is that they already know your system. And it takes less time to train them on what they need to go.

2). Local Stars

If you are running a sports camp for high school track sprinters, find previous state champions that are in college. These are your local celebrities. The athletes going to your camp will know who these past state champions are so it helps build the ‘perceived value’ of your camp.

Plus these past state champions are in college so if you catch them during their school breaks they are going to be extremely happy to make a little bit of money on something that doesn’t take much time or effort for them.

You don’t need a state champion. You can get league champions, MVP’s, all-stars, members of a championship team, etc.

3). Parents

If your camp is working with younger athletes, you can hire some of the parents to help you out. You would have to spend some time training them and you wouldn’t have them in charge of anything technical but most parents are more than happy to help out. Most will even volunteer to help out for free.

Another cool idea is to talk to the local parent organizations, give them a donation and see if any of the parents would like to be a part of the camp and help out. I think you’ll be surprised of the support you get. Think about it, parents who are already volunteering their time for free to aid in helping own children, other children and their school, is the type of person that would love to be apart to helping even more youth athletes out. (think of all the parents that coach their own child’s youth sports team).

4). Teachers

If you know any physical education teachers, ask them. If you do not know any, contact the school district of where your camp is going to be located and see if any of their physical education teachers would want to help out your camp. Many teachers pick up different types of jobs (like painting, landscaping, etc) during their school breaks and I am positive that they would rather help out running a sports camp then getting a physical labor type of job.

5). Sports Professionals

Hire an ex-professional athlete for the specific sports camp you are running. I hired an ex-New England Patriot for a camp and it was great. You could also look around for a pro that is in their off season and is willing to help out – a current pro will be more expensive though.

6). Interns

Interns and mentorships are great ways to staff your camps for free. I started out interning for the best local coach that was running strength & conditioning camps – and I worked for free so I could learn from the best.

If you are already known in your area as being a top coach or trainer it will be easy for you to get people lining up at the doors to be a part of your camps.

If you have a strong internet presence and a lot of people on your email/newsletter list that trust your information and want to learn more from you it will be easy for you. Just send out an email stating that you are looking for a few qualified and motivated individuals that would want to learn your system. You will have people applying for that internship immediately and have a waiting list of people that want to learn directly from you.

7). Local Sports Coaches

If you are running a soccer camp, contact the soccer coaches from surrounding towns that would like to join your camp.

First, you create a relationship with these coaches. Most coaches want to put on a camp or clinic but never really pull the trigger and actually run one so the next best thing is to be involved with someone else’s. They already know the sport, all you have to do is let them know the structure and let them know what you expect from them.

The best reason for hiring local sports coaches is that they are already in front of a lot of targeted potential campers. If you were on a soccer team and your coach told you that this summer she is going to be on staff at a soccer camp and that you would really benefit going to it. Then she handed you a brochure for you to sign up with, the odds are very good that you would go to that camp, right?

For extra incentive, you can even give a coach a small percentage of every kid on his team that he/she brings in. It is possible that you could completely sell out your camp by just hiring these local coaches.

To your success,

Pat Beith
Sports Camp Empire

I hope this helps and you completely fill all of your staffing needs for your camps. I would love to hear your comments and please share any ideas that you have found that work for you.

There are a couple areas of training and athletic development where I see many coaches steer violently off course. But one stands out above all the rest. And if you can’t get this together, with consistency, your athletes simply won’t be competitive with those whose coaches ‘get it’.

 The questions I get the most stem from coaches, parents and athletes who want to know what workouts to do, when, which order, how many sets/reps, how often, etc.

To ask these questions implies incomplete understanding of how each of the pieces of the puzzle (development of speed, strength, power, coordination, mobility and endurance) fit together. More specifically, it means coaches don’t understand how different training elements affect and challenge the body’s energy systems.

When I have discussions (and sometimes arguments!) with coaches who really ‘get it’, I find that they all have a fundamental understanding of how certain workouts affect the body. Once you understand the (basic) science behind energy system development, you can start asking the more specific questions that lead to the biggest improvements, i.e., how to tweak different workouts to maximize results.

Today, I want to share a video clip from my Complete Program Design for Sprinters program. In it, I talk about how to develop the primary energy system we should be concerned with when developing 55 – 400m sprinters (or any athlete competing in a speed and power sport or sport that requires running at full intensity).

Take a look:

 

To your success,

Latif Thomas
Program Design for Sprinters
Complete Speed Training

When I was growing up, I was raised to respect adults and do whatever they said, even if I strongly believed they were wrong. So, as a kid, I always thought that once you became an adult, you just magically knew how to behave and had all the answers.

When I became an adult I realized how completely off base I was!

When I was a young coach, I believed that if you were a college coach, especially at the Division I level, you must *really* know what you are doing. Otherwise, how could you get a job like that?

When I went to USA Track and Field Level II school, the college coaches had a distinct ‘high and mighty’ attitude toward us mere high school coaches. Then final projects had to be presented and we realized, very clearly, that not all college coaches knew what they were doing. It was, quite literally, a jaw dropping realization.

This past weekend I was working with a Division I collegiate sprinter with terrible coaching.  I’m not going to get into the mechanical and technical issues we worked on. For more information on that topic, check out this 82 minute webinar I recently conducted:

http://www.athletesacceleration.com/stslides

Look at the workout, in the order it was run. Then I’ll break it down. Remember, this is a primary event 200m runner (who never runs the 55) less than 4 weeks out from their Conference Championship:

1. 2 x ladder accelerations
2. 2 x 40m starts out of blocks
3. 200 – 150 – 150 @ roughly 80%, R = 2’
4. 4 x fly 40m

—————

2 x ladder accelerations

 Unless your entire team consists of identical clones, don’t use an acceleration ladder. This simply teaches your sprinters a restricted acceleration pattern/drive phase based on….nothing. A tall athlete will have different stride length than a short athlete. Same for a 400m runner vs a 55m runner. Same for a strong athlete vs a weak athlete. Experienced vs. inexperienced. Biodiversity is so great from athlete to athlete that forcing sprinters into an arbitrarily established acceleration pattern is a sure way to keep your athletes from getting faster. Additionally, as your sprinters get stronger and more explosive from their time in the weight room and doing plyos, their acceleration pattern is going to change.

     2 x 40m starts from blocks

 I have no problem with this in and of itself. However, their starts are going to be all screwed up based on ineffective and inefficient acceleration ladder work they finished a few minutes earlier.

      200 – 150 – 150, R= 2’

 Obviously, with 2’ rest, these can’t be all that fast. So why do intensive tempo/middle intensity runs in the middle of a speed day? There’s no specific value in doing this type of training for a short sprinter. The volume is too low to get any particular physiological improvement for a D-1 level athlete and the intensity is too low (especially at this point of the season) to do anything relevant as well. You have the athletes running at full speed out of blocks then you slow them down and create lactic acid in an extremely easy workout. The problem is that you can’t expect athletes to make improvements in any high intensity work for the rest of the session because they are now in a state of fatigue. Well, this is OK as long as the coach isn’t going to do anything like maximum velocity work after….Oh.

      4 x Fly 40m (aka Maximum Velocity)

 I would be all about this portion of the training session if the athletes didn’t just run a few intervals of middle intensity lactic acid work. As we all should know by now, to make improvements to speed of efficient acceleration and maintenance of maximum velocity (click above link for more information on this critical topic) athletes can not be in a state of fatigue. But they are here. So athletes won’t be efficient from a neuromuscular standpoint, they won’t hit top speed and they’re more likely to get injured.

 What’s the moral of this story? (Besides the fact that, like at the subcollegiate level, there are some extremely excellent college coaches and some that should be fired)

 Take out the middle intensity work and ladder runs and this workout is pretty standard.

 So here are a few pointers:

 1. Don’t use acceleration ladders unless you’ve carefully set up the distance between each rung based on a specific line of logic

2. Don’t do lactic work on the same day you you’re doing full speed work. Also, don’t give your sprinters a ‘booty lock’ workout the day *before* a speed day.

3. Middle intensity work (80-89% intensity) has little value for a short (55-200m) sprinter. So do more speed sessions each week and less tempo work. Just lower the volume per session.

 Got questions? Ask them below.

 Latif Thomas
Complete Speed Training
Workout Planning for Sprinters (55-400m)

Earlier this month, I spoke at the Illinois Track and Cross Country Coaches’ annual track and field seminar.

I presented on both 400m training and developing short (55-200m) sprinters. I only got through about 2/3 of my material, so I’ve re-recorded the information and posted that 82 minute video here:

http://www.athletesacceleration.com/stslides

If you missed my presentation on 400m training, you can catch that here:

http://www.athletesacceleration.com/lgslides

If you have questions about either, post them below. Emails will not get answered.

Latif Thomas

Complete Speed Training

Workout Planning for Sprinters