UPDATE: CLICK HERE to register for our Teen Sports Nutrition Webinar scheduled for Tuesday, March 9, 2010!

FACT: One out of three people in the United States is fat. Lack of proper nutrition, education and exercise are the main culprits.

 Actor/screenwriter Kevin Smith got kicked off a plane this week for being too fat. Logic says he should have said to himself:

 

‘Man, I’m too fat to fly on a plane. Maybe I should eat a salad and go for a walk every once in a while so I don’t get kicked off any more planes because I’m too fat to sit in a seat.”

 Instead he goes on a rampage against the airline, trying to blame them for his addiction to processed meats! Brother, take responsibility for your choices! You *chose* to get fat. Nobody snuck up on you while you were sleeping and injected cheeseburgers into your veins.

So it had me thinking about my athletes. I know I ate like crap when I was in high school. And I still got a Division I scholarship. So just because your athletes appear to be ‘in shape’ doesn’t mean they’re fueling their bodies with quality nutrients.

 I held an open forum with my team where I answered all their questions about nutrition. It consisted of throwers, jumpers, sprinters and distance runners. So it represented a good cross section of athletes whose training demands cover pretty much every sport I can think of.

 Here are the top 3 things I discovered about my (and your) athletes’ nutrition…

 

 #3: Most of Your Athletes Don’t Eat Breakfast

 The saying ‘Breakfast is the most important meal of the day’ is not a marketing ploy. It’s a fact of reality.

 And your athletes will give you every sorry excuse in the book…

 ’I didn’t know it was that important!’

‘I’m too tired to make breakfast.’

‘I’m not hungry in the morning.’

‘I got up late.’

 Your athletes last ate at maybe 7pm the previous evening and now they’re skipping breakfast. So the space between caloric intake is 15-18 hours. Their bodies are in starvation mode by the time they get something in their systems and their blood sugar levels are in the toilet.

 You spend endless hours writing workouts, designing plays, coaching, traveling, etc.

 And it all goes out the window when your athletes don’t consume enough calories to finish workouts or focus on executing plays or technical movements.

 Nutrition is easily 70% of your athletes’ results and if they don’t even eat breakfast, how far off their best are they falling?

 Want better results? Convince your athletes of the importance of breakfast and give them some healthy options on what they should be eating!

 

 #2: The Dollar Menu is a Food Group

 Your kids don’t eat breakfast, so they’re starving.

 What’s the easiest solution for HS kids with no real jobs or money?

 $1 double cheeseburgers my friends. And lots of ‘em.

 Half of your athletes eat fast food a solid 3 days per week. What’s most amazing is that your female athletes are often the biggest culprits.

 (Enjoy it now ladies because The Freshman 15 is as real as it gets.)

 The saying ‘You are what you eat’ isn’t a marketing ploy, it’s a fact of reality.

 The cells of your body are constantly being replaced…

 …by whatever it is that you’re eating.

 Eat garbage and your body rebuilds itself with garbage.

 The athletes on my team who get injured most often and stay injured the longest are, without question, the ones with the worst nutrition.

 Parents spend countless hundreds and thousands of dollars on camps, clinics, special coaching, clothing, equipment, travel, physical therapy for their injured athletes, etc.

 Coaches spend just as much in time and preparation, travel, coaching education (OK, that’s probably not true for most coaches), etc.

 Athletes spend countless hours running tough workouts, lifting weights (!), competing, traveling, etc.

 And you’re all wasting your limited time and money when you ignore the fact that nutrition lays the foundation for everything they do in *and* out of practice.

 If you want top performing, injury free athletes, you’ve got to break their addiction to the dollar menu.

 You can’t tell athletes:

 ’I want you to eat breakfast, eat every 2-3 hours, and stop eating fast food.’

 …unless you give them healthy alternatives to eat instead.

 Otherwise, eating right becomes a job and they just won’t do it.

 Remember: contingent rewards (if/then propositions such as: if you start eating healthy, then you’ll run faster) don’t work!!

 

 #1 Your Athletes Want to Eat Healthy, They Just Don’t Know What to Eat!

 The first part of my Team Nutrition Q&A session was debunking myths:

 - No, coffee is not OK to drink every morning before school

- Yes, you must eat 5-6 times per day

- No, sports drinks are not a substitute for water

- No, fruit juice is not good for you in large quantities

- Yes, if you feel thirsty you’re already dehydrated

- Yes, you’re more likely to get hurt if you don’t eat breakfast

 You get the idea…

 I realized these kids aren’t eating junk because they’re trying to make me cry, they really have NO IDEA what they should be eating.

 As the discussion went on and kids realized what a hot mess their eating habits were *and* how it kept them from performing at a higher level, their questions fundamentally changed.

 Instead, the questions were all based around the idea of:

 ’Well, what should I…

 …eat for breakfast?

…eat for a snack during the day?

…drink instead of juice and Gatorade?

…eat/drink before a competition?

…eat/drink during a competition?

…eat for dinner?

 Once you start giving common sense answers to these questions, you’ll start noticing more water bottles at practice.

 More healthy snacks before practice or on the way to the weight room.

 More kids telling you (proudly) what they ate for breakfast or dinner.

 More kids ratting out their teammates who can’t break their Dollar Menu addiction.

 And most importantly – more kids finishing workouts, performing at a higher level and NOT getting injured.

 Here’s the bottom line:

 Your athletes’ nutrition sucks. Even the good ones.

 You’ve got to coach them in this arena like you coach them on the track or playing fields. Because they want to play better. They want to eat better.

 They just don’t know what to do.

 And you spend too much time and energy being a coach to let half of it go to waste because you think nutrition is someone else’s problem.

 

If you want to get results, then it’s your job to make this a part of your program. Starting yesterday.

 To your success,

 Latif Thomas

Now is the time of year where I use every Jedi Mind Trick I can think of to convince myself warm weather is right around the corner.

Looking out at the snow as I type this, I’m not sure it’s working…

In an attempt to get an early jump on spring, we’re clearing out our inventory of select programs. You’ll want to take advantage of this offer because we’re also slashing the price of each of these resources by 20%.

The only catch is this:

There are only a handful of programs available and once they’re gone, they’re gone. No exceptions.

If you’re expecting to get better results out of your athletes then you’re getting now, then click on the following link and grab a copy of one of our best selling coaching resources while you still can:

http://www.athletesacceleration.com/springcleaning.html

To your success,

Latif Thomas

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.