Miles Lee Hargreaves is Bournemouth’s finest youth surfer.  He is the best in the country for his age group and was recently selected to join the Youth GB team in Auckland, New Zealand for the World Championships.  Miles is off to Australia’s High Performance Centre for some intensive training before heading to New Zealand in January 2010 for the world comps.

Good luck Miles, we can’t wait to hear all about your trip down under.

Check out Miles’ awesome surfing.  Let’s not forget too he is only 14 years old!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwPvB4y010Y

A massive thank you to Robbie Yates for an outstanding report…

“When I was appointed Dorset Girls Centre of Excellence director in May 2009 I knew that I had a big task in front of me. The centre runs girls under 10-12-14-16 football teams of up to 20 players per squad.

The main factor I have had try to effect was the girl’s fitness. But the problem I had I did not have a fitness coach to work with. Then my luck changed I was introduced to Rachel Light Head trainer & owner of Young Athletics Training Academy (YATA)

The general fitness of the players ABC’S Aerobic, Anaerobic & fundamental movements were poor.

I asked Rachel (YATA) to design a fitness plan for the season for all age groups. The effects the fitness training has had on the players from Rachel (YATA) has been unbelievable

Football is a sport requiring high levels of physical fitness. It is one of those sports that demands not only speed but agility, strength, power and endurance. Players at top levels can run a total of 14 km in a typical game, not forgetting the frequent accelerations, decelerations, changes of direction and jumps they must undertake.

But you don’t have to be David Beckham to train specifically for football. Fitness is important at all levels of the game. Whilst being essential for elite performers it is beneficial for players of all standards since both their effectiveness and

Enjoyment will improve as they develop their fitness. The aim of fitness training in football is to enable a player to cope with the physical demands of the game as well as allowing the efficient use of his various technical and tactical competencies throughout the match YATA has worked on all the above

This includes general conditioning, aerobic fitness and muscular strength. If you are in good condition then you are less likely to get injuries. Strong muscles are less likely to tear. A player that can keep going for the full game is less likely to be late in a tackle. Good all-round conditioning will balance the body and help avoid necessary injuries. Footballers can get stronger hip flexor muscles through repeated kicking on one side. This twists the pelvis and lower back causing other problems including recurrent hamstring injuries.

Also Nutrition needed to be effected educating the players & parents Rachel (YATA) again set the standards information related to the centre has been of high quality.

The work undertaken has made such a massive impact on all players, feeling better within themselves running styles have improved I can not say in words how much the work performed by YATA has done for the players.

I would have no hesitation in promoting Rachel’s work with YATA to any Organisation in sport her work with the Centre has had the most effect with everyone including my own coaches learning from the session Rachel delivers”.

Robbie Yates

(Dorset Centre of Excellence Director & Community Coach)

The Young Athletes Training Academy Official Merchandise for further information please contact us

http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/archive/2009/11/05/swimming/4719989.Dolphins_star_Joe_heads_for_Millfield/

The Academy has recently completed it’s work with Active Dorset (Sport England) who run a pilot scheme for local children, gifted and talented in Multi Skills.  Our role was to run a total of three sessions during the school holidays that included basic performance assessments to include:  Agility, Balance, Co-ordination, Aerobic Fitness and basic strength and power.  All children who took part worked extremely hard and were a pleasure to train.

As an incentive to encourage the children to train outside of these sessions we promised a prize for the best trainer at the end of the last session.  With this in mind a large number of children worked harder and pushed themselves.  The results were there to be seen.  However sadly we could only chose one winner and crowned Thalia Norman the champion for her hard work and dedication during all three training sessions.  Thalia was presented with a one off YATA Sports Tshirt, a key ring and a free personal training session with the Academy.

Congratulations to all the children!

Strength is an important part to sport training and even as a child you should perform very basic strength training exercises. Download this document to see demonstrations and teaching points on some basic exercises.

Basic Strength Exercises

We’ve been so fortunate to have some of the counties finest young athletes answer some questions for us.  Their answers are truly inspirational and definitely ones to watch for the future.  Check out here to read their interviews  http://www.yatasports.com/what-we-do/for-future-stars/

For the last seven weeks I have been working the the Dorset Centre of Excellence for girls football.  I currently train under 10’s, under 12’s, under 14’s and under 16’s.

When I first joined the centre I was concerned at the number of girls whose fitness levels were very poor.  I ran some performance tests and the results were surprising.  It was a task ahead to help improve the girls fitness and their understanding of general health.  For the last seven weeks I have introduced aerobic and strength training to the older girls and with the younger ones concentrated more on the FUNdamental movements of sport.  To our delight we are now starting to see good results.  The older girls are really enjoying the fitness and getting better at their sport.  They all have a better range of movement and there are no injuries at present.  I am confident to say this is because I have drummed in to them about the importance of stretching.

I would like to say a big thank you to Robbie and the other coaches for supporting me and an even bigger thank you to ALL the girls at the centre for listening to me and putting it in to practice.

Rachel xx

Stretching is a very important part of your training and is often missed or overlooked.  When you train hard you are using the same muscles in your body over and over again. It is there for important to stretch all the muscles in your body to maintain their length.  If you do not stretch properly then this will have an issue on the range of movement of joints.  For example in swimming the quadricep muscles and hip flexor muscles are dominant during leg kick, therefore hamstrings will become shorter unless you stretch them.  By stretching properly you can reduce injury.  Please look at this stretch sheet for information on all the stretches you should be doing.  Remember if your muscle is short then you need to hold the stretch for a minimum of 40 seconds as often as you can.  Contact us for further information.

Stretch sheet number 1