Every athlete wants to find an edge. Blue Chip Athletic Performance Enhancement LLC provides experienced coaches who specialize in sport-specific performance enhancement. If you need to run faster, jump higher, or throw harder we can help you.
From young athletes just learning a sport to more experienced athletes looking to improve performance, we offer sport-specific training sessions for individuals or small groups. Your coach will design a training regimen to help you improve the skills needed to succeed in your chosen sport.
-Gene Dougherty
Strength and Conditioning
Strength and conditioning is a vital part of an athlete’s development, especially for youth athletes. It involves a structured program of exercises designed to improve physical strength, endurance, flexibility, and overall athletic performance. For youth athletes, strength and conditioning programs are tailored to ensure safety and proper technique while building a solid foundation for future athletic growth.
Key Benefits:
Improved Strength: Building muscular strength helps youth athletes perform better in their sport, improve stability, and reduce the risk of injury.
Increased Endurance: Through cardiovascular and muscular endurance training, young athletes can sustain higher levels of performance throughout their games and competitions.
Enhanced Coordination and Balance: Strength exercises help with body control, improving movement efficiency and preventing injuries.
Injury Prevention: By focusing on proper movement patterns and strengthening muscles, tendons, and ligaments, strength and conditioning can prevent common youth injuries, like strains or sprains.
Program Focus:
Bodyweight exercises: Push-ups, squats, lunges, planks, and other bodyweight movements build foundational strength.
Resistance training: Light weights, resistance bands, or medicine balls are used to develop strength gradually.
Flexibility and mobility: Stretching and mobility work improve range of motion, supporting both injury prevention and performance.
Core stability: Exercises like planks, leg raises, and twists enhance the core, a crucial area for almost every sport.
Considerations for Youth Athletes:
Progressive overload: Gradual increases in intensity are key to safe, effective strength training.
Proper technique: Technique is crucial, and young athletes should be taught how to perform movements properly to avoid injury.
Age-appropriate programs: Training should be age-appropriate, focusing on bodyweight exercises and light resistance until the athlete matures physically.
Speed and Agility
Speed and agility training is focused on improving an athlete's ability to move quickly and change direction efficiently. These are key skills for almost every sport, helping athletes to perform better and gain a competitive edge. Speed and agility training is particularly beneficial for youth athletes because it helps develop essential movement skills that will enhance their overall athletic abilities.
Key Benefits:
Improved Speed: Speed training helps youth athletes develop quicker starts, faster running times, and improved overall acceleration.
Better Agility: Agility involves the ability to change direction rapidly and maintain control. Agility training teaches athletes how to react to changing situations in sports.
Enhanced Footwork: A strong emphasis on footwork can improve a young athlete’s efficiency in both running and in other sport-specific movements (like dribbling in basketball or shifting in soccer).
Reaction Time: Training improves how quickly youth athletes can respond to opponents, the ball, or changing game situations.
Injury Prevention: Agility and speed training can help youth athletes improve their body control and awareness, which helps reduce the risk of falls, strains, and other injuries.
Program Focus:
Speed Drills: Sprints, short-distance runs, and hill runs to improve acceleration and top-end speed.
Agility Drills: Ladder drills, cone drills, and shuttle runs teach athletes to change direction quickly while maintaining balance and control.
Footwork Drills: Quick steps, rapid foot changes, and foot coordination exercises improve reaction times and movement efficiency.
Plyometrics: Exercises like bounding, jumping, and hop drills improve explosive power, which is essential for quick take-offs and directional changes.
Start and Stop Technique: Training athletes to start quickly and stop efficiently is key in maximizing speed and agility during games.
Considerations for Youth Athletes:
Focus on mechanics: Proper technique is crucial for developing speed and agility safely and effectively.
Emphasis on form and posture: Posture and body position impact how quickly and efficiently an athlete can move. Proper form also minimizes the risk of injury.
Gradual progression: Speed and agility drills should start at a manageable intensity and increase over time as the athlete’s skill level improves.
Recovery: Sufficient rest and recovery are important to avoid overtraining and help young athletes perform optimally.
Injury Prevention/Rehab
Injury prevention is a key component of any training program. We help you reduce injuries by building functional strength through a full range of mobility.
Nutrition
Any good training regimen requires a good, balanced diet. We can assist you in understanding the best foods to use to fuel your body for peak performance.