Coaching Youth and Training Kids - What Parents and Volunteer Coaches Need to Know

Ben Burlinson, the owner and founder of Performance Pediatrics and Co-founder of HPR Colorado Springs has more than 15 years of coaching experience with numerous national coaching certificates, including a National NSCAA license. Officially starting his career working with children as a teacher, Ben taught locally in Colorado Springs for nearly 10 years, instructing several subjects including secondary science, elementary math, and physical education.

After pursuing an exercise science degree and finding a void in the developmental coaching curriculum, he spent hundreds of hours researching and educating himself on the growing athlete. Using his broad experience as a teacher and coach, Ben founded Performance Pediatrics with a goal to provide long term planning, management, and injury prevention to the young aspiring athlete. Starting from a small gym in south Colorado Springs Performance Pediatrics has grown into a reputable and powerful ally in the youth sports community. Ben in proud to be a part of the community at HPR and is excited to work alongside some of Colorado Springs’ best practitioners. Coach Ben has many years working with athletes and Alignment of goals, what does everyone want out of this experience? What do the parents want? What do the kids want?

Today we have the honor of talking with Ben for an entire hour! We get in depth on the topic of training youth and specifically how to train youth.

This is a great resource for volunteer coaches and parents who have no experience coaching but are suddenly in charge of coaching their child’s soccer team.

A lot of current training programs are built for adults and shouldn’t be used for training youth. Ben helps us understand what it takes to be a good coach:

Define expectations – There are different reasons why kids are taking part in sports and it is important for the coach to know why the kids are there. Some kids might be there to get out of the house and off of the electronics and some kids might be there because they want to play sports at a collegiate level. Talking with the parents and administrators to define what the goals are is paramount in knowing how to train the kids and making sure there isn’t any confusion among the group. Decide what type of team you’re going to run and let the participants know so they can make an informed decision on whether or not they want to be a part of the team. It’s better to turn some people away now than to upset parents and kids when expectations aren’t met.
Don’t Over Train – Practice 3 times a week for 90 minutes each.
Focus on skills – When developing kids should be working on moving well and controlling those movements. Once the skills are perfect then they can move on to the specific power and weight training. Remember kids are growing and even a Centimeter of growth can change the entire way a kid moves.
Watch out for Pain – Kids shouldn’t be in pain. If kids are complaining about being in pain. Listen and find out what is hurting and why.
Breaks – Take lots of breaks and have plenty of water available!
Ask Questions – Ben has made it clear that he is more than happy to answer any questions so please feel free to contact him via email here: [email protected]