Effective athletic development starts with a strong foundation in fundamental skills that must be developed prior to training sport specific skills. In other words, a solid base of fundamental movement is essential to developing a skilled athlete. This base consists of three broad categories which include locomotion, manipulative, and stability skills. The skills that get us from place to place are locomotive and include walking, running and sprinting. Manipulative skills involve controlling objects via the hands or feet and include throwing or striking. Stability skill development, which is what we will focus on today, consists primarily of movements executed with little or no movement of the base support. As you’ve probably already guessed, balance is the key component of stability skill development. Balance is the foundation of many sport skills, especially those that involve finer motor movement. A baseball pitcher balancing on one leg or a soccer player cutting the ball to change direction are examples these balance type movements.
To train an athlete effectively and in a way that builds the proper foundation, the trainer must understand the functional movement skills the athlete performs and reproduce them in a way that allows the athlete to perform them automatically within a targeted, defined progression. This type of training not only builds the foundation of future success, it helps reduce the chance of injury.
At CAMP, Building Better Athletes our sport specific balance training begins with static skill development and progresses through dynamic and eventually to ballistic type movements – all designed to build the foundation of future success and reduce injury. Pay attention to the details, build the foundation the right way and your chance of success will increase dramatically.
Paul Campbell
Director
CAMP, Building Better Athletes LLC