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PHOTO CAPTION:

The 2012 Division 1 Girls Castro Valley National Junior Basketball Champions pictured after their Championship Game victory, front row, left to right, Coach Jose Alvarez, Giana Wright, Jasmine Smith, Jennifer Fallejo. Back Row – Sarah Kim, Heather Robertson, Franchesca Sousa, Juliet Gica, Martina Daniel, Aariana Linen, Cori Davis and Assistant Coach Rich Fallejo. Missing from the photo, Assistant Coach Frank Robertson.

Monday, April 9th – Friday, April 13th

Our Sports Specific Summer Camps provide campers with a fun-packed, enjoyable environment where they can increase their athleticism and develop a wider range of skills. Velocity Sports Performance is looking for boys and girls ages 8-14 who are dedicated to making themselves better as athletes.

Our state-of-the-art facility, experienced staff, and proven Velocity program will enhance confidence and individual sport related skills. Velocity’s goal is to increase sport specific athletic ability through the fundamentals of speed, power, and agility.

Sports:

• Football Spring Camp (ages 8-11)
• Football Spring Camp (ages 12-15)
• Basketball Camp (ages 12-15)
• Soccer Camp (ages 8-11) 
• Soccer Camp (ages 12-15)

Click here to view camp times

The Girls Volleyball Spring league is open to youth in fifth through eighth grades. (ages 10-14)

Highly trained and experienced staff will teach the fundamentals using philosophies from Gold Medal Squared and USA Volleyball. This program is a great introduction to the world of Club Volleyball. For the more experienced players, staff will continue to emphasize fundamentals, and add advanced volleyball techniques with a heavy concentration on footwork and arm swing techniques.

• Teams will train twice weekly during this six week program.
• One Saturday tournament will also be included.
• The registration fee includes a t-shirt for each participant. 10 practices.
• lead Instructor: Jack Cowden, Foothill College and USA Volleyball High Performance Coach.

After hobbling through a grueling non-league schedule, Pilar Souder and the College Park girls soccer team are galloping through their Diablo Valley Athletic League competition. Through games played on Jan. 26, the Falcons are a sizzling 9-0 in the DVAL with three league games remaining. The junior midfielder serves as one of the catalysts for a squad that’s peaking at the right time.

SportStars Magazine: With the season winding down, do your and your teammates feel the pressure coming from league opponents?

Pilar Souder: It’s not really pressure, it’s definitely excitement. It’s just exciting to be undefeated and thinking about winning. We feel the pressure when game time is coming.

SSM: Your team has many weapons. How crucial is that moving into the postseason?

PS: Especially when we’re playing a good team, we’re not relying on one person. We can rely on anybody on any given day.

SSM: You guys had a rough stretch in December losing four of five games. What did you learn from that?

PS: We had the Tri-Valley Tournament. The teams we were playing were a lot better than the teams we play in league. In December, that’s when we started playing together. We’re playing more as a team now. That’s contributed to our success.

PILAR’S QUICK HITS

• Favorite athlete: Landon Donovan
• Favorite subject: Photography
• Favorite Starbucks item: Green Tea lemonade w/ Passion Tea

Know a high school athlete that deserves to be the SportStar of the Week, email us at Editor@SportStarsMag.com

SportStars Magazine can be found at more than 900 locations throughout the East Bay, including your local Velocity Training Center. You can also check out the magazine on its new website: www.SportStarsOnline.com.

• There are an estimated 100,000 ACL tears a year
• 80% of these are non-contact injuries
• The majority of those who tear their ACL’s are female
• Almost all tears occur while playing sports

You have probably all heard of or known someone who has recently torn his or her ACL. This injury has become more prevalent in the last few years and has taken many athletes, young and old, out of sport for at least six months. In my college career I was able to count the number of ACL tears on two hands from the men’s and women’s soccer teams alone. These injuries required intensive surgery and rehabilitation that took the athlete out for an entire season.

What is the ACL?

The ACL (Anterior Cruciate Ligament) is a ligament connecting the femur to the tibia that works together with the PCL, MCL, and LCL to stabilize the knee. More specifically, the ACL controls pivoting and sliding movements of the knee, aiding the quadriceps and hamstrings in stabilization of the joint. When the ACL is torn, the rest of the knee is compromised, causing more falls and further injury due to internal collapsing.

How is it torn?

The major factors for ACL tears combine the instantaneous loss of motor control while landing with the knees and hips straight. For example, while an athlete cuts inside, the knee collapses due to a valgus force (forcing the knee inward) while the foot and tibia point straight, causing the ACL to stretch beyond its limit and tear(Picture 1A). The loss of control is usually contributed to internal rotation of the hips, muscle imbalances in the quad and hamstrings, and/or failure to activate knee flexors, leading to excessive stress on the knee ligaments.

The ACL is often torn when an athlete plants and tries to turn at a 180 degree angle. The foot often gets caught in the turf, but the knee and hip still turn at that angle. This stretches the ACL to a point past its limit and results in the athlete hearing a “pop” in which they simultaneously lost stability.

Good News

In the last few years there have been a few groups who have taken on research in order to find a preventative program to avoid this injury. One research group from the Vanderbilt Orthopaedic Institute found that girls age 14-17 involved in a preventative program were 74% less likely to tear their ACL. Although many of these prevention programs differ slightly, they all include neuromuscular training consisting of plyometrics, balance, and technique training. The main focus of these programs is to alter neuromuscular risk factors so that the knee joint is more stable and the musculature surrounding the knee can preactivate and activate correctly in order to protect the ACL.

• Velocity is looking to implement a program like this in the future

A

I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve had parents and athletes ask me “is your training sport specific?” and about 100% of the time they have no idea what that actually means. I’ve seen so many coaches use these so called “sport specific training” methods in an effort to make themselves look more cutting edge when the reality is they are doing more harm than good. I decided it was time to write an article on the subject to clear the air, to explain why its not what most athletes need and to inform on what truly translates to performance on the field.

What is Sport Specific Training?

Like most good ideas, the concept is simple; take movements that occur in your sport and mimic them in the weight room to build strength in that movement pattern. Theoretically this should have a direct translation to the field. This idea was all the rage in 1990′s and suddenly performance coaches that should have known better were jumping on the bandwagon. Sprinters were doing high knees with resistance bands to mimic the high knee punch; soccer players were kicking balls with ankle weights; running backs were doing ladder drills with bands around their ankles; Pitchers were doing their throwing motion with a band around their wrist attached to a wall. The examples are endless. Yet in most cases performance was decreasing, and the smart coaches who took those crazy exercises out of their programs and focused on building up the compound lifts (squat, deadlift, olympic lifts, etc.) saw no loss in performance and in most cases improved performance.

Why sports specific training is destroying your performance

First of all, most athletes already get enough sports specific training… its called practice and playing the sport itself! Turns out these fancy, gimmicky, sports specific training exercises are not nearly as effective as playing the sport itself! Since most athletes are already performing these movement patterns multiple times a week as it is, incorporating those exercises into their routine only accumulates fatigue by burning out their nervous system from overtraining the same pattern. This diminishes the quality of their practices because it prevents them from being able to practice or play at their peak.

B

Another important factor is that those exercises completely alter the mechanics and physics of how your body applies force. In most sports athletes have to utilize what is called ground reaction force. This concept is derived from newtons third law; for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For example a sprinter moves forward by driving back into the ground and the ground reaction force that is returned is what makes him go forward. So the more force he can put into the ground, the more is returned and the more ground he covers with each step. So coaches who fell for the sports specific nonsense are making their sprinters do high knees with bands when the truth is that the high knee punch is really a result of the massive forces they are applying to the ground! Ground reaction force is also huge for throwing athletes. Can a pitcher throw a 100 mph fastball while sitting down? No way! He has to transfer force that he puts into the ground back through his muscles through his feet, hips, core, shoulder into the ball. These so called sports specific exercises are not nearly as effective at training athletes to create ground reaction force and transfer that force which is the common denominator of pretty much all athletic movement. Additionally, these exercises use a very small percentage of a normal, healthy, fully functional athletes work capacity. They aren’t loaded enough to promote any significant strength gains which is the foundation of all movement.

The Solution

Same thing athletes have been doing forever, get strong! Stick to the basics. Squats, deadlifts and olympic lifts requires the athlete to produce massive amounts of force into the ground and trains athletes to transfer force through multiple muscle groups. Using multiple muscle groups and being able to use heavy loads gives you the ability to work at a much greater percentage of your total work capacity. This elicits much greater neural and muscular adaptions. In other words, your muscles get stronger and contract faster; which translates to the ability to produce greater force and produce it rapidly which is required in all athletic movement!

I was at a National Strength and Conditioning Association Clinic last weekend and one of the speakers cited a study that showed that golfers that had the longest drives also had the highest vertical jumps. Seems about as far from sports specific as you can get, right? But they know how to express power and that translates to power in their sport. The point of sharing that is to illustrate that playing your sport makes what you do in the gym sport specific.

Whos working harder?

A. The Lifter
B. The guy with bands

If you chose B, smack yourself in the head and re-read this article.

In closing, here are the take home messages I want to leave you with:

There is no replacement for strength.
There is no big secret, there is no short cut, the best thing you can do is the same thing athletes have been doing forever; lift heavy and play your sport
Train to develop maximal strength and power the old fashion way, big compound movements where you can really load up the plates (squat, deadlift, olympic lifts)
Playing your sport makes your strength training sports specific!

Benefits of Stretching

Stretching has many benefits to the enhancement of your sport performance. First of all, it improves your flexibility. This may sound like an obvious result of stretching, but many people underestimate the importance of improving the flexibility of your muscles and joints. This can actually greatly reduce the chances of injury when performing vigorous activities that put major strain on the body.

In addition, flexibility can improve your physical ability to perform a specific activity. For example, a sprinter with greater flexibility will be able to increase their stride length if their muscles and joints are capable of stretching farther. Combining this techniques with others can result in a much greater ability to outperform other athletes at the same skill level.

Stretching all the muscles and joints in the body is important. Even though certain sports may require you to use a specific part of your body more than any other, you would still benefit by stretching all the muscles to give your body an overall flexibility.

Proper Stretching is Important

It is not enough to simply stretch a particular muscle for one or two seconds, once a week. In order to see any results from stretching, it must be done properly. First of all, you should stretch your muscles after they have been warmed up after a little bit of activity. Stretching muscles that have been sedentary can increase injury simply from the act of stretching itself.

Secondly, when you are stretching, you should hold the position for at least ten seconds, up to 30 if you can. Holding it for less than 10 seconds will not result in a great amount of flexibility. In addition, you should not be bouncing during the stretch. You must be able to hold the position without moving to maintain the pull and stretch of the muscle. Make sure you do not over-stretch. Eventually, you will be able to reach a certain mark by practicing on a regular basis.

If you find that you need some assistance, you can use a rolled towel. For example, when you are trying to reach your toes, but find yourself coming up short, wrap a rolled up towel around the bottom of your foot, and pull yourself into the stretch by holding the ends of the towel with both hands.

There is no doubt that warming up and improving the flexibility of your muscles and joints can greatly improve your sports performance. By performing these stretches faithfully and ritually, you will be able to see an improvement in your flexibility and performance in a matter of weeks.