Six Stretches and Exercises Every Youth Sports Coach Should Know

Horsham / Warrington: If you are or know a Youth Sports coach, Keith made a great video for you. These are a handful of Stretches / Exercises that you can easily incorporate into your pregame routines to keep your kids safe and healthy – and to avoid back and neck problems.

Please share if you know anyone that coaches youth sports.

Hey, this is Keith at Genesis Chiropractic Clinic. If you’re a youth sports coach, you’re working out with the kids, you’re preparing them for their warmups before their games or practices:

I have six exercises that I’m going to recommend. I will demonstrate for you.

At Genesis Chiropractic Clinic we’re very big on whole-body warmups. We’re getting the spine moving, getting the hips moving. If you’re working with kids, I have great exercises to get them prepared for their activity. A patient of ours, Rebecca, she’s a lacrosse coach, and she had asked us if we could help her out, as well as other coaches working with the children on exercises to improve their performance.

The six exercises I’m going to do, I’m going to have you do them before the game, before the practice. Again, it’s full-body exercises starting with the first exercise, the bird dog.

The bird dog stretch

This is going to stretch out the hamstrings, stretch out the glutes, it’s going to straighten out their spines, mobilize their spine as well as reaching with the upper body, therefore opening up the lats and through the shoulders.

Have them start on their hands and knees here, looking in between their hands, keeping their neck neutral. We’re going to go straight arms, straight opposite leg, reaching away, really stretching out that spine. Hold for two seconds. So come on in. Alternate, activating the core here. Reach a little further. Come on in. Have them do that 10 times on each side, a total of 20. They can easily do that.

The next exercise is the cat and camel.

This actually helps pump fluid back into the discs, it’ll mobilize the spine as well as mobilize the neck. Hands and knees. They’ll love this one. Hands and knees, deep breath in, lifting the back all the way up. Hold for two. Breathing out. So keeping the arms straight, pressing your lower spine all the way down and look up here. The scared cat and the camel, the cat camel exercise. 20 of those as well. 20 times all the way up, deep breath. Twenty times all the way down, looking up.

Now we’re going to get into the hips.

Have them lay on their back. Arms are out wide here. This will open up the chest. Feet and knees together. We’re going to have them go all the way down. Nice and slow. Try and touch the floor here. This will open up the hips, stretch out the lower back to the mid-back. All the way down, count for two. Nice and slow, with control to the middle. Other side, all the way down here. Hold for two, touching the floor. Nice and slow, with control, back to the middle. To keep things simple, we’ll do 10 on each side of those as well.

Then next we’re going to do our laying down hamstring stretch.

I’m going to use a strap here. Kids can probably grab their leg, though we’ll go over the specifics of how to do the stretch proper.

On your back, I’m going to put this strap right here on my foot. The important thing here is I’m going to keep my right leg nice and straight. I may even turn it in towards the middle, that’ll lock the hip in place. I’m going to work myself here, getting my leg as close to 90 degrees as I can get. So a little tip here, if you point your toes down, that’ll also stretch through the calf.

I don’t really have a whole lot of time. So usually, I like to do this for about two minutes, but to keep things simple for the kids for the warmup, have them move around first and hold this for about 15 seconds. After the 15 seconds, come on down, switch legs. So 15 on each side.

The next exercise I have here are the hip circles.

This will move the SI joints, it’ll get the hips mobile. We can go in and out, but for today, I’m just going to go out. Have them stand nice and tall, tight core. So leg will come up, all the way out and around, keeping the upper body straight, forming a circular rotation. 10 on this leg, 10 on this.

I think that’s it guys. Enjoy yourself. Teach these kids these exercises if you want. So I think it’s going to help. I think a lot of our patients who do these will agree it helps, so have at it and give us some feedback. Thanks.