Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

Every fanatical sport parent is looking for an edge in their kid’s training program. I’m one of those fanatical sport parents and I’ve learned two things about training kids over the last 7 years.

1. There is no one size fits all training “program” that can give your kid an edge over the competition.
2. However, there is a one size fit’s all training “strategy” that I highly recommend you try.

This strategy is very simple and involves only 4 steps.

The 4 Step Home Training Strategy I use With My Kids

STEP 1:

First, find two to four activities that will help your child develop and master their innate gifts and talents. It could be a calisthenic exercise, mastering the muscle memory of a technique, a video review or visualization process, or something genuinely unique to the sport or special talent of your child. I can’t tell you exactly what to do, as the innate gifts and talents of every child are different. Therefore, there are two main things that matter about the activities you choose:

1. Your child understands how the activities strengthen their innate gifts and talents, and
2. Your child is confident that the activities will drive improvements to help them reach their goals

STEP 2:

Next, carve out 20 to 30 minutes either first thing in the morning or before bed to establish a daily routine around executing these activities. Since time is so short, this narrows down your options in step 1. You must be able to execute each activity at home, without needing much setup time to get started.

STEP 3:

Then, come up with a process to rotate between activities in such a way that either rest a muscle group or provides mental rest. For example:

• Day 1: Activity 1 and 2
• Day 2: Activity 3 and 4
• Then on Day 3 take a rest day
• Day 4: Back to activity 1 and 2
• Day 5: Back to activity 3 and 4

STEP 4:

Now comes the final and most important step. You must get 100% buy-in from your child. They must own this process and want it more than you want it for them. None of the above matters if you have to force your child to wake-up 30 minutes early or constantly nag them before bed.

I’ve done this with my own kids and I know first hand that if they don’t want to do it, it’s not worth pushing them. So trust me when I say buy-in is the most important ingredient to all of this. With that said, if they fall in love with doing this daily routine, and you can be there to serve as their cheerleader, magic starts to happen.

It’s worth giving it a try just to see if your child’s commitment is there. Even if they don’t buy-in, you will still find value in taking time to identify two to four activities that develop their innate gifts and talents. That alone is worth the effort. So whenever your child does develop their self-motivation, you will have a routine ready for them to execute.