by Alan Stein
16. September 2008 05:47
This past weekend I was in Halifax, Canada running a cutting edge agility, reaction, and conditioning clinic for the girl’s of the Thunder Selects program. The program is run by Brandon Rafuse, an excellent coach and skills instructor. Brandon has done a tremendous job with the Thunder Selects Program and was a marvelous host. I can’t thank him enough for his gracious hospitality and I look forward to going back this spring (as well as to Ontario).
This was my first time to Canada and it was a fantastic experience overall.
On the basketball side, we ran separate clinics for two different age groups; 6th-8th graders and 9th-12thgraders. We had well over 40 girls in each group. The workouts were 3 hours in length, which gave us plenty of time to work on every facet of performance – warm-up, dynamic flexibility, ACL injury prevention, core training, reaction, agility, explosion, and conditioning. The girls worked really hard and a lot of fun! As always, I made sure to sporadically incorporate my thoughts on what it takes to be successful in life, not just in basketball, as this game can be a priceless tool in teaching kids invaluable lessons. Things like, “if you only work hard when you feel like it, nothing will ever get done” or “most people fail because they trade what they want most for what they want at the moment.”
Given it was my first trip to Canada, I had to do some touristy things too. I took a tour on the Harbor Hopper (a land/sea tour of the city) and learned about the history of Halifax (world renowned Halifax Explosion) as well as ate at some great restaurants (Sicilian's Pizza, The Keg and Tomisino’s). I even had some world famous Cow’s Ice Cream! The Thunder Selects program was nice enough to put me up in the Westin with a breathtaking view of the Halifax Harbor so I got to see several huge cruise ships come and go.
If you would like to contact me about this blog, my MVP Vertical Jump Training DVD, my training and/or camps and clinics, please email me atAlan@StrongerTeam.com. I will respond as quickly as possible!
Train hard. Train smart.
Alan Stein, CCS, CSCS