Children's Sports

The Doula Book: How a Trained Labor Companion Can Help You Have a Shorter, Easier, and Healthier Birth

The complete and essential guide to birth with a doula by the "undisputed experts in the field."-- Los Angeles Times

More and more parents-to-be all over the world are choosing the comfort and reassuring support of birth with a trained labor companion called a "doula." This warm, authoritative, and irreplaceable guide completely updates the authors' earlier book, Mothering the Mother, and adds much new and important research. In addition to basic advice on finding and working with a doula, the authors show how a doula reduces the need for cesarean section, shortens the length of labor, decreases the pain medication required, and enhances bonding and breast feeding. The authors, world-renowned authorities on childbirth with combined experience of over 100 years working with laboring women, have made their book indispensable to every woman who wants the healthiest, safest, and most joyful possible birth experience.

A Merloyd Lawrence Book

The Baffled Parent's Guide to Coaching Youth Soccer

Written by soccer great and championship Stanford coach Bobby Clark, COACHING YOUTH SOCCER: THE BAFFLED PARENT'S GUIDE tells you how, starting at point zero, an uninitiated coach can meld kids into a team and help them enjoy one of the most rewarding experiences of their youth. (In the end, you may be the one who reaps the biggest reward, as you watch kids learn and grow in an experience they'll treasure for a lifetime.)

Great Soccer Drills : The Baffled Parent's Guide

A PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

A games-based alternative to tedious rote exercises, guaranteed to keep practices fun, engaging, and productive

Great Soccer Drills provides soccer coaches with a great way to make every soccer practice active, fun, and productive. Coaches get 125 games guaranteed to keep kids moving and excited while teaching them basic skills, sharpening their reflexes, and building their confidence and decision-making ability. Written by two of North America's foremost names in youth soccer coaching, it also includes guidelines on how to create just the right blend of drills to hold the attention of six- to twelve-year-old players.

Great Soccer Drills can be used in conjunction with the bestselling Coaching Youth Soccer: A Baffled Parent's Guide or as an excellent stand-alone resource for spicing up any practice.

The Baffled Parent's Guide to Coaching 6-and-Under Soccer

"Scott and David have done a fantastic job getting into the psyche of these very young players. What I really love is their emphasis on FUN, and that kids learn by DOING. This book will make a great extra assistant as you prepare for your season."—Bobby Clark, Head Soccer Coach, University of Notre Dame; author of the best-selling Coaching Youth Soccer: The Baffled Parent's Guide

Coach. You're the new coach of your child's soccer team, and you're not sure how to teach your players the fundamentals of soccer while also ensuring they have fun. Don't panic—Coaching 6-and-Under Soccer is here to help.

Coaching 6-and-Under Soccer offers straightforward advice, tips, and techniques, including reward-based games and drills; your first six practices in an easy-to-photocopy format; and how to teach soccer basics to 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds in ways that are fun for you and your players. This complete tool kit for a new coach includes:

• The twelve easy-to-run drills that work best with young soccer players
• How to keep your young players happy and active while they learn
• How to make parents your best assistants and supporters
• How to keep the focus where it belongs—not on winning or losing, but on having fun
• How to have a terrific time coaching young players

"Coaching 6-and-Under Soccer shows you how to teach your young players the right way—through lively games that encourage kids to use their creativity and self-expression when playing."—Brandi Chastain, Olympic and World Cup Soccer Champion; author of It's Not About the Bra: Play Hard, Play Fair, and Put the Fun Back into Competitive Sports

"I have no doubt that young players will come to love the game of soccer if their coaches follow the simple, straightforward advice in this book."—Anson Dorrance, Head Women's Soccer Coach, University of North Carolina; author of The Vision of a Champion: Advice and Inspiration from the World's Most Successful Women's Soccer Coach

"I highly recommend this terrific book to coaches who want to instill good sportsmanship and the love of the game in their young players while building a solid foundation in basic soccer skills and teamwork."—Jeremy Gunn, Head Men's Soccer Coach, Fort Lewis College

Progressive Plyometrics for Kids

Three of the most respected and sought-after specialists in the field of exercise and physical conditioning, Donald A. Chu, Avery D. Faigenbaum, and Jeff E. Falkel, present this comprehensive, progressive, cost effective, and developmentally appropriate program of plyometric exercises specifically designed for younger athletes.

This book with free DVD begins with easy-to-understand and apply principles, methods, and modes of plyometrics, and offers keys to training success and program design. It then outlines a clear six-week progressive plyometric program, divided into three stages: bronze, silver, and gold. Each of the exercises in the three stages are described in complete detail, including equipment needed, a point-by-point action sequence, and movement-specific coaching points. Multiple clear photographs accompany each exercise.

The remarkable and easy-to-navigate 58-minute free DVD that comes with the book allows you to see this all-star team of trainers explain the 45 exercises from the progressive program. Then watch as they coach young athletes through each of the activities in real time, giving coaching points and tips to insure maximum results. Ideal for coaches, teachers, and parents of young athletes at any age and any ability level.

Coaching Youth Lacrosse

Coaching Youth Lacrosse is an excellent introduction to youth coaching and teaching young lacrosse players valuable skills. It provides all the information you need to coach effectively and help 6- to 14-year-old athletes, both boys and girls, learn and enjoy the game.

This second edition features the games approach to coaching lacrosse, which makes practice more fun for the kids and teaching more effective for you, the coach. Also included are chapters on communicating with athletes and parents, planning and conducting practices, coaching during games and specific programs for both boys and girls lacrosse.

Developed by the American Sport Education Program (ASEP), the nationÂ’s No. 1 coaching education program, Coaching Youth Lacrosse provides volunteer coaches with both an explanation of their role and concrete instructions on fulfilling that role.

101 Great Youth Soccer Drills: Skills and Drills for Better Fundamental Play

101 Great Youth Soccer Drills is an exhaustive collection of the very best drills available, providing a solid foundation for you to build your players' skills. Filled with simple step-by-step instructions and diagrams, plus a sample practice program, this encyclopedia of drills provides you with solid skill-building fundamentals as well as the advanced techniques you need to get your players in top form.

Training for Young Distance Runners - 2E

Race your best this season with science-based training specifically geared for teenage runners. Your performance will soar when you follow the proven guidelines on designing customized daily, weekly, and seasonal programs.

Running experts Larry Greene and Russ Pate combine the latest research with what works in the most successful high school and college programs throughout the country. You'll learn how to optimize performance through tempo running, interval training, technique drills, circuit and weight training, and flexibility exercises. And you'll gain a competitive advantage by applying guidelines for choosing the best foods and nutritional supplements, developing mental fitness, and preventing injuries.

Training for Young Distance Runners has everything you need to build a winning training program for cross country, track and field, and road racing events. Get this book and get ahead of the pack!

Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Basketball: Only the Essential Drills, Practice Plans, Plays, and Coaching Tips!

You volunteered to coach the basketball team, but are you really ready? How will you teach the fundamental skills, run effective practices, and harness the energy of your young team? Fear not: Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Basketball has the answers.

In Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Basketball, longtime coaches Keith Miniscalco and Greg Kot share their experience and provide advice you can rely on from first practice to final shot. From evaluating players' skills and establishing realistic goals to in-game coaching tips, it's all here--the drills, the plays, the fun.

Develop your team's dribbling, passing, shooting, and rebounding skills with the Survival Guide's collection of the game's best youth drills. For plays and sets that young teams can actually run, flip to the Survival Guide's offensive and defensive playbook. And to get the most out of every practice, follow the ready-to-use practice plans.

Survival Guide for Coaching Youth Basketball has everything you need for a rewarding and productive season.

Youth Strength Training:Programs for Health, Fitness and Sport (Strength & Power for Young Athlete)

Age-specific sport, fitness, and health programs for kids 7 to 18

The benefits of strength training for youth are clearly documented. Yet teachers, fitness instructors, and youth coaches are often not sure how to proceed, and they end up watering down adult versions of strength-training programs.

That is definitely not the way to go. But authors Avery Faigenbaum and Wayne Westcott, with their 50 years of combined experience in teaching youth strength-training classes and coaching, can tell you the way to go--and back it with the most current research on instructional techniques and program design for youth.

Long recognized as leading authorities on strength training, Faigenbaum and Westcott guide you in designing efficient, enjoyable, and productive programs for kids of varying abilities in elementary school (ages 7 to 10), middle school (11 to 14), and high school (15 to 18). You will focus first on broad-based, balanced muscle development, and then move into comprehensive, sport-specific strength-training programs.

In addition, Youth Strength Training will teach you

• productive protocols for warming up and cooling down;
• procedures for enhancing joint flexibility;
• innovative ways to incorporate resistance exercises into physical education classes, sport practice sessions, and exercise facilities; and
• proper exercise technique for 111 resistance exercises using weight stack machines, free weights, medicine balls, elastic bands, and body-weight resistance.

Much has changed since the authors first wrote a book on strength training for youth, and those changes--including information in the areas of nutrition, hydration, and recovery to maximize the effects of strength training and minimize the risks of overtraining--are incorporated in this book. Additional changes, based on the authors' studies, are reflected in workout frequency, exercise repetitions, related training components, and other factors that affect program design and conditioning results. All programs were fashioned with the latest NASPE standards in mind.

Faigenbaum and Westcott have included new information on periodization and long-term planning, perceived exertion scale for youth, overtraining and undertraining, dynamic warm-ups and static stretches, new exercises, effective instruction of youth, and plyometrics.

Through strength training, kids as young as 7 can safely develop a strong musculoskeletal system that can help them improve their health and fitness and also withstand the rigors of sport participation.

Youth Strength Training is the definitive source to guide you in designing and overseeing the programs of the kids you work with, whether you're in a school, fitness center, or home setting. If you want to see high rates of strength development and spark a lifelong interest in strength-building activities, rely on Youth Strength Training.