About Us
Our Mission
Here at Prep Performance it is our goal to prepare the high school athlete to compete at their highest individual level in whatever athletic pursuit they follow. Prep Performance was formed due to the inadequacies we saw in the training and preparation of middle and high school athletes. From the skills we saw being taught on the field, to the ‘conditioning’ that was taken place during the offseason, we know that a lot of the hard work being put forth by these athletes was going to waste. Our services, either the sport specific skill camps or our offseason conditioning programs, are designed to help the athlete move forwards towards achieving their highest potential in whatever sport they choose.
Prep Performance – ‘Helping athletes achieve their potential'
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Why is it important for young athletes to strength train?
Answer: This answer probably deserves its own article, but the short answer is that a proper strength and fitness program designed for the youth athlete will improve performance and reduce the risk of injury. As a young athlete improves his or her strength and athletic ability, you will see an increase in self-confidence and self-image and studies have shown that improving fitness levels at a young age will translate to fewer health problems (such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, etc.) as they get older.
Is strength training dangerous? Will it stunt my growth?
Answer: This is one of those "myths" that just won't go away! Simply put, engaging in a properly designed training program will DECREASE the risk of sports-related injuries. During top-speed sprinting or jumping, the human body can encounter forces in excess of its own body weight. A proper training program will help prepare an athlete to handle these forces and also help fix problems such as muscle imbalances or asymmetry that can lead to injury. Problems arise from doing exercises with unsafe or improper form, or from subjecting an athlete to loads that his or her body is not prepared to handle.
What is the best age to start training?
Answer: Right now! Seriously, many people think there is some mythical quality about lifting weight in the shape of a barbell or dumbbell as compared to force applied to the body in other forms. Picking up a bookbag or playing on a jungle gym could be seen as a form of "training" as various muscles in the body encounter and react to external forces. However, the difference in the training program of a college football player will be drastically different from what an 8-year old child should be doing! In general, young athletes possess much greater "neural plasticity" than late teenagers and adults, meaning qualities like coordination and balance can be developed much more when an athlete is young. When an athlete gets older and their skeletal and hormonal systems are more developed, exercises with increased loading and greater forces become more appropriate.
What kind of sport-specific training should an athlete be doing?
Answer: Let's ask another question that will help make things more clear. When a basketball player jumps for a rebound, is that significantly different than a volleyball player jumping to block a spike? Not really. How about when a centerfielder sprints to chase down a fly ball? Is that much different than a soccer player streaking toward the goal? Again, not really. The basic physical qualities such as speed, power and strength are developed in almost the same way from sport to sport. What should be taken into consideration is how important each quality is to that particular athlete's sport and the energy systems involved. For instance, a basketball player needs much more aerobic endurance than a baseball player. A football player generally needs much more upper body strength than a soccer player. Rather than thinking about "sport-specific" training, at Prep Performance, we like to think of it is "athlete-specific" training.
How about functional training? What is that and should I be doing it?
Answer: "Functional training" is one of those industry buzzwords where nobody really knows what it means. Some people think that functional training means standing on BOSU balls and performing other feats of balance. Others think that functional training means carrying sandbags or flipping tires. The truth is that all training is "functional" in some way. Every training exercise elicits some sort of adaptation from the body. What makes a program "functional" or not is whether those adaptations are going to help an athlete perform better on the field.
What is the role of strength in getting faster or jumping higher?
Answer: Simply put, strength is the foundation of all other athletic qualities. More accurately, for the purpose of improving speed and jumping ability, relative strength is the foundation. Relative strength is how strong you are, relative to your own body weight. I have seen time and time again that most young athletes will increase almost every athletic quality, from speed to endurance, by improving their relative strength. This means that an athlete gets comfortable and efficient moving their own bodyweight around and then begins to progress to external loading. I don't think I have ever seen an athlete make great improvements in speed or power without improving their relative strength.
How important is flexibility?
Answer: Flexibility is a quality that is often very misunderstood. First of all, the standard flexibility tests such as stretching involve what is called "static flexibility". Most sporting actions require "dynamic flexibility," or the ability to go through a large range of motion fairly quickly. These two are related but not totally in synch with one another. All athletes need a certain amount of flexibility to be able to go through the proper range of motions in their sport. A restricted range of motion can lead to imbalance and eventually injury. However, more flexibility is not always better and evidence has shown that being too flexible may actually be detrimental to sport performance. What an athlete should strive for is an optimal level of static and dynamic flexibility and a proper training program should help with this. A coach should evaluate an athlete from both a static or postural standpoint as well as a dynamic assessment. From there, a training program can be implemented.
So what is the best way to improve my vertical leap?
Answer: This is a question that could (and has been) a subject of its own book. To put it in the most simple terms, athletes with outstanding vertical leaps often have excellent relative strength, very good reactive ability and movement efficiency and are usually very lean. A training program that addresses these three elements will help improve an athlete's vertical leap over time.
How about conditioning? What is the best way to "get in shape?"
Answer: This is one of the most misunderstood topics in all of sports training and actually inspired me to right a short article on it. Check out the "Conditioning Conundrum" for a more detailed explanation.