Archive for June, 2011

June 28th 2011 by admin

New Summer Backyard Game for Everyone

The 4th of July is here with a bunch of upcoming summer weekends at home, the beach house, on vacation, or visiting friends & family. This is the best time to enjoy yourself outside playing games while drinking your favorite beverage, barbecuing, or just hanging out. It could be horseshoes, volleyball, frisbee, wiffle ball, or playing catch. Now there’s a new game that will not only pit you against your buddies, but actually improves your golf game. It’s called PGA Trick It Out Golf, and an integral part of the new PGA Sports Academy.

Trick It Out Sports is a company I created 3 years ago, that makes learning the fundamental skills of sports more engaging and fun by breaking them into measurable tricks. Most recently we partnered with the PGA of America and designed our first golf product.

PGA Trick It Out Golf is a backyard skills game for any level of play. Based on mini-skill competitions that are called “tricks”, and a virtual web based scoring system, you can conduct on-going competitions throughout the summer, wherever you are.

This unique and innovative PGA game breaks down all the fundamentals of golf into a series of fun tricks, in combination with a virtual web tool that measures each golfers improvement, while providing everyone the opportunity to compete and rank each of their trick performances among other golfers around the world. In your own backyard!

All tricks are introduced and available on a member’s personal PGA Trick It Out Golf web page, via trick videos, and an illustrated pocket guidebook, that provides step by step instructions on how to set-up, execute, and score each trick. After a golfer executes a trick they download their best score onto a virtual scoreboard that automatically shows where that performance ranks.

For this upcoming holiday weekend you can try it out and let PGA Trick It Out Golf know what you think. All you need is 10 yards of open space, a pitching or sand wedge, 5 short flight golf balls (wiffle, foam, etc), 7 small disc cones (you can substitute with two jump ropes, rope, string, etc), 6 empty shoe boxes or pairs of different size buckets that form 3 different size obstacles approximately 6, 12, & 18 inches in height, an extra club or stick to lay on top of the shoe boxes or buckets.

How to Set-up:
Set-up a 6 foot diameter circle of cones or use jump ropes, 10 yards from a tee area. Start by placing a 6 inch obstacle three feet directly in front of the tee-box. Follow that by placing a 12 inch & 18 inch obstacle three feet directly in front of tee-box.

How to Play
Take 5 consecutive shots with short flight golf balls (using a pitching or sand wedge) over the three different sized obstacles for a total of 15 consecutive shots. Each ball that stays within the 6 foot diameter circle 10 yards from the tee-box is awarded 5 points. Total your points after 15 consecutive shots from the three different heights for your final score. Keep trying to improve your score.

Then go to PGA Trick It Out Golf on Facebook and let them know what you think. If you’re pleased, and want to try more, log onto HYPERLINK “http://www.pgatrickitoutgolf.com” www.pgatrickitoutgolf.com and register for a one year membership.

Anyone can sign-up & join. You can sign-up your kids by age category, as well as register yourself to the open adult division.

A one year individual membership includes:
Access to 10 introductory tricks on video, with more tricks added throughout the year, including indoor tricks for the winter.
A virtual realtime scoreboard that ranks your trick performances among others nation & worldwide.
Tips from the pros.
Download video of your swing, or tricks performed, and link them to a certified PGA Teaching Professional for analysis (your local pro can sign-up and link to you anytime)
A calendar of upcoming PGA Trick It Out Events throughout the country.
All for just $9.95 per year

June 8th 2011 by admin

What Athletes Are More Creative?

Athletic Creativity – DO ORGANIZED SPORTS LIMIT YOUR CHILD’S DEVELOPMENT?

What’s lost in youth sports is the true enjoyment of participating. Yes, it sounds cliche, but it very much holds true in this case. Sports should be played to enjoy oneself, to socialize, to learn how your body moves, and progress that learning in order to increase & improve an individual’s athletic skills.

Action sport athletes have a culture that focuses on the pure enjoyment of participating, they play & live in the moment. Sports such skate & snowboarding appreciate and celebrate the small individual elements & achievements of what it takes to participate. The very fact that their sports are based on performing tricks provides them an element of freedom that many team sports don’t ever achieve.

Sports such as surfing, skate & snowboarding are essentially not based on winning & losing a game or individual contest. Participation in these sports are purely focused on practice and the joy and reward received through self-improvement. Athletes in these sports are naturally creative due to the fact that there’s no set way any one trick must be performed. Everyone is different, everyone moves differently, our movement skills are our identity, another set of fingerprints that distinguishes us from others.

Action sport athletes are not forced to conform to any particular structure of coaching and competitions. This freestyle nature of participation truly allows a young athlete the opportunity to own and mold their experience.

Sports, through athletic movement & skill development should be thought of as an art form. Through sports, the ability to self-discover how your body and mind work both separately and together provides all of us an incredible educational experience that never ends. Unfortunately, a majority of team sports rarely provide this experience, therefore our kids never truly enjoy or reap the educational benefits of self-discovery and an appreciation of the creative process of athletic development, in comparison to action sport athletes.

Are young action sport athletes better athletes than traditional youth team sport athletes?

Physically in most cases, I can argue that participants in action sports are athletically more multidimensional and creative. For the most part they develop better core strength and balance, and they better understand and are aware of how their entire body needs to work together.

Creatively there is no question that a young action sport athlete has a tremendous advantage over a young team sport athlete. Unfortunately, unlike action sports, team sports don’t emphasize improvisation, where freestyle execution of skills are frowned upon and often not allowed by coaches. Action sport athletes have the freedom to learn and develop on their own, through their own style and creativity. Team sport athletes are robotic, waiting to be told what to do, stymied through a right and wrong way to execute skills.

Does organized youth sports have benefits for kids? Absolutely, it keeps them somewhat active, but it mostly serves to identify who is more talented much too soon in their developmental process, through often untrained amateur methods, organizations, and overzealous adults.

We as adults do more to limit creative development in our young athletes. Action sports have limited adult involvement, and those athletes have flourishing creative experiences and development. Over 40 million kids play organized sports in this country, while millions of adults coach &/or administer youth sports. Hmm… do you see the problem!!??

This is part one of an ongoing series of blogs where I’ll be exploring, “Creativity in Sports”, the importance it plays in your child’s overall development, how to incorporate it into the organized sports experience, and what you can do at home to supplement the process.

Let me know your thoughts