Leading a CrossFit Kids class is no different than leading any other class: Competency is honed through experience. Physical literacy is a life-changing gift, and in many ways it is the primary responsibility of trainers to pass on in hopes of helping to shape the lives of future generations.
As amazing an opportunity as shaping lives is, it comes with inherent problems most all youth coaches and trainers face: the kids won’t listen, they don’t work hard, and they seem to not care. If you have ever felt this way while coaching kids, you are not alone. Parents, teachers, sport coaches, and anyone else who has worked with youth have also felt this at one time or another. The reality is that our job as coaches starts with gaining our athletes’ attention and flourishes when we create an environment that promotes working hard and listening.
We Need To Train Kids
The purpose of this article is to empower trainers to coach children of all ages. The importance of this is no less than the health and performance of the next generation. While that may be a tall order, the great news is that it can be a fun and rewarding endeavor. At CrossFit we believe an effective trainer excels at each of the following six criteria: teaching, seeing, correcting, group management, presence and attitude, and demonstration. As the CrossFit Level 2 Training Guide states: “Regardless of a trainer’s current level of proficiency, a commitment to improving each area is the hallmark of a successful trainer.” And that’s true whether your athletes are 30, 60, or 10 years old. So, let’s examine some strategies to improve how you can teach, see, and correct children as effectively as possible.
Creating a Positive Atmosphere
The CrossFit Kids program is first and foremost about creating a positive atmosphere for our athletes. This hallmark of our program is woven into the CrossFit Kids Certificate Course and permeates how we teach, see, and correct as well as how we frame our classes to be a positive experience for our athletes. If you watch a young Kids’ class, it should be hard to differentiate if what is happening is a game, a workout, or a celebration. The whole class is meant to be an enjoyable experience punctuated with the sound of children laughing throughout. Older age groups will have athletes moving through classic workouts and movements we all know, but they’ll still be asking incessantly to play dodgeball! As young athletes mature, it is our job to guide them to intensity. The main goal is to make it enjoyable to move well, fast, and relatively heavy for the rest of their lives. Put simply, CrossFit has to be fun.
Why It Has To Be Fun
Think of fun and success as being synonymous, and it is easy to see why we need to make fitness fun. For young children, our job is to make squatting and running as much fun as playing with their friends. We can disguise these two movements by creating a game where they chase their friends in a game of freeze tag (running), and squat with their knees out to melt their frozen teammate (squatting), all the while earning their attention through laughter and play. By making what we want (improving their fitness) and what they want (having fun with their friends) the same thing, everybody wins. For older kids, it’s our job to make working hard worth the effort. When teenagers get to add more weight and speed by doing what we ask of them, we earn their attention. By making the things they want (more weight and faster times) part of a clear process with defined indicators, we get the things we want (good movement), which builds better, heartier CrossFit athletes. There is no one way to accomplish this, and as a trainer you can always measure the success of your own classes against this standard: Did they have fun? When your classes are consistently fun and effective, your athletes will be excited to return. In the sections below we’ll cover some great ways to do this.
Creating Consistency at the Start and Finish of Class
Creating consistency at the start and finish of a class helps establish predictability for athletes so it’s clear when class is in session and it’s time to focus. (Pro tip: this is a great tactic for adult classes as well!) Additionally, this consistent cadence provides a fantastic framework in which to teach much more than movement to the group.
Begin and end each class at the whiteboard. At the beginning of class, use this time to communicate and share what you deem important and worthy of teaching your athletes. It may be your gym or personal values, life lessons, or math related to your class and the workout of the day. Ultimately, with our aim to earn the attention of our younger athletes, we need to keep this part brief and engaging, as listening to an adult talk at a whiteboard is likely what children spend hours doing every day at school. To increase engagement, consider starting class with a quick game or by reading a short part of a story to prime your athletes’ focus before coming to the whiteboard. By the end of their intense workout, their brains will be firing with attentional resources — the brain activity, hormones, and molecules used to retain knowledge long term — thanks to increased blood flow to the brain, making the end of class a prime time to drive home the lessons you want to impart. Exercise is an incredible tool to teach more than fitness — use it!
As trainers, we teach, see, and correct during every class we coach. The below strategies have been tried and tested to work with youth; however, many coaches find they are also valuable in working with athletes of all ages. Remember, the goal is to create a positive experience that will motivate athletes to keep coming back, creating a love for fitness that lasts a lifetime.
Teaching
Tell them what to do and have an athlete demonstrate how to do it. One way to do this is by having all the kids line up, telling them to squat with a certain focus, and then asking an athlete who is performing well to step forward and show the class. Another strategy is to identify movement patterns you want to see while kids are playing a game or warming up. Then pause the group, highlight the athlete and the movement you want to see, then resume the activity.
One time, during the warm-up for a kids class, a young athlete hopped over to me and said, “I’m a frog.” This “frog” happened to be in a squat with their heels on the ground, which is what I had planned to focus on teaching that day. “Team,” I cried, “everyone look at this frog squat with their heels on the ground! Can you squat like this?” We then proceeded to play frog relays, frog freeze tag, and lily-pad hops to practice squatting with their heels down.
Another way of teaching can happen in a semicircle. Instruct athletes to perform reps, and when someone moves well, use them as an example to teach your point. “Team, look at how Kelly works hard at driving her elbows up in her front squat. Try to do that!” Use another athlete to highlight a different point of performance, and another, and another. The beauty of only telling them what to do and then using the athletes to demonstrate is that it minimizes the amount you speak and only covers the positive. Most kids have to sit and listen to teachers all day. Get them moving.
Seeing
Search for good movement. Find the knees that are tracking out, the heels that are staying on the ground, the elbows that are high, and the shoulders that are active. Over the course of an entire class, this focus on the positive will help foster that positive atmosphere, and it can serve as the framework for corrections for those who need improvement. If you know what good movement looks like, this will be simple enough; however, it may not be easy at the start.
It is human nature to find the flaw, the problem, the thing that needs to be fixed. When you have a group of children squatting in front of you, it is natural to notice narrow stances, knees caving in, and rounded backs; however, we recommend that you selectively ignore them. Focus your attention on coaching the positive – the shoulder-width stances, knees tracking over toes, and nuetral spines, and the rest of the athletes will fight to do the same for your positive attention.
Correcting
Specifically praise the effort of the athlete who’s doing it well. Here is an example: “Chris, great job working hard to keep your chest up.” If you’re reading this and just lifted your chest slightly, good job! The athletes who are doing it “wrong” usually have no idea what “right” even is. So instead of spending your time and effort telling them what to improve, praise the effort of the kids who are working hard to make the change.
The two key pieces here are the effort and the action. Chris was praised for working hard (the effort) at keeping his chest up (the action). This reinforces the behavior of working hard for Chris and outlines what the coach wants the group to do. Even more rewarding than a “good job” for kids could be getting to be “it” for the game or being charged with putting away a set of cones. For teenagers, the reward for good movement could be five more pounds on the bar.
These strategies can help create a positive atmosphere, and that in turn will help create coachable kids. If you share in the goal of improving lives through CrossFit, then the youth in our community need to be in that picture. Most of us have had an amazing teacher, coach, or mentor shape our future with the atmosphere they created when teaching us. Pay it forward.
About the Author
Nick Pappas became a CrossFit coach when he was 19 years old. Now 31, Nick is a trainer at CrossFit Fort Vancouver where he coaches adults, kids, and teenagers. Additionally, he works with the Recovery Gym, a program that offers free CrossFit to those seeking recovery from substance abuse and mental health disorders. Nick is a CrossFit Level 3 Certified Trainer and works for the CrossFit Seminar Staff as a Head Trainer for the Level 1, Level 2, and CrossFit Kids Certificate Courses.
Creating a Class Where Kids Want To Be Coached