The Show Up Fitness Podcast
Join Chris Hitchko, author of 'How to Become A Successful Personal Trainer' VOL 2 and CEO of Show Up Fitness as he guides personal trainers towards success.
90% of personal trainers quit within 12-months in the USA, 18-months in the UK, Show Up Fitness is helping change those statistics. The Show Up Fitness CPT is one of the fastest growing PT certifications in the world with partnerships with over 500-gyms including Life Time Fitness, Equinox, Genesis, EoS, and numerous other elite partnerships.
This podcast focuses on refining trade, business, and people skills to help trainers excel in the fitness industry. Discover effective client programming, revenue generation, medical professional networking, and elite assessment strategies.
Learn how to become a successful Show Up Fitness CPT at www.showupfitness.com. Send your questions to Chris on Instagram @showupfitness or via email at info@showupfitness.com."
The Show Up Fitness Podcast
14 Yr old girl basketball workout | Needs analysis for basketball programming
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Ever wondered what goes into creating an effective training program for a young athlete? This episode dives deep into designing a comprehensive workout regimen specifically tailored for a 14-year-old female basketball player, revealing the science, psychology, and practical considerations that elite trainers use.
We break down the essential components of athletic development, starting with a thorough needs analysis that examines movement patterns, physiological demands, and injury prevention strategies. You'll discover why basketball relies on specific energy systems (60% ATP-PCR, 20% glycolysis, 20% oxidative) and how this knowledge shapes program design. From properly sequenced warm-ups to strategically structured compound circuit arrangements (CCAs), we provide a blueprint for developing explosive power, strength, and sport-specific skills.
Beyond the exercises themselves, we explore the often-overlooked psychological and political aspects of training youth athletes. Learn how to navigate parent expectations, coach relationships, and the unique developmental needs of teenagers. The most successful trainers understand that they're not just building stronger bodies—they're serving as mentors during a critical stage of physical and emotional growth. We share practical strategies for making sessions both effective and enjoyable, ensuring long-term athletic development takes precedence over short-term performance gains.
Whether you're a personal trainer looking to specialize in youth sports, a coach seeking to enhance your programming, or a parent wanting to better understand athletic development, this episode delivers actionable insights that bridge the gap between exercise science and real-world application. Subscribe to the Show Up Fitness Podcast to continue learning how to develop truly elite personal training skills that transform both your clients and your career.
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Welcome to the Show Up Fitness Podcast, where great personal trainers are made. We are changing the fitness industry one qualified trainer at a time, with our in-person and online personal training certification. If you want to become an elite personal trainer, head on over to showupfitnesscom. Also, make sure to check out my book how to Become a Successful Personal Trainer. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. Have a great day and keep showing up. Howdy y'all, welcome back to the Show Up Fitness Podcast.
Speaker 1:Today we're going to help you design a program for a 14-year-old female basketball player. We're going to begin with the warmup. Hit those 10 checkpoints of human movement, starting with the most distal and the inferior portion. We got the ankle, knee, hip, moving up the spine from the lumbar, thoracic, cervical moving down shoulder, elbow, wrist and some breathing mechanics. The first C for the CCA would be a plyometric into a single arm press or pushup and some type of rotational ball throw. We're doing those for eight to 10 reps, keeping it specific to the individual, resting at least two minutes before we get back into that second round for the plyos. The second CCA we're going to do a step up into a chin, up into a side plank and some dribbling drills. Do those for three rounds and the last CCA. We're going to do goblets into a landmine, press into some calf raises and some band walking with a tennis ball dribbling drill. If time permits, we would do a Metcon at the end. Metabolic conditioning, some jump rope for a minute into a wall, sit into some leg curls and extensions roughly five to 10 minutes there. You can implement some every minute on the minute if you would like. How did I design that program? It on the minute, if you would like. How did I design that program? The program is important, but we have to train the person and not the program. This athlete could come in one day and their knees feel a little wonky and so you're not going to do the plyometrics, or maybe they just sprain their ankle.
Speaker 1:So when we look at designing a program for an athlete, we need to go through the needs analysis, which is going to be taking a look at the movement analysis, which is the planes of motion, the patterns that are appropriate for the individual. The physiological analysis what energy system is required, do we need conditioning, how much? And then, lastly, we have an injury analysis. We just saw Lillard and Tatum go out with Achilles injuries. We just had our anatomy instructor Tyson go through an Achilles rehab process with a physical therapist.
Speaker 1:Part of the Show Up Fitness CPT program you get access to live calls and professionals where we break down movement injuries and so forth within programming. For some continual education resources, there's a great textbook via the NSCA with Duncan French and he goes over the essentials for sports science and he talks about KPI, which are key performance indicators. We use that in business, but we can also use this within sports science looking at the individual, seeing what they need for their sport. In this case, as a basketball player, does she need to lose weight? Is that a body comp issue? Do we need to improve her vertical jump? What about her issue? Do we need to improve her vertical jump? What about her conditioning?
Speaker 1:So we want to also look at the psychological components, because I've trained 14-year-olds where the parents came to the session. Is it a team, is it five people, is it one? Why are they showing up today and what are the ultimate goals for the individual? And that can be a difficult assessment because a lot of times the parents will be there during the assessment. I cannot tell you how many times I work with athletes and their parents were talking the entire time and the athlete didn't look interested. And so then I'll say, okay, this is awesome. Mom and dad, I would like 15 minutes alone with the athlete just to talk about their goals, and that's going to be between them. So I want to be a mentor for this individual. I don't want to just be a drill sergeant telling them to do more lunges or jumps because that's what you think they need.
Speaker 1:But then there's also a realistic component to it. Do we have a Ford who's trying to get better at three-pointers? And when you look at those KPIs, it's not necessarily advantageous for her to improve that. So let's keep it realistic. If we're watching Caitlin Clark and we're trying to shoot 30 foot three-pointers, but yet we're getting our most output in the paint, getting rebounds and being the muscle underneath, well, we're not spending our time optimally. Where are we going to generate the best results? That 80-20 rule. And so those are all things I'm going to talk about and review during my assessment.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to be doing measurements or doing any type of soft tissue stuff on someone under 18. You want to make sure it's appropriate. But then you have that fun component. Psychology should really be implemented within the needs analysis, because if we have someone who's really down on themselves, how are they going to handle those sessions? If you're like another coach, on top of the coach and the parents that they have, if you email info at showupfitnesscom, I will send you a blog article that I wrote.
Speaker 1:We help people pass the CSCS, along with all other textbooks out there. That's the easy part. Becoming a qualified coach or trainer, you need the hands-on learning. But within this article I have a very famous bioenergetic breakdown from the physiological basics of exercise and sport the sixth edition and it goes over the energy demands for a basketball player. So we're looking at about 60% from ATP-PCR, which is adenosine, triphosphate, phosphocreatine system, about 20% in glycolysis, about 20% oxidative.
Speaker 1:So how much is this athlete training? Is this off season? Is it in season? There's a lot that goes into this. Right now we're in May, so it's going to be out of season. Maybe they just finished a tournament in late April, so we want to make sure that we've had some rest. But the thing today, a lot of athletes are getting injured because we're playing year around and that's almost worse.
Speaker 1:And so again, you have to make that educated, professional recommendation. But then you have the political side, because mom and dad don't give a shit what you think within reason, they don't. I've worked with so many athletes. We've consulted with Santa Monica high school team over here basketball, lacrosse, track and there's the application in the realistic part when it comes to the sciences. But then you have the individual, but then you have the politics from the parents and also the high schools, and there's so much within social media. This person has X amount of followers. Well, they were training LeBron James and they're doing stability ball stuff, so I should be doing them. You are the professional for that individual and you have to be confident in your delivery and your competence comes from the fundamentals of movement. Those are all things that we teach within our internship and our CPT program, but when it comes to strength and conditioning, it is definitely a level up. So we want to look at what is the training going to be like for basketball.
Speaker 1:So when we go back and revisit the needs analysis, let's start with common injuries. You're going to see it at the ankle, you're going to see it at the knee, so we want to make sure for the accessories we're putting in rehab and prehab exercises. Maybe you want to do a little bit in the warmup. Maybe you want to finish off a little bit. At the end you make that decision. If they just had an injury, consult with your team, dp team. What are contraindications? If we've sprained an ankle, it is awesome to incorporate unstable surface training. I would have them do BOSU ball exercises walk around on an unstable surface throwing a ball back and forth. That is really pertinent for an ankle injury. If they haven't had that injury, well then we don't necessarily need to do those exercises, but then we have that fun factor. So these are all things that you have to make the decision on the efficacy for the program in your exercise selection.
Speaker 1:If I'm working with a 14-year-old, I'm going to ask them what are some things that you've seen on social media or friends are talking about that you would like to try or incorporate within these sessions? Mom and dad or coach talk to me more about what success looks like six months from now, because coach could be telling them to do CrossFit or High Rocks and that is not specific for their sport, specific adaptation, to impose demand when you have that background in sports science, as I do, with a degree in kinesiology. I took my CSCS. I've worked with thousands of athletes from the professional level to the elementary level, and so you have to have that psychological part of it as well in the political side. I cannot stress that enough.
Speaker 1:And the other thing that you need to factor in when it comes to KPIs how many times are you going to be working with you? Maybe it's six times a week, so you're going to have three days of weights and three days of conditioning. Maybe it's just once or twice at a gym, so then you're going to try to cram all that into a session. When are the practices? When are games? You need to program that around the session as well, because the last thing I'd want to do is a bunch of plyos and some Bulgarian split squats. So my athlete is sore the next day and they have a big game. Now their form is going to be altered. So these are the things that you're going to want to learn.
Speaker 1:Within. That needs assessment and analysis, talking with the athlete, the parents, the coach, potentially, and maybe even an athletic trainer or another trainer. Bring your team to get involved in. The more that you provide, the better you're going to look. That's why you should have an RD that you can consult with. What are some supplements that you're going to suggest for these athletes Creatine would be awesome, those would all be great things to incorporate but you let the parents know here's a report from the ISSN and they go over the supplements that are going to be best for your athlete. You make the educated decision. I'm not telling you to do this, that's just doing it out of respect, because there's so much smoke and mirrors out there when it comes to social media, and that's why it'd be really valuable to add in a session that is specific to nutrition. Let mom and dad know. Hey, let's go to dinner one night and you guys are buying and I'm going to tell you the top 10 things that your athlete should be doing, your son, your daughter should be doing, and that's the value add that you can provide as their trainer and coach. So we've knocked off the injury component and things that you want to address.
Speaker 1:Now let's take a look at the physiological demands. So when we say 60% is coming from PCR, what that means is zero to 30 seconds high, intense, because that's the demand of the sport. It's explosive or it's a jump or a dunk, it's a cut, and then there's going to be rest and that's the aerobic side of it. 20% is going to be aerobic conditioning and that can be hard for you to grasp because you're thinking a basketball game is 60 minutes. There's a huge aerobic component, which there is, but within the sport, if you watch the athlete, they're not jogging back and forth for 60 straight minutes or 30 straight minutes. The ball goes out of bounds, they rest. There's a TV timeout or there's a foul, so they're resting. So if you were to compare that to in the gym, you lift something explosively that's challenging, high intense for eight to 12 reps and then you rest and you do it again. We're not doing a bench press into pushups, into chin-ups, into a sprint, into a run, into jump rope, into the accessory stuff, with no rest. Basketball has a ton of rest which allows for those type two muscle fibers to be recruited.
Speaker 1:One of the most common drills that you will see in basketball liners you start at the baseline, you touch the free throw, you come back, you go to half court, you come back, you go to the other free throw line, you come back, you go to the other baseline. It takes about 30 to 60 seconds depending on the condition of the individual. The physiological analysis would be on the conditioning days, but again, you may need to incorporate that within the session of which we would do at the end. We want to start with the stuff that is non-taxing, optimizes force production. That's why we did the plyo first and, depending on what they're capable of, it may just be a box jump, it could be side jumps, depth jumps those are awesome for athletes, but make sure the height of the depth is appropriate for the individual. We're not doing more than 10 reps because that's more aerobic, which would be type one. We don't do type one recruitment when we jump, that's type two. That's why they're called the fast twitch muscle fibers.
Speaker 1:After you do 10 of which exercise you feel is appropriate for the plyo, you would then go into a pushup or a single arm press, and there's a discrepancy there based on the individual. I've worked with 14 year olds who are in really great shape and very strong, so I would be doing the loaded exercise, a single arm press, which is going to get the core engaged. But if they're a beginner, start with the pushup. Maybe we need to do it on a barbell, maybe we need to do it on a bench. Regress it to what they're capable of getting eight to 10 clean reps and then the rotational component, which can be a transverse plane, which is super important for basketball. Get involved as the trainer. You rest, talk about school, talk about stuff that's going on. Make it appropriate. Remember you're training a 14-year-old. We're not dropping F-bombs because all it takes is for the client or the student or the athlete to go home and tell their parents and then they fire you. Now you have a bad review on Yelp.
Speaker 1:Three rounds of that and you go into the second CCA. That's going to be your step-up or a lunge, depending on their capabilities. I would start with unilateral, because basketball is very unilateral. If you feel the step up will be appropriate. Keep the height appropriate for the individual. The higher you go, it's going to be more glute specific.
Speaker 1:But do we have that eccentric control which is super important for cutting? We blow out the knee ACL because we cannot decelerate. We have to stop and then accelerate as quickly as we can. That's agility. So the eccentric control on these exercises, especially for the lower body in the frontal plane, is paramount. Can they do a chin up If they can't work on upper body strength there? If they can then do some single arm rows, which will be pretty much the antagonist of a single arm press, focusing on the core, getting the arms and the rhomboids, the retractors, involved, and let's do some side planks with some abductions.
Speaker 1:If they can have them hop up and then stand on one leg and you pass back and forth the tennis ball, you have them dribble the tennis ball. Maybe they close their left eye or their right eye. Pistol Pete, one of the greatest point guards of all time, was known for walking around dribbling a tennis ball. Steve Nash, when he was at Santa Clara, he was known for walking around on campus dribbling a tennis ball. That's going to help with their handles. Make the accessory fun within reason. Do that for three rounds.
Speaker 1:In the last circuit we're going to do a goblet and or a step up. Now. The reason I have and or is because if we don't have that competency, I'm going to start with the goblet bilaterally. Get them stronger, great for the core, great for their mechanics of the game. I just said that basketball is more unilateral, but mastering a goblet squat would be paramount for an athlete. If they cannot do that, if they have that competency, maybe they're doing a PE class and they are getting those goblets in there. And earlier we did a lunge instead of the step-up. I would do the step-up here for the last CCA.
Speaker 1:Load it up, have one dumbbell you can do at the shoulder, you can do it by the side, you could do a frontal one, whatever you feel is appropriate. Move into a landmine or split stance press. Get the shoulders involved. Very shoulder friendly, great for the core. You can add in some anti-rotations there. Calf raises would be huge for the gastroc, also helping the knee because it crosses that joint and we've seen that the ACL is vulnerable due to a lack of calf strength and quad strength. So that's something we want to incorporate.
Speaker 1:Let's do some band walks. Throw a ball, get a bouncy ball the smaller the better, because that's going to help with their dribbling mechanics. Hand-eye coordination Do that for three rounds If time permits. Let's do a little metabolic conditioning. You do a jump rope into a wall, sit, you clap your hands real loud and then they have to go over and do a set of curls and they go into the jump rope immediately. This is where rest would be very short and that's where the conditioning comes in. Do it for five to 10 minutes, based on what they're capable of doing.
Speaker 1:Listening to this program. You may be really confused because there's a lot of variations. It depends on the athlete. If you want to get better at free throws, you need to shoot free throws. You're not going to have them stand on a BOSU ball doing overhead squats. You will know, based on the competency of the individual.
Speaker 1:I work with a kid who played basketball and he was like the last kid that got selected Couldn't even jump rope. So if I wanted to have him do advanced exercises, he doesn't have the competency. From a learning standpoint it's going to be too overwhelming. He's not going to adapt efficiently. So you have to find the exercises that are appropriate for your athlete. I'm not going to do your standard overhead squat or some FMS. I'm going to look at the individual and choose the exercise that I feel are appropriate. When you start getting into junior high and high school they start getting a little awkward because of the growth spurts. So maybe they were getting strong in eighth grade with squats, but now they're significantly worse because they grew six to eight inches. So we might have to focus more on squats. We may have even progressed into unilateral stuff. It just always depends on the individual. That's why we train the individual, not the program. So when I look at the CCA right here, we have a plyo into an upper body into an accessory. We have a unilateral or squat into upper body into an accessory. We have a bilateral or unilateral into a shoulder into an accessory.
Speaker 1:Choose appropriate conditioning drills within the landscape and the equipment that you have. It may be this gym that you're working at has a basketball court, so for the last 10 minutes maybe you have them do a liner and then you shoot some free throws with them. They shoot 10, you shoot 10. You make it a game. That's how you can make it fun and enjoyable. If you don't have a basketball court, it's just a gym environment. I would encourage you to get involved and use props a basketball, tennis ball, bouncy ball because people are going to look at you and be like, wow, that's creative. But the whole session isn't going to be like that. We're going to work on strength, stability, mobility, conditioning, all of those things within the session.
Speaker 1:Pending on that KPI analysis that we did in the beginning, where do we really need to improve? I designed a full week workout for you. If you DM us showupfitness or email us at info at showupfitnesscom, I will send you over that? Please leave us a five-star review. If you haven't got my book, volume two, read that sucker. Leave a five-star-old who's trying to get better and more athletic for the sport of basketball.
Speaker 1:You just have to find the appropriate exercises and the competency for that individual. Remember the first month that they haven't been training. We're not going to get a ton of hypertrophy. It's more neurological those first four to six weeks, depending on how much they do it. After. That's when we can start putting on some size. Have we gone through puberty? These are things that you're just going to visually notice.
Speaker 1:I have a kid right now. When I started training him he was 13,. Didn't have hair on his legs. A year later the dude has acne. Now he has hair on his legs. He's going through puberty. He's going to have a huge growth spurt. He's going to start putting on a ton of size. So that'd be a great time to focus more on hypertrophy specific to what his organism is going through. So we have to factor that in for the individual and the program that we feel is most appropriate for the person in front of us. And just to reiterate, today's program and workout is designed for a trainer at crunch, so this isn't a team, this isn't.
Speaker 1:You're going to someone's house. You can kind of imagine the equipment that they would have. You probably need to bring some stuff in there. You're going to be training them two to three times. We keep it full body, keep it fun with the accessories. Communicate and network with the parents. Keep them involved, send them articles about hydration, protein, nutrition, stuff. The more you keep them involved, they're going to be talking about that practice at parent meetings. Oh, you got to work with this trainer.
Speaker 1:Everything that I talked about today was just from the physiological and psychological aspects for an individual who wants to get better at basketball. When it comes to the business side that's, your people, skills that's going out and above and beyond. If they have an event, go there, donate, ask if they need a sponsor, donate a hundred bucks, 500 bucks, whatever you can afford. Imagine if you're a trainer in the area and they put your logo on the jerseys. That investment one is a write-off, but now you're going to be on the minds of all these parents who want their kids to be professional athletes which probably none of them will be, but they're seeing your involvement. That's how you're going to get new leads.
Speaker 1:If there's a game or travel ball, go and watch. Don't be that crazy lunatic in the stands yelling at the ref. Just sit there and watch. Wear a trainer shirt. So then people are like, oh, who's your kid?
Speaker 1:No, I'm actually training number 13 out there, jessica, she's kicking major butt and I just wanted to make sure that everything we're doing in the gym is transferring over to how she's playing, or maybe there's a missing link. She's telling you a bunch of stuff, but then when you go and watch you're seeing different things weaknesses that she may have, maybe it's more psychological, maybe it's the coach, maybe it's the environment. The psychology of sport is a whole nother podcast. But by being there you're going to learn so much about how they're involved with their team, their strengths, their weaknesses. When you are a strength coach and you're working with athletes, you're a business owner. You're looking at the KPIs, you're seeing what they're great at, what they can improve, and then we bring it back into the gym when we get better at it. If you enjoyed today's podcast, throw it into your story and remember three-pointers are better than two-pointers and keep showing up.