Many families' first introduction to TAT is at a youth or high school sporting event where I have my sponsor table set up with TAT training videos playing on a TV. For example this video:
I've found that playing the videos is very eye-catching and serves as a default ice-breaker where people can approach the table and not feel obligated to talk because they're watching...but more often than not it does naturally lead to conversation, but I always cringe inside when people first respond with this comment:
"He already does this." "You know...speed and agilities...."
But it's not at our place...I personally work with every athlete at our facility and know all the parents. I cringe because they are wrong - they aren't doing what we're doing. I cringe because they are not training at TAT - but think they are getting the same thing because a few exercises or drills are recognizable enough to their uneducated eye to resemble what their athlete is doing!
Despite my internal cringing I usually respond, "That's great! Where are they training?" If the athlete is pre-high school, the answer is usually with their sports team where one of the coaches (a parent volunteer) puts the players through some drills as part of their practice. Let me emphasize that I do think this is great! Our young athletes are generally not getting enough coaching and work on overall athleticism and general physical development.
But trust me they aren't doing what we're doing.
For the off chance that someone is actually training with a professional coach / trainer at a field where they meet, at another sports performance facility, or even with coaches at their high school my answer is still the same.
They aren't doing what we are doing...they simply can't be:
TAT is not some canned and planned cookbook-style program that you can download off the Internet or replicate by watching a couple YouTube videos. Believe it or not, but you can't even copy a college team's training program or just remember what your coaches did with you in high school and get the same results as TAT!
I've been doing this almost 20 years. I have the degrees and the certifications. I've proven myself at the college level as a strength and conditioning coach at 4 universities. But that isn't why you should come try TAT.
It's because training the youth athlete and high school athlete is different than training elite athletes...A LOT different! But 15 years ago I didn't fully realize how different it is. Running my first youth strength and speed camp at UCF in 2001 I quickly came to see that my skill set developed by training college athletes was not meeting the needs of the kids in my youth program. College athletes don't need to be taught how to be athletic...they wouldn't be there if they weren't athletic already! But unless your athlete is in the 2% destined for the elite level, they DO NEED to be taught how to run, jump, cut, and move athletically to reach their full potential! In a nutshell, that's what our program is about: Teaching the movement skills required for success in athletics within a training system modeled after the elite level but regressed and developmentally appropriate at both youth and high school levels.
So unless the coach working with your athlete has been where I've been, has seen what I've seen, and then developed a training system based upon those experiences, backed by sport science, and honed through in-the-trenches coaching with thousands of athletes...
There is simply no way they could be doing what we are doing at Total Athlete Training!
Reach Your Potential,
Coach Dan Bessetti
