| By Julie Eibensteiner PT, DPT, CSCS Owner/Founder of Laurus & MNUFC Team Physical Therapist Relays. Races. Tag. Something where a person has to react off another person with full intent. It’s not pre-planned. They have to take in sensory information they didn’t know was coming. The brain has to make a decision. Then the body has to act. The key reason? Brain-body connection at competitive intensities. The second reason is simpler: they’re fun. Fun means engaging. Engaging means more intent. More intent means the systems actually get trained at a level that matters – and people will do it more often. It’s closer to sport than a warm-up, a strength circuit, or a drill you already know is coming. It’s how you get real speed, quickness, deceleration, and a real first step. Competitive athletes need it. It primes the body to move with intention and keep that brain-body linked. That’s a big part of non-contact injury prevention. We prioritize this every day in our performance groups at Laurus – not endless drills. A lot of non-contact injuries happen in the first 20 minutes of a game, especially when the body isn’t ready to read and react at game speed. ACL injuries are increasingly thought of as a brain-processing issue. If you want to reduce that risk, you have to train the weakest link. It doesn’t have to be complicated. MNUFC routinely uses competitive relay races of all types to start training. Fun. Engaging. Intentional. A great way to begin a session. They enjoy it just like youth athletes do. Adults need it too. If you don’t train it, you lose it. Then a step in pickleball, a slip, or a trip forces your body to solve a problem it isn’t prepared for. That’s when the big injuries (tendon ruptures) show up. That’s what Laurus Legends is for. We help you keep the athletic qualities and the ability to solve the physical problems life throws at you. We’re enrolling now. Late-stage rehab is where this gets missed the most. We hear the same story from patients who come to us looking for more. Rehab in isolation. Occasional check-ins. No real movement component. No tangible plan for getting back to moving at high speeds off other people. Then they wonder why they feel slow and unsure of themselves. This is not a one-week checkbox. It has to be built in over several phases so the athlete can actually marinate in it. Middle school athletes need a place to start this the right way. A lot of it is coordination and the ability to read and react, plus the physical pieces that support it – especially when their bodies are changing at warp speed. That’s why we developed Laurus Roots, our middle school athletic development course for 6th and 7th graders. We typically run it twice a year, and we’re offering it again this fall. Laurus Roots 6 weeks | 2x per week September 22 – October 29 Tuesday/Thursday | 4:00–4:45 pm $325 Limited to 8 athletes Progressive strength, movement quality, mobility, coordination, and age-appropriate speed and power. Sessions are engaging on purpose, so kids actually like training. Want a spot? Email info@laurusperform.com Subject line: ROOTS |
| A Laurus tidbit: We don’t do long-term contracts. If we do our job right, we earn you back each month – through our work, not paper work. Our Performance members average stay is 3 years. This year, one athlete hit ten – middle school through college! |