STORIES
ny charter school makes neuromuscular training a priority
90% of sport coaches at Charter School for Educational Excellence are trained in a Neuro-Dynamic Warm up provided by HSS
Following their ethos to do “whatever is best for kids,” Charter School for Educational Excellence (CSEE) began an athletics journey to invest in sports safety, athlete health and injury prevention. With help from HSS, neuromuscular training has resulted in lower injury rates, taught youth to move better, and is now “how we do things here.”
March 2025
Editor’s Note: This series of case studies profiles sports programs successfully implementing neuromuscular training and includes background, program selected, implementation approach, outcomes and program advice.
BACKGROUND
CONTEXT | New York Charter School
Based in Yonkers, New York, the Charter School for Educational Excellence (CSEE) enrolls just over 1,100 combined students across their middle and high school campuses. 93% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Within athletics, 400 students participate in sports across 21 middle and high school teams.
KEY ACTORS | Athletic Director & PE Teacher/Athletic Trainer
Now 14 years into his tenure, Athletic Director Mike DeSimone built the sports program from scratch. He played sports in high school and has a background in physical education. Patrick Kilcarr is a PE Teacher who also serves as Athletic Trainer. Now in his third year, Patrick holds a BA in Athletic Training and a Masters in Physical Education.
CATALYST FOR ACTION | “Whatever is best for the kids, just do it”
CSEE aims to close the equity gap in education. For DeSimone, that means “whatever is best for the kids, just do it.” The athletic department invests in activities they see as helpful for keeping kids in school, improving performance and preparing them for life. In recent years, DeSimone has reached out to external partners for guidance around health and safety, leading to annual summer coach development workshops in sport safety education and quarterly PD for coaches.
NEUROMUSCULAR TRAINING PROGRAM
HSS | Neuro-dynamic Warmup
After meeting Mike at a conference seven years ago, Jimmy Russomano (Assistant Director, Athlete Health, HSS) helped CSEE set up an injury prevention program built on the HSS Neuro-dynamic warmup. The warmup has two variations, each consisting of 10 exercises, and is done in less than 10 minutes before each practice. Coaches are active during the warm up by providing cues and feedback. CSEE liked the warm-up because it was seen as all-encompassing. “It strengthens the intrinsic muscles of the foot, core strength and glute strength, " says Kilcarr.
IMPLEMENTATION APPROACH
1 | Start with coaches you know have buy-in
For Mike, the goal was to “have everyone on the same page for implementing the neuro-dynamic warm up.” Boys basketball was the test-case. Mike knew he would have buy-in with the coach, so his first action was to reach out and simply communicate the benefits of the warmup. The program was eventually introduced during a pre-season meeting with the team.
2 | Lean into your culture of coach development
After Basketball in the winter, softball followed in the Spring. Since then, they’ve faced few barriers with coach adoption. “Buy-in was natural because a lot of the work had already been done,” Mike says. Effectively, their efforts to introduce sports safety education through coach development workshops led to an easy integration of the HSS neurodynamic warmup. They simply added this content into their existing cadence of sessions. Mike and Patrick say that staff on board have a willingness to evolve as a coach and to mentor students in sport, “they want every kid to have an opportunity.”
3 | Ongoing data collection and recognition
Mike, Patrick and Jimmy take small actions consistently to keep momentum going. Patrick helps coaches on the ground when questions come up while Jimmy (Athletic Health, HSS) sends a “weekly booster shot” email to coaches on the importance of neuromuscular training. However, a big part has been data collection. Mike and Patrick did not want to miss out on data that kids were doing the warmup but not being tracked. Mike supports coaches on this. Jimmy provided a spreadsheet that coaches update regularly at each session to monitor adherence. The data is shared with the kids and also used to reward coaches. At their regular quarterly coach PD sessions, Mike awards amazon gift cards (a gift from HSS) to coaches of teams with the most warm ups each month.
4 | Use the hiring period to prepare new coaches
Preparing new coaches through a pre-season training was “an eye opener” for Mike and Patrick. The aim has been to teach new coaches that the safety of players was not only part of their job, but “here’s how you do it.” Anytime CSEE hires a coach, they use the initial 30-day process to review the warm up and the role of the coach as an active participant with cues/feedback. Their guidance? Use the “Three I’s: Instruct. Identify and Intervene.”
OUTCOMES*
The Neuro-dynamic warm-up is now part of “how we do things here,” says Mike, AD and Patrick, AT. “Athletes, coaches and families are learning on a daily basis through pre-season and on-going in-season education how to properly take off and land on single legs and perform a proper neuro-dynamic warm up, which is completed on a daily basis and feedback is provided by coaches trained three times per year.”
Close to 90% of coaches regularly use the HSS neurodynamic warm-up with their teams.
90% of coaches have been trained, either in the hiring process or at a workshop with HSS. More than 20 workshops have been hosted since the start of their HSS partnership six years ago.
35% decrease in documented knee and ankle sprains, in middle and high school teams, since implementation started.
No ACL injuries, in middle and high school teams, since implementation started. Three ACL injuries prior to 2018.
*Internal data from Charter School for Educational Excellence
“Over the past five years or so, I have seen a priority in the athletic department focus around injury prevention and the focus of a standard [Neuro-Dynamic Warm up] for the programs. Every summer, I attend a PD led by HSS in regards to sports safety, injury prevention and NDW. The amount of success it has had on my players staying on the field, educating families, and practice planning has been nothing short of remarkable. My players know the standard to start practice in regards to warm-ups. More importantly, they understand “the why” of what we do and why we do it. As a direct result of NDW – we have seen such a positive impact among our student-athletes in regards to prevention of injuries, which then streamlines into optimal performance and more opportunities for them in the future.”
ADVICE
See Athletics as an extension of the PE program, including ‘wellness’ as a way to frame the importance of the warmup. The most important thing is to get stakeholders to understand the connection to safety, wellness and social emotional wellbeing.
Be methodical in how you introduce the warm up with current staff. Take your time, Fall is a crazy period, so better to initiate things in the Spring, especially since people load up on education in the summer. Take the time to sprinkle in the philosophy, motivation and goals. Get coaches to do the movements themselves so “they know it intimately.”
Hiring is the ideal period for setting expectations around sports safety and injury prevention. Set expectations for the first practice so that “it would be unacceptable for a team to do it and have another team not.”
By Vincent Minjares, Ph.D. Program Manager, Aspen Institute Sports & Society