Matt Hank

I had a youth sports coach recently ask me to put some agility drills together that he can implement for his team during practice. I told him it is quit simple to put drills together, even if the only equipment you have access to is a set of cones.

Closed Drills – Predetermined Patterns

• Make different shapes with your set of cones
  o Box, diamond, zig zag patterns, etc.
• Determine the movement pattern you want your athletes to perform between each set of cones
  o Sprints, backpedal, carioca, shuffles, crossovers, etc.
• The possibilities are endless – Be Creative

Open Drills – Reaction Drills

• These drills may be more effective because sport is random and movement patterns are not preplanned during a game or match.
• Two athletes can complete against each other in mirror drills
  o Example: Box mirror drill – One athlete is the leader who runs/shuffles/backpedals/etc. from cone to cone while their competitor needs to mimic the same movement patterns.
• A group of athletes can compete against each other with open line drills
  o The athletes start at one cone, when the whistle is blown the athletes first sprint. On the second whistle they backpedal, this continues until the athletes finish through the second cone. The coach can incorporate lateral movements as well as linear movements for these drills.

Be creative and make sure the workouts have progressions built in. The progression can include adding movements that are more advanced or can be the addition of more drills and repetitions.

Train Hard-Train Smart
www.asap-pt.com

These transverse plane (rotational movement) exercises need to be incorporated in every athletes training program.

Rotational training is not just important for baseball, softball, tennis and golf athletes.  Those specific sports require an athlete to be efficient in the transverse plane and this is obvious to most people.  What about other sports such as volleyball, soccer and football.  Look at all three of these pictures and notice the amount of rotation taking place at the hip, core, and shoulder girdle.

Train and develop these movment patterns.

Train Hard-Train Smart
www.asap-pt.com

Most athletes want to be strong and fast.  You need to train to improve both variables - speed and strength.  The ability to generate maximum strength and produce high speeds are different motor abilities. For younger athletes, they will likely see improvements in speed and strength when performing heavy strength training. This is the case because the majority of young athletes have no prior lifting experience and are relatively very weak – At that point anything they do safely will help. However, the same athlete will see greater performance gains if also training with high-velocity movements (training the rate of force development). It is important to incorporate Olympic lift variations, plyometrics and speed drills into a performance program. Exercises that enhance the rate of force development become even more important for athletes that already have a solid strength base. For stronger athletes, their speed will start to peak if they only continue to incorporate heavy resistance training. It is very important to incorporate high-velocity movements if an athlete is looking to improve their overall speed, quickness, and agility.

Take home message: Athletes need a balanced training program to improve their overall athletic development. They need to increase their relative strength (incorporating heavy resistance exercises) and improve their rate of force development (incorporating high-velocity movements and exercises).

The only time athletes (that require quick bursts of speed to be successful at their sport) should be doing low intensity jogging for an extended period of time is when there is systematic planning to put this type of workout in place.  A couple examples of reasons to plan medium/low intensity “cardio” would include days of recovery, regeneration, or flushing (elimination of lactic acid accumulation).  Essentially all three of these words are the same thing; however, different coaches have different terminology.

Too often, I see teams running laps around the track or the field for conditioning purposes.  Unless your goal is to be the best jogger in the sport of baseball, soccer, basketball, etc. you should stop jogging around the track and start doing sprint intervals.  Some people say that continuous paced jogging/running will increase your VO2 max (maximum ability to use oxygen - develop your aerobic system).  It has been shown that intensity is the far more important variable for increasing your VO2 max.  In addition, especially for sports such as basketball and soccer, you can only have a positive influence on your lactate threshold when you exercise at or above your current threshold.  The lactate threshold is the point at which your lactate production begins to significantly exceed lactate consumption. (Everyone knows the feeling of lactic acid production - when your muscles become tight/stiff and it begins to affect your performance)

The bottom line is that your body responds to the type of stimulus that you provide it.  Do you want to be slow or fast?  Think about this and design your program with that in mind.

Train Hard-Train Smart,
www.asap-pt.com

“I’m going to do cardio at the gym.” What the heck does that mean? For most individuals it means flopping yourself on the elliptical or treadmill for 30 minutes while you read your favorite gossip magazine or watch Oprah. It is not efficient and certainty not effective. You are not going to melt the fat off your body if do cardio at a low intensity for a long period of time – you’re just going to waste your time. Start incorporating interval training, which is efficient and effective. It is efficient because you can accomplish more work in less time. Try doing 10 hard sprints for 30 seconds with one minute of rest in between repetitions. You will only be working out for 15 minutes (5 minutes of high intensity exercise and 10 minutes of low intensity recovery. It is effective because you will burn more calories in those 15 minutes than in your 30 minutes of low/medium intensity cardio that you are currently doing. You can manipulate your interval training by changing a few different variables

• The length of the interval – Run for 1 minute instead of 30 seconds
• The intensity of the interval – Run at 85% of max heart rate instead of 75%
• The number of intervals – Last week you did 8 intervals, this week do 9
• The length of the rest period – Decrease the rest interval from 1 minute to 45 seconds

Interval training is even more important for competitive athletes that rely on quick sprints to be successful in their sport. If you are an athlete (except cross-country and long-distance track), you are wasting your time and hurting your performance if you are doing low/medium intensity cardio unless it is for a recovery workout. I will talk more about this during the next post.

Train Hard-Train Smart,

www.asap-pt.com

I get the question from parents all the time “What age should my child begin training?” Usually they mean sports performance training with me. My answer is they have already begun sports performance (weight training, speed, and agility) training at a young age. Every youth team sport and many individual sports involve running, jumping, hitting, kicking, or throwing. If they are doing these activities, they already begun performance training. Here is the problem: parents are willing to invest money to have their kids practice with specialized coaches such as soccer goalkeeper specialists, basketball shooting coaches, pitching/hitting coaches, and many other specialized coaches. At a young age you teaching your child one skill, when they really need to train their overall athletic development. On the other hand, I teach young athletes a variety of skills that apply to virtually every sport. If the training is age appropriate and progressed systematically, there should be absolutely no reason for your child to not participate in a sports performance program. They will develop many skills such as improved coordination (footwork and foot speed) and body awareness (how to move in all three planes of motion effectively, how to change direction efficiently, improved flexibility, and relative strength). Every type of athlete, young and old needs to develop and refine these skills on a continuous basis or they will either A) never develop these skills or B) loss their ability to perform these skills correctly and efficiently. A and B will both lead to inquires in the long run.

Parents: If you invest your money into a specialized coach, you had better also invest your money into a quality sports performance coach who works on the develop of athletic ability otherwise you’ll be paying to have your child rehab from sports injuries in the future. ASAP Baseball Academy is taking the right approach and combining specialized training with athletic development training, check it out www.asapbaseballacademy.com. This is how the development of young athletes should take place.

Train Hard-Train Smart,

www.asap-pt.com

VHS Baseball players training with speed parachutes.

Willy Taveras of the Colorado Rockies lead the major leagues in stolen bases this year. This guy is quick, but let’s look at his form for a second to illustrate how perfect his running technique is.

His body is in a perfect acceleration position. You can draw a line from the top of his head down to the foot that is planting into the ground. With this straight and rigid body position, he is able to drive his foot into the ground with no wasted movement or energy. He has complete extension of his right leg at his knee and most importantly at his hip. The powerful muscles of hips and butt are working to produce this hip extension. Also, notice his leg drive (his left leg). He drives his knee up to the optimal height – any higher, he would bend at the waste losing his rigid body position, and any lower and he would lose power when driving his foot into the ground. His foot is in a dorsiflexed position (toe up) which loads the calf muscles and propels him even further when he drives that foot into the ground to push off. His arm action is also perfect; both arms are short and compact. He is driving his elbows back and this motion is taking place at the shoulders, which connects to the powerful core musculature. Finally, his head is looking straight forward, not down at the ground, which would cause his torso position to change and thus slow him down.

To all parents, coaches, and athletes who think perfect running technique is not that important look up how many stolen bases Willy Taveras has this year and then get back to me.

Train Hard-Train Smart

www.asap-pt.com