The ability to effectively move laterally is critical for athletes in many sports. Here are some speed and agility exercises that are designed to improve lateral movement.

In the video clip below Bobby Smith, strength and conditioning coach at Reach Your Potential Training (RYPT), shares his thoughts and ideas on how to effectively train for better lateral movement in your athletes. His presentation was delivered at a recent Glazier Athletic Performance Clinic.

This clip is just one portion of his presentation. If you would like information about how to gain access to his entire presentation, as well as hundreds of other athletic performance clinic presentations, click the link Glazier Athletic Performance Clinics.

The YouTube video below has audio, so please make sure that your sound is turned up and that you have access to the site. Note that some schools block access to YouTube. Click the arrow to play the video.

This post was provided by Complete Track and Field.

Here are three Glute-ham Complex exercises that can add variation to your workouts. These exercises will work the posterior chain and help improve acceleration, and especially top speed, while helping to prevent injuries.

By Travis Hansen,

We are all more than likely well aware at this point that the posterior chain, Glute-Ham Complex, Backside, or whatever else you would like to call it, is absolutely critical in all areas of human performance. Success in everything from power lifting, Olympic lifting, bodybuilding, team sports, injury prevention-treatment, aesthetics, etc. automatically demands that the hips be operating at the highest degree possible. In this quick article I’m going to hopefully introduce 3 new hip dominant exercises that do an outstanding job at developing this part of our anatomy, as well as discuss some of their specific roles in training. The posterior chain helps regulate all physical aspects of life.

#1- Stability Ball Leg Curls

The stability ball leg curl has existed for awhile from what I’ve seen, but progressing the pattern by means of external load with 45-100 lbs. plates, is not that common. I should also note right away that all of the drills I’m going to share are generally more effective with moderate to high rep ranges (i.e. 8-16 reps) for two reasons. First, I think working within this rep spectrum assists in CNS preservation since the intensity is naturally lower. Another by-product here from what I’ve read from several credible sources is that the legs seem to respond well to higher levels of time under tension. Secondly, exercise compatibility with these number of reps is achieved since the capacity to load the movements can be pretty difficult even if an athlete or trainee is fairly strong.

#2– Modified Reverse Hypers

This drill has been slightly modified from the original version that was shared with me by one of my mentors and friends: Kelly Baggett. Kelly opted for a dumbbell and I think that implement works as a great variation! The other option is obviously loading the exercise with 45 or 100 lbs. plates and then distributing the weight at various points at the posterior leg to alter leverage and serve as another source of overload without necessarily increase the poundage. Or add more weight, or combine altering leverage and add the weight. There are lots of ways to approach the situation here.

#3- Sled/Car Pull-Throughs

 

And when the cable pull-through is no longer sufficient enough to really challenge you or someone else, enter the sled or car! The potential for increasing stress and intensity to the posterior chain is very high here, and I believe the exercise is unique to the best of my knowledge.

All of these drills do a solid job of applying direct stress to the hips, thus increasing local growth and strength endurance qualities. Moreover, I’m certain that these exercises will help improve acceleration, and especially top speed since the glutes and hamstrings are so dominant in generating horizontal force and power at the latter stages of a sprint, which are necessary precursors to “breakaway” ability according to research. 1 2 3 Just check out any of Bret Contreras’ books or articles on his site and you will see what I mean.

Another reason why I love these exercises is because they serve as a great source of training variation, without in any way compromising exercise selection quality. We all know that bilateral and unilateral RDL’s, GHR’s, Swings, Sleds, etc. are staple movements for building strong, big, and powerful hips and I have no doubt that these drills can contend if executed correctly.

Last but not least, these 3 exercises shine in terms of addressing injury prevention/general treatment, either directly or indirectly at the groin, hamstrings, hip flexors, or quadriceps muscle groups. These areas are repeatedly beat up and injured during sprinting and other athletic based movements. For example, Anterior Pelvic Tilt (APT) as you know is a very common local dysfunction that occurs for a variety of reasons. Gait patterns, sitting, mechanics, poor exercise selection, and several other factors can encourage APT. Fortunately, building strength in these exercises can dramatically counteract anything that can potentially disrupt muscle balance and symmetry at the hip and cause APT. I should also note that APT can both directly and indirectly cause strains of the 4 muscle groups I previously mentioned.

Training Resource: The Speed Encyclopedia

The other area where these drills become valuable is by addressing “Specific Strength” of the glutes and hamstrings. When you consider landing impacts in excess of 3 times our bodyweight upon landing during a sprint, and the specific joint and muscle actions these muscles are responsible for, and their relative high level of activity after initial acceleration, then it’s no wonder they are susceptible to injury if they become underdeveloped for whatever reason.

I’m sure that most of you reading this already knew to some degree just how vital size and strength of the hips are for literally everything in life, and now there is even more confirmation. Try each of them for awhile and I think you will be pleased.

Exercises for Sports Performance Training

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SCIENTIFIC REFERENCES:

#1- Sprinting and Glutes by Bret Contreras: http://bretcontreras.com/sprinting-and-glutes/

#2- NCBI Post: Activity and functions of the human gluteal muscles in walking, running, sprinting, and climbing: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24218079

#3- NCBI Post: Changes in muscle activity with increasing running speed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16194986

This article was provided by Training-Conditioning

Have you found that while your athletes are consistently getting stronger, they are not gaining agility? If so, you might want to consider adding footwork and running drills to their workouts.

Doing this will not only make your athletes faster, but also give them more power and endurance. When implementing agility drills, one of the best instruments to use is a cone.

Affordable and easy to transport, cones can add variety to any workout. Unfortunately, some coaches associate cone drills with football, and many of the exercises actually have football in their name. However, Matt Rhodes, Head of Strength and Conditioning at Morehead State, found that none of them are truly sport-specific. After four weeks of applying these drills to the workouts of the softball team at Morehead, both players and coaches noticed great improvement in how the athletes looked and moved.

“My advice: no matter what sport you work with find some football cone drills and teach your athletes how to do them,” Rhodes wrote in an article for elitefts. “In my opinion, no drills like this are sport-specific (I said football because football has thousands of cone drills to choose from).  They are simply drills that get the athletes moving and changing direction in a variety of different ways.”

This article was provided by Training-Conditioning

Adam Linens, MS, CSCS, ATC, PES, CES, is an Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach at the University of Oregon, working specifically with the men’s basketball team. He has also worked with the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks and Cleveland Cavaliers and the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream. Below he answers questions on training speed and agility.

What’s your overall philosophy regarding speed and agility?

Linens: In my experience, all athletes want to do is go fast. But speed and agility training is not about how fast a player can accelerate, it’s about how fast they can stop and then reaccelerate multiple times. When NBA players get to the final years of their careers, they have no problems starting—they have problems stopping, landing, and changing direction. Those skills require the most eccentric strength, so I try to instill them early in my players’ careers.

That being said, much of what I teach is based on linear speed development. Although basketball athletes don’t need a ton of linear speed training—since they play a change-of-direction sport—good technique for linear speed will transfer to change-of-direction work and other movements.

This article was provided by Training-Conditioning

The 60-yard sprint is a great way to measure speed and assess running mechanics. Longer than most typical sprints, it challenges athletes in different ways and will help you identify where their running needs to improve.

The following tips from Nick Brattain in a blog for the International Youth Conditioning Association, outline how to get the most out of this exercise.

Front Side Mechanics

Many athletes lack proper front side mechanics when they get into an upright running position. Front side mechanics refers to the movements that occur in front of the body during running, which includes the knee driving up and down, as well as the arm swinging in front of the body. More time is spent in the upright position during the 60-yard sprint compared with other shorter sprints. Therefore, coaches need to take time during training to help athletes perfect these important mechanics.