4 Methods to Improving Speed Qualities

First of all, yes – that’s me in the videos and pictures.

And yes, the information that Lee Taft went over was great and informative, and I highly recommend it.

Second of all, I’m already biased towards you starting this certification, because I have already been exposed to this information, and I am also an affiliate for this product – this means I’ll get kickbacks if you sign up using my link.

When Lee and I were going over all of  these drills (surprise surprise, I’m not just a model for pictures – we did sprinting and change of direction drills for over 8 plus hours!), I took away many things that I was never exposed to because I didn’t have formal collegiate or professional athletic training.

I understood what it meant to apply force into the ground in a meaningful manner. You can’t do backflips, no handed cartwheels, or do extremely fast footwork from a dancing point of view without applying just the right amount of force to get the move just right! 

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If you work with athletes, there are tons of ways to get them faster.

  1. Strength Training
  2. Physiological Speed & Power
  3. Joint Positioning
  4. Technical Practice

In this certification, you’ll be going over WHY you’re choosing which exercise at what exact time for your specific athlete. Not all athletes are the same, and not all athletes respond the same way to any given cue. If you, as a coach or trainer, have a specific desire or wanted outcome that you know will get your athlete or client to the next level, understanding what to say, or what corrective exercise (in the nature shown in this certification) is imperative.

Understanding the Qualities for Speed

Strength training is often touted and praised as one of many ways to improve upon an athlete’s speed. The general recommendation of simply improving an athlete’s speed calls upon understanding the force velocity curve, along with understanding the implications of how strength training can impact an athlete’s overall and absolute speed.

Essentially, just because you can squat heavy, does not mean you can sprint fast. And just because you can sprint fast, does not mean you can squat heavy.

Where teh Magic Lies

However, somewhere in between these two statements, you will find that it is a general rule of thumb that those with better ability to express strength in squats will also be likely able to sprint at a relatively fast speed.

At some point however, an athlete’s strength in the squat will need to have some type of transfer towards his or her sport. If an athlete cannot display this newfound strength towards either a change of direction or linear sprint mechanic, then I will have to argue that squatting for strength qualities is no longer necessary. Sprinting (or whatever else it may be sports specific skillwise) technique and speed will need to be improved upon in order to get better at sprinting.

From a nervous system point of view, improving elasticity of force production when sprinting is something that can be viewed through several tests. Essentially, force absorption and force production over a duration of time is necessary to understand when you are aiming to improve physiological speed and power.

There are tons of tests to assess an athlete’s reactivity in whichever sporting demands you are aiming to test: 5-10-5 (pro-agility) shuttle, vertical jump (with and without countermovement), or even the amount (and height) of jumps over 10 seconds, are just a few tests you can perform.

Further, whenever a parent of an athlete comes in and says to me “Johnny needs to get a little bit faster,” there are a few things that can be improved upon initially, but the large majority of the time these are 12 to 15 or 16 year old athletes that need a few things:

  1. Muscular hypertrophy and strength
  2. Neuromuscular coordination
  3. Go through an appropriate strength and conditioning program that doesn’t involve only ladder drills and 20 minute runs.
  4. To go through puberty.

If an athlete is a late bloomer, or hasn’t even gone through puberty, it will be difficult to support a physiological requirement for absolute speed without any hormonal, neuromuscular, or skeletal adaptations that often take months if not years to develop. Asking a baseball player to get a sub 7 second 60 yard dash is difficult to do as a professional, let alone as a freshman high school athlete.

Long story short, improving the physiological make up of an athlete (which is the hormonal, neuromuscular, and skeletal adaptations necessary for athletic development) takes time.

Teaching and Programming for Speed

The next two points are areas where I believe myself and other coaches and trainers can have the fastest lightbulb moments for athletes, simply because this is the area where changes can be seen relatively fast. Improving strength and physiological power and speed take time. Telling an athlete to get lower out of a two point stance in order to improve push off out of the hole is like magic.

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When speaking about joint positioning, it is imperative to understand that there are good and bad positions when thinking about improving your sport specific demand.

There is a difference between knee valgus, and hip internal rotation in the effort to absorb force when decelerating or changing directions.

There is a difference between dorsiflexion of the ankle over the talocrural joint and plantarflexion  of only the metatarsals of the foot.

Sprinting - Cause of Lack of Ankle Dorsiflexion

Improving someone’s requisite range of motion and control over that range of motion can take several forms and methods in order to achieve said position. However, just achieving that end position is not the only purpose for training – it is these movements backed by strength, power, speed, and endurance qualities that is the end goal!

If you want to improve an athlete’s speed, getting them into the right positions from a general perspective (ie. Can you move your ankle into dorsiflexion in order to deliver an appropriate force into the ground during sprints?).

Talking About Practice?

Now the idea of practice can take several forms. The essential goal of practicing for speed is to learn a sequencing of events in order to facilitate your body in the face of an opponent or external and moving object. If you can accelerate and speed past an opponent on the soccer field, or if you can run a ball into the end zone faster than anyone else can catch you – then you can and should work on that skillset.

This certification won’t go over the technical aspects of how to get your athletes better through specific drills, like running slant drills, or working on technical cone drills for teams – but the ideas remain for individual athletes. You can learn what external cues to use to facilitate better movement quality, along with understanding how to improve upon your athletes’ errors that may occur.

Certified Speed and Agility Coach

I like the things that Lee Taft has taught me and allowed me to see. These are things that I now use on a daily basis with many of my athletes, as the athletes that come through at Cressey Sports Performance are not just baseball athletes, but often multi-sport athletes who are looking to improve overall awareness of their movement capacity. Please check out his Certified Speed and Agility Certification if you are anyone who trains with youth, collegiate, or professional athletes.

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As always,

Keep it funky.

MAsymbollogo

One Weird Trick: Installment 3 – Using Balls to Improve Shoulder Mobility

Many individuals have developed their whole careers to improving shoulder mobility. Before, the complexity of the shoulder girdle had plagued many individuals, whether it is from pain, dysfunction, or “I got this one really weird clicking thing that happens when I move like this,” type scenarios. I don’t claim to fix shoulders, but a funny thing happens when you do this one exercise called “Stir the Pot.”

Now, I’m not talking about stirring a pot of chili – although I would not be surprised that that is the origin of this exercise. In fact, when I first saw this exercise I thought it would be best called the cabbage patch, because of the circular nature of this exercise.
cabbage-patch

Wow what a throwback.

How Does The Cabbage Patch/Stir the Pot Exercise Help?

Well, thanks for asking Suzie. The first principle to respect involves understanding that sometimes shoulder mobility is limited due to positioning of joints, and activation of specific musculature.

If you find yourself in an extended posture, performing the Stir the Pot will certainly engage your anterior core if performed correctly.

The improvements from simply respecting antagonist and agonist relationships can see massive gains very quickly.

Positioning wise, improving your ability to activate your obliques will improve your positioning of your thoracic diaphragm. Bringing your “belt buckle up to your nose” will bring your pelvic floor/diaphragm into a better synchronous position with your upper body as well.

Scissor

Next, the interesting portion comes along with the circular motion of the shoulders and forearms on the ball. Interestingly enough, I believe that if done properly, you can achieve small ranges of motion into upward rotation of the scapula.

That is, if you can fix the thoracic diaphragm, and stabilize your upper body/ribcage, your scapulae will now have better ability to move upon this ribcage.

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Constant perturbations* from the unstable surface will require a reflexive maneuvering of specific musculature, namely the protractors, abductors, and even retractors and adductors of the scapulae as you perform your “stirring” motion.

Now you aren’t bringing your arms completely overhead obviously, but any improvements in range of motion in an overhead fashion will certainly translate to better motion overall, so you can hopefully do some really cool stuff, like handstands, overhead pressing, or even walking around with no discomfort.

Cues That Will Help

  1. Make sure to push chest and head away from the ground/ball.
  2. Improve motion by placing forearms directly into ball, not just elbows or just hands.
  3. Think of leading or creating small circles with your elbows.
  4. Keep a steady body as you perform this.
  5. Perform this exercise slowly – as you may not receive the same benefit if the exercise is performed in a fast and reactive manner.
  6. For beginners, try performing a stability ball stir the pot on the wall for a wall assisted and easier version.

As always,

Keep it funky.

MAsymbollogo

My Favorite Exercise Combinations – Installment 10

With athletes at Cressey Sports Performance in the thick of things during their winter break, I just wanted to drop a very quick and easy combination that I’ve been implementing that will enhance hip mobility, increase range of motion for athletes that are looking to improve their stride off the plate, along with challenging core stability.

Keep in mind that these same exercises can also be adjuncts or supplementary towards improving hip width during power moves in breakdancing, something that is necessary once you perform at a higher level.

AirFlare - Hip Abduction

When looking at things from a stride point of view in baseball, it is imperative to understand that there is dynamic motion in multiple planes, and a subsequent need for stabilization in multiple planes as well. Ignoring one plane of motion for another is shortsighted; only performing sagittal plane movements will ignore the necessary transfer of force into the frontal and traverse planes that are seen in baseball and many other rotary sports.

Matt Blake - Hips

At the same time, always improving motion in the frontal plane at the exclusion of training the sagittal plane will not be the best course of action either, because well, you just won’t get strong.

“Improving sagittal plane stability will often open up frontal plane mobility.”

I’ll let that sink in.

So with that under your belt, here are the following two exercises for improved hip mobility and stability!

Key Points

  • Determine end range for hip abduction, as each will have individual ranges of motion.
  • Push and spread the floor to activate glutes.
  • Stay tall through movement, and don’t allow head to fall into a forward head position.
  • Torso and head are stable, and arms move as you perform movement.

In essence, many individuals just assume the position, and either slack with positioning, either losing torso/ribcage position, head or eye position, or even not locking out their legs/glutes appropriately.

Key Points

  • Stay tall through movement, providing only a slight forward lean as necessary in order to accommodate the weight.
  • Maintain a tall neutral neck position (don’t go into cervical extension).
  • Make sure to sit back into hip flexion.
  • Heels will be in contact with the floor at all times, in order to maintain appropriate ankle, knee, hip alignment as you perform this movement.

This is a standard lateral lunge, holding a DB of desired weight in front of the body to make sure the reactive nature of the core is ensured.

What is being improved upon in this combination?

  1. Hip abduction (femurs moving away from the midline)
  2. Hip external rotation (stabilizing the pelvis by corkscrewing with your feet, tibia, and femoralacetbuluar angles)
  3. Internal and external oblique muscular stability as both exercise challenge anterior core stability, along with rotary stability being challenged in the anti-rotation chop.

Your brain is an easily fooled creature – you believe you are “tight”, but after performing these items your hip mobility can be improved upon through several mechanisms, namely reciprocal inhibition by activating the glute max and glute med (hip abductors)

If you are lacking in lower body range of motion, challenge yourself by really spreading the floor in the Wide Stance Anti-Rotation Cable Chop. Instead of leaving the idea of “wide stance” out for interpretation, challenge your hip mobility and push your limits!

Now, after completing one set on both sides, if you can ensure you are performing your lateral lunges to the next degree, make sure you are improving your range of motion by making sure your straight leg is really and truly straight.

Lateral Lunge

Don’t forget to lock out your knee on the “straight leg.”

Why You Should Include This Combination

One item to remember is that with many of our baseball athletes, I’d argue that this is also an “arm care” exercise – that is, by improving the ability of the lower body to move fluidly and absorb and adapt to stress, you are improving the ability for your athletes to move with more efficiency (and, to be more specific, have less issues biomechanically as you release the ball since you have more separation).

From a dance perspective, if you can open your hips up more, you will be placing less stress on your knees, as many dancers flex and extend rapidly at the knees in order to produce torque, instead of closing and opening their hips rapidly (which is naturally a greater source for force production).

Integrating This Combination

Within a programming scheme, I’d look at this towards a more complimentary or accessory exercise selection, perhaps performing this back to back in a circuit scenario in order to challenge the lower body musculature.

Perform this later on in the session, perhaps after your sagittal plane strength training has been performed already, as a secondary or tertiary exercise combination selection.

B1. Wide Stance Anti-Rotation Cable Chop – 3×8/side
B2. DB Goblet Lateral Lunge – 3×6/side

For weight selection for the DB Goblet Lateral Lunge, you can always choose a lighter weight, and go heavier after grooving a movement pattern. Don’t be afraid to go heavy (40 to 60+lbs) in order to challenge your anterior core more. If you are having difficulty with this exercise initially, start lighter or even bodyweight at first, and then seek to rapidly increase weight.

As you can see, there are multiple takeaways that you can introduce into many of your sport specific training methods that require a wide stance, or at the very least challenge the lower body musculature.

As always,

Keep it funky.

MAsymbollogo