Preparing Athletes for Sports That Feature Starting, Stopping, and Changes of Direction

Speed is a primary measurable that gets the attention of coaches and scouts looking to add talented players to their organization. This, understandably, causes athletes to place an emphasis on speed preparation prior to camps, combines, etc..., and gives trainers opportunities to sell themselves as being able to help the athletes improve in this area. The objective, in my mind, should be to improve speed by learning to better position and balance the body, and coordinate movements, thus resulting in more efficient movement abilities and the potential for better body control when needing to stop, cut, change direction, etc... My contention is that, ideally, speed training should occur in the off-season, hopefully after various injuries and ailments have had sufficient time to heal. The off season should be where there is not the pressure of wanting an improvement of speed to have an immediate positive impact on the field, court, pitch, etc... I'm not saying that a 15-30 minute session during the pre-season or season is of no benefit, but I'm talking about what I feel is ideal.

When running a race, ie; being timed in a 40-yard dash, the objective is to simply get from Point A to Point B as fast as possible. In various team sports, although having speed is a good thing, obviously, quite a bit more is often asked of the athlete, even just in the context of movement. Fortunately, many aspects that help a sprinter succeed during a race can be manipulated to maximize movement efficiency and effectiveness on the field of play.

It is well known in various sports that an athlete having "good hips" is a good thing. It is like that in sprinting also. My various blogs on this site detail developing explosiveness through good ranges of motion with the glute/hip/pelvic area being primary and used in coordination with the various other body parts. A key part of this is that the back is to support this vigorous movement but to not be overly involved. This is referred to as having "trunk discipline". An example of not having trunk discipline would be exploding into the extension of the initial stride with an over contribution of the erector muscles of the back, to do what I would call "over-launching". This results in the following stride not being executed as explosively as it should.

I explain in my blogs how the start is actually the first three strides, and how they are foundational to maximizing sprint success. Realizing this makes it easy to see how overly involving the back in each of these strides is not a good thing when racing or when executing movements specific to various sports.

There is also a "shin discipline" that relates to demonstrating an ability to be sufficiently stiff when the foot lands for each stride to help enable a good response to the forces being put into the ground. The opposite of this is the ankle collapsing when the foot hits the ground, rolling the shins and pushing out of this to find tension while on the ground. Between the ankles and hips is of course, the knees. Good running/movement mechanics allows the athlete to maximize the contributions of the knee joint muscles (See my "The Start is Three Steps" blog). The bottom line is that these and other abilities, ie; stride rate and stride length combination, can be applied to moving about on the field of play.

Check out my Improve Speed and Changes of Direction YouTube video, and note how the elusive athletes in this Human Highlight Reel Video look when they break into the open field and dash toward the end zone. They have good running mechanics. In my opinion, the body control and effective combination of stride length and stride frequency, to make the great moves wouldn't be there if their running technique wasn't fundamentally sound.

When it comes to training youths, we must not forget to consider their level of physical development and realize that they will get stronger and faster anyway, as they mature. A key is for them to be fundamentally sound and be allowed to blossom at the appropriate time. In my experience it isn't necessary to use a heavy hand with the workloads with youths, and to intensely and repetitiously obsess over technique. Primarily consider the big picture.

For the more mature athletes, the formula is still the same, in regard to; brushing up on sprint fundamentals and appropriate training, but of course the loads can be heavier and more intense, and film study can be a valuable tool toward the improving of technique.