Foot work skills sessions: Build better MOVEMENT

Regularly we conduct Movement Skill or Movement Facilitation sessions along with our strength and plyometric work to help our athletes get used to performing the basic movements they'll see on the field. These sessions are generally referred to as speed & agility sessions but truthfully they are not! Speed sessions, in the purest form of the word are sessions where we focus on speed. Linear running drills designed to get our bodies used to moving as fast as possible with great technique. Then we have agility sessions. These type of sessions are designed to help our athletes move in a lateral or multi-directional position, focusing on good body angles and transverse plane running. These Movement Skill sessions are NEITHER. These sessions are basically sessions where we take a plyometric drill and focus on the initial 1st to 3rd step in ANY direction. We are not concerned about their actual linear speed. We are not overly concerned with their lateral speed. We are simply concerned with how they initiate their first to third steps. Body angle, body position, and basic re-teaching of simple ability to move is our focus. I believe that these sessions (integrated with linear & lateral speed teaching) help produce fantastic results for our athletes on the field movements.

Basic rules:

• We only use a 10 yard surface for all of our progressions. We believe that the 1st 10 yds is the most important part of the teaching. So we cut down the running space to prevent useless injury and to focus on the initiation of sprinting. 
• We are only concerned with giving athletes a healthy base teaching on how to initiate their movements. Some believe that athletes should just lift hard and practice their sport, believing that this type of training will suffice. Others believe that simply focusing on linear sprinting will be enough. We DO NOT agree. From our assessments, most athletes will not use their sprint form or even their agility form because sports move at such fast paces its hard to have perfect form. Athletes WILL however, have to learn how to initiate their acceleration runs from both stand still and moving positions. So because this is something  ALL (non-track) athletes will face, we find it critical to spend time here. 

Here is a few clips of one of our movement skill sessions. No top end speed work, no agility work and excessive lateral running. Just getting good and movement initiation. This along with a sound strength program focusing on strength, plyometrics, mobility & even conditioning should give your (non-track) athletes a great chance and not only better performance but a healthy season.

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