Changing Directions

A lot of times as an athlete we get too focused on numbers and test's and times and forget about how we actually perform. Performance on the field is often measured in quantity, but change in performance can also be measured in quality. How well does a person move, or how much better does this kid move than 3 months ago?

Changing direction is one of those things that is qualitative. It is very hard to time change of direction alone. But if you're looking for it, the change can stand out like a sunflower in the outfield.

Changing direction is all about angles. The most glaring culprit of poor performance is the inability to change directions efficiently without wasting movement. Whether it is during linear transition or lateral change in direction, many athletes are "too tall" when changing direction and have a lot of wasted movement. Athletes will lack stability through the truck and hips and lose a lot of energy transfer due to what we call upper body sway. This occurs when the lower body plants and attempts to push back the other way, but the upper body continue's moving opposite to where the lower body is now attempting to go. When you see this it looks like the lower body is dragging the upper body back the other way with it.

Upper body sway results in a lot (relatively speaking) of wasted time as the upper body must now get pulled back and dragged the other way. This is one very good reason why situps and crunches are a waste of time. They do not train the core muscles to be stable during change of direction. Planks, side planks and lateral stability exercise's are going to be the agent of change.

Changing directions will also involve maintaining a low ground position. This allows the proper angle to be taken so that force is transfered down through the leg and into the ground horizontally rather than vertically. What happens when we push our legs quickly into the ground directly below us? We jump straight into the air.

To change direction, we must produce force that transfer's down and horizontally so that we may move in the opposite direction of our force production. We are pushing ourselves away from the ground. Change the way we teach lateral change of direction and we will change the speed of our athletes.

Pool Time

Our summer Speed, Strength & Power (SSP) Camp just wrapped up its fourth week. All the kids are moving more efficiently. Which translates to faster foot speed and less fatigue. Some are learning faster than others but the interesting thing is how much faster the younger kids are learning than the older kids.

This is probably because we have unlearn all the bad habits the older kids have while with younger kids, there are not many bad habits to fix. So things are going good. But today they got great.

All 4 groups met out at the pool at CSUB. Most thought we would be swimming all day long. So they were kind of excited, but mostly they were just looking forward to getting out of the bakersfield heat.

What they got was more than they bargained for.

The beauty of perfoming speed and power drills in the water is that it slows everything down and makes it much safer to do plyometric exercises and speed exercises. The water produces the resistive forces against the jumps and movement, but also produces the force that slows the athlete down.

Some may say, well doesn't moving slow produce slower players. Well yes and no. If athletes are chronically using heavy resistance that does not allow for use of the entire muscle contraction and speed spectrum then you will start to see a decrease in movement speed and power. But when providing resistance such as water the athletes intend to contract quickly and the water simply slows them down. They are not moving at "slow" speeds. Simply slower than out of water.

Give it a shot. I'm going to have 40 high school athletes that will have an entirely new view of aquatic exercise.