Presentation description Deceleration is THE most overlooked aspect of athletic movement speed. We all know about the extensive research that has gone into acceleration and its affect on performance. But what about deceleration? We have great knowledge on how to enhance acceleration and top speed, but not how to slow athletes down! In this presentation,…
Why should practitioners use qualitative methods to understand cutting movement quality? Many team sports are characterized by a high frequency of high intensity actions such as sprinting, jumping, tackling, dribbling, kicking or turning. These occur during key moments of the game: goal scoring, assists, defensive interceptions, blocks. Among these high intensity actions, change of direction…
Has testing change of direction got any value for strength and conditioning coaches? I believe my perspective on this matter might provoke differing reactions, as it seems we often find ourselves in opposing camps when it comes to strength and conditioning. To shed light on how I view the current state of the field, I’ll…
An important skill for rehab and performance practitioners to have is the ability to analyze athletes’ movement strategies. Whether stationary movements like a squat or dynamic movements such as a change of direction (COD) maneuver, practitioners must be able to evaluate whether the strategy is appropriate for that individual athlete. The big questions to ask…
The term “game speed” has grown in popularity within the industry over recent years. Built from the foundations of general agility training, the aim to maximise transfer of training into competitive performance has resulted in more specific and contextual training. Like most things, there is a broad range of definitions dotted around the literature. I…
One scroll through Twitter and you’re bound to see it. “Agility” drills done so poorly and so decontextualized it’s almost laughable. It’s almost like a car crash: horrifying, yes, but you just can’t look away. While many sports are guilty of these atrocities, I’ll use an example in American football. Take a look at this…
Movement skills coaching exists in the grey area of performance, which makes some practitioners uncomfortable and others overly contentious. This article won’t go into any of the philosophies around speed development, nor will it give you A-skip progressions, but it will provide a conceptual framework to evaluate your movement skills program against. As our industry…
Speed and agility are among the most sought after athletic qualities, and athletes who excel in these abilities can hold a significant advantage in their sport. This realisation has resulted in many organisations, in the quest to produce the next sports prodigy, investing a lot of time and money into driving these qualities in their…
This Live focused on the testing and training of agility. This Live roundtable features three experts in this area, Shawn Myszka, Ian Jeffreys and Tom Dos’Santos. We will discuss – Understanding change of direction vs agility Drill progressions and constraints led approach Coaching specific positions for performance and reducing injury risk Maximising transfer to on-field performance…
The model of agility that I published with Brian Dawson and Greg Henry in 2015 [1] described agility as being determined by physical, technical and cognitive components. My first article for Sportsmith discussed what agility is in the context of invasion sports, and explained the philosophy that suggested agility, for the most part, should be…
In my article ”Agility training is more than just change of direction training,” I explained that pre-planned change-of-direction (COD) tasks in training are quite different from the in-game agility demands that are part of invasion sports. Training with 1v1 contests and small-sided games (SSG) help develop agility in a holistic manner; and pre-planned COD activities…
Invasion sports are team games in which the purpose is to invade the opponents’ territory while trying to score points and minimise the opposition’s scoring. These include all codes of football, field and ice hockey, lacrosse, hurling, and court sports such as basketball, netball, and handball. These multidirectional sports require a range of technical and…
Change of direction speed and agility are among the most confused and contested areas both in the sports performance literature and in the practical realm. The field has evolved from the early resources and certifications designed to sell agility ladders (a misnomer, by the way), but the present discourse is largely driven by two mutually…
This Live focuses on improving change of direction ability and features three experts in this area, Molly Binetti, Neil Welch, and Daniel Kadlec. We are going to kick off this MasterMIND with a chat about developing technical models to develop change of direction ability, monitoring and managing progressions and regressions, and finally change of direction testing…. Sign up to register…