Showing posts with label drill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drill. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

The 5-0-5 Agility Drill

Today I would like to talk about one of my favourite agility drill: the 5-0-5 acceleration test.


The idea of this drill is to found out  how fast an athlete can fully stop from max speed and sprint back again.
This drill can be used in those sports where agility is a "must", such as American football, basket, football etc etc.

Let's see how this drill works.
Our pinkish cubic athlete will sprint from a distance that allows him to reach sub max speed before the 5 meters mark; generally, 10 meters away is a good distance. So, he will run toward the stop line, stop in front of it, turn back, and sprint again to the starting point.
The time starts when the athlete pass the 5m mark for the first time and we will stop the clock when he pass the 5m mark for the second time.

One key point of this drill is the stop phase. When the athlete reaches the stop line, he does NOT perform a change of direction (one foot on the line and sprint back); instead, he places boot feet in front of the line and then sprint back. Basically, he has to perform an 180° spin.
Moreover, the athlete, on the way back, has to sprint toward the starting point and not decelerate after the 5m mark.

We can adjust the marks according to our needs. For instance, we can start the clock at 10m and stop it when the athlete reach the 10m mark again.

In order to have an accurate result, is better to perform this test three time, allowing the athlete to have enough rest between sets. Moreover, we can do a practice set before the drill begin.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Light Traffic [Warm-up Drill]

The warm-up could be the most boring part of the training session.
2 laps of run, back-pedalling on the short sides, sprint the last 20 meters. Then, all on one line and do some dynamic stretching; job done.
Every time the same routine. If people spends a lot of time thinking about new drills to avoid the tedium, why shouldn't we do the same for the warm-up?

Here I will show you a nice warm up drill that I use when I am coaching multisport.



This drill is called “The light-traffic”.
All your players are on the line (again?). When they are ready, you shout red, orange or green.

Green → they sprint forward
Orange → they slowly run forward
Red → they stop

You keep on shouting the colours and you can even change the exercise, e.g. back-pedalling or frog jumps, focusing on the muscles that the players are going to use the most during the training.

To make the drill more competitive and fun, you can introduce a forfeit every time a player doesn't follow your command, for instance you shout red! Then, red again and someone runs forward instead of staying still.

The effectiveness of this drill depends on the “creativity” of the coach and on his ability to make the training “interesting”.