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About 20 years ago, a high school coach gave me a tour of his athletic facilities. We stopped by the weight room and saw a young man squatting, all the way down and without knee wraps, 415 pounds for five reps. When the coach asked what position he played on the football team, the young giant replied, “I don’t play football—I just like to squat!”

I eventually became a volunteer strength coach at that school, teaching a girls PE elective with athletes and non-athletes. After a few semesters, 12 girls cleaned 135 pounds (five over 150), and nine vertical jumped (no step) at least 23 inches. Although the athletes were impressive, many non-athletes demonstrated remarkable strength and jumping ability.

The point of these examples is that many males and females with exceptional athletic talent never play sports in high school. As for numbers, the Youth Sports Institute at Michigan State University estimates that 70% of kids quit organized sports by age 13. This means sports coaches in high school only have access to about 30% of their athletic talent pool. Think about this.

School districts separate schools into divisions based on the number of students. A school with 2,000 students will compete against schools with approximately 2,000 students, and a school with 1,000 students will compete against schools with about 1,000 students.

What if coaches who work in a school with 1,000 students could tap into another 10%, 15%, or 20% of its student population to try out for sports? That would significantly increase their athletic talent pool. Another 30% would double it, potentially putting them on equal footing with schools with twice their enrollment. Although it’s unrealistic to achieve 100% participation, it’s worth considering the advantages of expanding a school’s athletic talent pool.

This begs the question, “Why do so many kids give up on athletics before high school?”

The Fun Factor

A Minnesota Amateur Sports Commission study asked kids about their experiences with coaches. Here’s what the researchers found:

• 45.3% were called names, yelled at, or insulted by coaches.
• 21% were pressured to play with an injury.
• 17.5% were hit, kicked, or slapped.

With these red flags, it’s no surprise that one of the primary answers kids give for quitting sports is that they “are not having fun.”

Besides these coaching abuses, I would add to the list the coaches who discourage less-talented athletes from staying in the game. Let me expand on this point.

Several years ago, track and field athletes from one high school told me their head coach only paid attention to those who could score team points. Winning was top of mind, and he had no desire to spend his time or resources helping less-gifted athletes reach their potential.

Because this coach only wanted to work with the best athletes, he tried recruiting athletes away from other sports and encouraged his athletes to participate in indoor and outdoor track. This tactic backfired.

The year after he was hired, only one athlete on the football team went out for track. After two years, his track team went from state championship contenders to cellar dwellers. He would not coach a third season.

Yes, the football players could have benefited from participating in track in the outdoor season. However, the coaches didn’t want to risk losing their athletes, particularly because this track coach encouraged his athletes to compete in the indoor and outdoor seasons. (I’ve seen this conflict with weightlifting coaches. A weightlifting colleague of mine was coaching weight training at a high school. One of the best football players quit the team to focus on weightlifting year-round with my friend, and the athlete went on to compete internationally. However, the head football coach feared losing more athletes, so my friend was no longer allowed to work with football players.)

It’s a shame that so many athletes dealt with this track and field coach for so long, and a more extensive screening process may have prevented this problem. In fact, this coach had “allegedly” been pressured to resign from his previous coaching position in another state due to complaints from parents about his behavior. I understand this information was never passed on to the school administration because of privacy laws. So, what can be done?

A Question of Character

Although background checks are essential, they’re just one aspect of the hiring process. “What a background check does is show what kind of legal action has been taken against a person,” says sports liability consultant Dr. Marc Rabinoff. “If they’ve had a felony conviction, even if it was 20 years ago, and they’ve paid their debt to society, it would show up.” That’s the plus side.

The downside is that background checks are generally performed only once every two years. The process doesn’t include regularly checking someone’s criminal history and reporting new illegal activities to the hiring organization. “What happens when a coach comes through squeaky clean in a background check but gets convicted of a sex crime involving a minor a month after you’ve completed the background check? You will have to wait 23 months until the next background check is performed to hear about it,” says Rabinoff.

Rabinoff says employers must call references when hiring coaches, even volunteer coaches, and “ask the hard questions so you get a good grasp of an individual’s character.” He also recommends that incoming coaches be made aware of the expected behavior standards and sign a document stating they agree to them. For reference, Rabinoff says USA Soccer has developed documents that schools and sports organizations can use as templates. And there’s much more that can be done.

Bigger Faster Stronger (BFS) has conducted high school and middle school character education clinics for over four decades, often giving hundreds of presentations a year. Their instructors are primarily certified teachers and accomplished coaches. These four-hour clinics are called Be an 11, and their motto is “On a scale of 1 to 10, be an 11!”

The BFS clinics are designed to help athletes set worthy goals in all areas of life, determine the steps to achieve those goals, and be able to tell right from wrong. Another benefit is that they help athletes become role models that their peers would admire. What’s unique is that the clinics involve athletes, parents, and coaches—BFS wants everyone to be on the same page as to what’s expected of them.

Remember the Charles Atlas ads with a strong, muscular bully kicking sand in the face of a wimpy guy in front of his girlfriend? A “Be an 11” athlete would pull that bully aside and try to turn him into the type of person who might even encourage the skinny guy to train with him to build up his body and self-confidence.

Many other organizations offer character education workshops, each with its unique approach to helping kids. These may help prevent coaching abuses, create a supportive environment for kids to continue playing sports, and encourage some of the Forgotten 70 Percent to try out for a team.

Those are some of the social and psychological reasons why kids quit sports. Now, let’s look at some of the physical reasons.

Bigger, Faster, Older!

If you fill a room with 12-year-olds, some will have the physical maturity of an 11-year-old and some that of a 13- or 14-year-old. Therefore, from a physical perspective, a sports program with 12-year-olds could have a mix of 11-year-olds competing against 14-year-olds. Such an environment is not much fun for those less physically mature (“Ant, meet boot!”), and these weaker kids often quit.

A year can make a big difference in physical maturity. Although rare, I’ve heard of parents of football players holding back their sons a year in school so they will be older than their classmates. The extra year enabled them to become bigger and stronger than their teammates during their junior and senior years when the college scouts started paying attention. Consider the practice of redshirting.

College football teams often redshirt players to give them an extra year to improve their strength, power, and quickness. At Brigham Young University, a type of extended redshirting occurs because many linemen pause their education to go on a two-year mission for the Mormon Church. They can still lift during this period, packing on slabs of muscle mass to give them an edge on the gridiron. (When I coached at the Air Force Academy, I recall that the BYU offensive linemen were so physically imposing they could be classified as a different species!)

The bottom line is that coaches need to recognize that kids physically mature at different rates. Don’t rush nature; instead, encourage these young men and women to stay with the program. Your patience may pay off with big returns.

The bottom line is that coaches need to recognize that kids physically mature at different rates. Don’t rush nature; instead, encourage these young men and women to stay with the program. Share on X

The Training Edge

Besides chronological age, another factor to consider is an athlete’s training age, which refers to how long an athlete has been involved in a sport or physical training. I recently interviewed Ciro Ibañez, a 1983 Pan American champion in weightlifting who runs the Beyond Lifting Club in Montreal, Canada. His wife, Abigail Guerrero, coaches their daughter, Emily Ibañez Guerrero. Emily fulfills the definition of an outlier.

When she was six, Emily began extensive physical training, which included gymnastics and plyometrics. About 18 months later, she started lifting weights, focusing on technique. She is now 12 and therefore has a training age of six years. The result? Weighing 121 pounds, she clean and jerked 231 pounds and back squatted 319 pounds! Again, she’s 12.

While early sports specialization is often necessary to compete at the highest levels, it has drawbacks. Besides mental burnout, the risk of injury may be higher, resulting in athletes quitting their sport. For example, one study on 1,544 high school athletes found that those who played only one sport had an 85% higher incidence of lower-extremity injury. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that supplementary weight training significantly reduces overuse injuries and total injuries for athletes specializing in one sport. This is my approach with my golfer, Ava Andoscia.

As a high school freshman, Andoscia was the only girl to earn a spot on the varsity golf team and made the Providence Journal All-State Team. In practice, she has scored 76 on 18 holes and has a best long drive of 275 yards. Because she plays golf year-round, I give her specific exercises to prevent muscle imbalances.

The Art of the Comeback

Let’s say a high school football player has to quit the team during their freshman year due to a serious injury, then decides to rejoin the team in their junior year. Wouldn’t you think that young man might have a better shot of seeing playing time if he’d been lifting hard and packing on muscle?

When an athlete suffers a serious injury, such as an ACL tear or an Achilles rupture, they can still get involved in an aggressive weight training program. If an athlete injures their knees, train the upper body. If they injure their shoulders, train the lower body. Legendary Bulgarian weightlifting coach Ivan Abadjiev said if an athlete is injured so severely that they can only lift a finger, “They should go to the gym and lift a finger!”

With the right encouragement and a sound rehab program, injured athletes may return to their sport stronger than ever. This was the case with two of my track and field athletes at Brown University, Maddie Frey and Bretram Rogers. Both mastered the art of the comeback.

Frey was a high school soccer player who tore her ACL. After a long rehab process, she switched to track and field as the risk of reinjuring her knee was lower—she even competed in cross country. In 2020, she broke the 32-year-old record in the 200m at Brown. Likewise, in his senior year in high school, Rogers severely tore his hamstring, causing nerve damage. He broke Brown’s indoor 60m hurdles record set in 1959 and the 110m hurdles record set in 2007.

Of course, for athletes to come back from serious injuries quickly requires good training facilities. Machines often come in handy, particularly with athletes who have injuries requiring a limb to be immobilized. This brings us to the issue of athletic training facilities.

United We Stand!

One of the realities of coaching at the high school level is budget restrictions, particularly for weight rooms. Promoting a unified weight training program that involves all students, not just athletes, increases a coach’s resources.

In many schools, the athletic and physical education departments have separate budgets. At the high school where I coached in Utah, the weight room for athletes consisted primarily of benches, squat racks, and barbells and dumbbells that had seen better days.

At this same school, the weight room reserved for the physical education department received a grant to develop a large circuit of resistance training and cardio machines that probably ran north of $25,000. I saw the same situation in a nearby school with two weight rooms working with separate budgets—the cardio equipment alone in the PE room retailed for at least $20,000.

Why separate PE and athletic department weight rooms? How about pooling resources to make one master weight room benefitting both programs? Athletes could use the machines for rehabilitation and more sport-specific exercises. PE students could be introduced to dynamic free-weight exercises (such as cleans) and plyometrics to make them better physically prepared if they try out for a sport. Also, having athletes and non-athletes train together may help break down social barriers and thus encourage more of the general student population to give organized sports another go.

“We don’t have the physical requirements for physical education that we had 30 years ago,” says Bob Rowbotham, CEO of BFS. “Based upon our experience, when the weight room is set up correctly, weight training becomes one of the most popular classes in the PE curriculum.” (By the way, my high school girls’ weight training class was an elective, and it grew from 20 students to 92 after a few semesters.)

One recruiting idea to take into the Forgotten 70 Percent is to consider having students from feeder schools participate in your summer weight training classes before high school.

Inviting feeder school athletes into a high school summer program reduces the amount of teaching required when an athlete enters high school. It also creates a safer training environment. These athletes will know how to perform the exercises, spot, read workouts, and behave in a weight room. It may even keep a few middle school athletes from dropping out of sports, as they will be exposed to the high school sports experience.

One coach who benefitted from this approach is Head Football Coach Matt Biehler at Conway Springs High School in Conway, Kansas. I wrote an article about Biehler’s program about a dozen years ago, and he noted that his feeder program helped avoid the hazing and bullying problems many schools face as the older players “take the younger players under their wing.”

Another option for weight training is to bring in the private sector. From 2015 to 2020, I coached over 150 athletes from 20 middle and high schools in three private gyms. The sports coaches loved this program as it allowed them to focus on their other responsibilities rather than spending several hours a week in the weight room. My program is not unique.

In Rhode Island, one personal trainer opened a 4,500-square-foot strength and conditioning facility in a warehouse about a half mile from a large high school near me. Brilliant!

Kids could receive high-level coaching and train with their teammates at a discounted rate. School administrators loved it, as they didn’t have to invest in upgrading their weight room or foot the expense of having staff coach all the kids who wanted to train. As a bonus, the gym was a great marketing tool for their personal training business for adults, such that the parents of the athletes would train during the early hours while their kids were in school.

If your goal is to win and expose more athletes to the joys of sports, consider these ideas to increase your talent pool by tapping into the Forgotten 70 Percent!

Summary

• Seventy percent of kids quit organized sports by the age of 13.
• One of the primary reasons kids quit sports is that it’s no longer fun.
• Abusive behavior by coaches contributes to kids quitting sports.
• Background checks and checking references help ensure more professionalism in coaches.
• Athletes physically mature at different rates.
• Chronological age does not necessarily reflect training age.
• Character education programs can help keep kids interested in sports.
• Weight training can prevent and rehabilitate injuries.
• Weight training enables athletes to return to the game faster and often in better condition.
• Pooling the PE and athletic departments’ resources improves the quality of both programs.
• Having athletes and non-athletes train together may increase the number of students participating in sports.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

References

Goss, Kim. “The Hunter High School Experiment,” Bigger Faster Stronger, January/February 2010, pp 18–21.

O’Sullivan, John. “Why Kids Quit Sports,” Changing the Game Project, May 5, 2015.

Lench, Brooke De. “Abuse in Youth Sports Takes Many Different Forms,” Momsteam, June 21, 2018.

Minnesota Amateur Sports Commission, “Troubling Signals from Youth Sports,” Organized Youth Sports Today, 1993.

Rabinoff, Marc. “The Truth About Background Checks,” Bigger Faster Stronger, September/October 2010, pp 46–48.

Ibañez, Ciro. Personal Communication, September 26, 2023.

Goss, Kim. “Conway Springs High: Training with the Best,” Bigger Faster Stronger, July/August 2012, pp 14–16.

Skills will only improve as much as one’s ability to move athletically! A pitcher can spend hours on the mound at camps, work with private pitching coaches, throw in the backyard, compete in games, and pitch in practices to improve her velocity, pitch count, spin, and power. In my experience, however, I’ve realized that many of the girls I work with lack athletic development for basic movements. The less a softball pitcher can move athletically, the less she’ll be able to pitch faster, injury-free, and efficiently.

I ask the girls to work on a few basic athletic movements during our sessions.

• Squat.
• Hinge.
• Jump & land.
• Single-leg foot/ankle stability.
• Pelvis + trunk separation.

I utilize five tests to determine what the fastpitch pitchers I work with lack athletically. From these tests, I begin to implement programming that involves warm-ups, strength movements, lifting, and games that improve overall athleticism and movement—and, as a result (hopefully), the fastpitch pitcher’s skills.

When implementing solutions to the tests, we start with the very basic parts of these lifts and progress them over weeks, months, and years.

Test #1: Can You Squat Well?

The primary keys I look for are:

• Whole foot on the floor.
• Neutral spine.
• Knees lined up with toes.
• Correct core brace.
• Butt back.

All of those = athletic.

Video 1. Keys to a good squat. 

Ways to Improve the Squat

Surprisingly, squatting well is something we have to teach to kids nowadays. The more kids sit, and the less they play, the more I find myself, as their coach, having to teach basic movement patterns. This includes how to squat well.

Common cues I use for squatting are:

• “Sit in a chair.”
• “Hover over a public toilet seat.”
• “Get in the ready position with hands on your knees.”

From there, I have kids sit to stand on a tall box to learn to initiate the proper hip hinge of a squat. Then, we practice isometric squat holds and eventually segue into loaded goblet squats. Next, we quickly move into split stance squat positions with isometric holds.

Video 2. Iso squat hold demo. 

Video 3. Iso split squat hold demo.

Test #2: Can You Hinge Well?

For the hinge, I look for:

• Whole foot on the floor.
• Neutral spine.
• Knees lined up with toes.
• Correct core brace.
• Butt back.

All five = athletic.

Video 4. Hinge athleticism test for pitchers.

Ways to Improve the Hinge

Hinging is a difficult movement for many athletes, especially younger kids. Common cues I use for hinging are:

• “Push the butt back.”
• “Shut the door with the hips.”
• “Pretend you’re hovering over a public toilet seat.”
• “Think of moving your hips forward and back, not up and down.”

For visual/tactile cues, I like using a foam roller or a target that the athlete can reach back toward with the hips.

Video 5. Hinging to a target.

Video 6. Hanging stance with support.

Video 7. Fake ball slams (SLDL). 

Video 8. Kettlebell deadlift jump and land.

Test #3: Can You Jump and Land Well?

For this test, I visually assess:

• Whole foot on the floor.
• Neutral spine.
• Knees lined up with toes.
• Correct core brace.
• Butt back.
• Squat + hinge to load, then powerfully extend knee, hip, and foot to jump up/out and land.

Those six things = athletic.

Video 9. Jump and land test for softball.

Ways to Improve the Jump + Land

Strong explosiveness off the rubber is key for a high-velocity pitch, but finding a way to land on a firm front-side leg is crucial for arm whip and rotation. Surprisingly, many kids do not know how to use the ground to push off for power and lack the strength/stability to absorb the force of that drive through front-side resistance.

Video 10. Single-leg DL and jump over hurdle.

Video 11. Pitching push-off and land drill.

Test #4: Can You Stabilize a Single-Leg Squat Hold Through Your Foot and Ankle for an Extended Period?

Keys for this quality are:

• Load big ball of foot and little ball of foot, heel lifted.
• Neutral spine.
• Knees lined up with toes.
• Correct core brace.
• Butt back.
• Low heel, high squat hold for 10 seconds.
• High heel, low squat hold for 10 seconds.

Video 12. Spring ankle test.

Ways to Improve Single-Leg Foot/Ankle Stability

An athlete’s ability to produce a ground force reaction from the foot into a powerful leg drive is dependent upon their foot strength. A few of my favorite exercises to help produce a strong foot and ankle connection are shown below.

Video 13. ISO ankle and knee drive into a wall.

Video 14. Ankle ISO hold and drive.

Video 15. Deep lunge ankle stability and hold.

Test #5: Can You Separate the Core from the Pelvis?

For this last test, I’m observing:

• Whole foot on the floor.
• Neutral spine.
• Knees lined up with toes.
• Correct core brace.
• Butt back.
• Keep the torso straight and rotate the pelvis forward and back like sliding your hips under a plane of glass extending sideways from your hip bones.

Video 16. Rotation test for pitchers.

Ways to Improve Pelvis + Trunk Separation (oblique sling)

The ability of the athlete to keep the pelvis aligned and the core activated through the oblique sling depends on their ability to separate the torso from the hips. The oblique sling activation depends upon foot load, core control, and separation.

Some of my favorite ways to help an athlete learn how to create separation are shown below.

Video 17. Pitching separation ISO holds

Video 18. Plyo + separation drill

Video 19. Front side resistance + rotation

Targeting the Five Qualities in a Session

We work through these steps one by one in each session. We break down how a pitch includes all these movements throughout, including when and where the squat, hinge, jump, land, and rotation occur. Then, we discuss why it’s important to do these basic movement patterns very well—to ensure efficiency, power, and safety are on point, pitch after pitch. Once the athlete can see how a pitch is broken down into these specific movements, we can usually get buy-in to the “less sexy” practice of squat holds, etc.

Session 1: We assess the squat, single-leg squat, and the ability of the athlete to hold this position. Then, we correct any issues and practice getting into a better position. If this goes well, we move into split squat positions and how to hold them well. From here, we work pitching drills from squat and split squat positions. 

Session 2: We assess the hinge and get into better hinging positions, both with bilateral and split stances. From here, we work on pitching drills with a newly acquired hinge pattern applied. We also revisit the squatting positions of a pitch we covered in the first session.

Session to session, we continue adding movements to the pitch. Jumping and landing and rotation/anti-rotation seem to be the hardest movements for athletes to learn or relearn. We spend most of our sessions on these patterns.

As athletes begin to understand and better apply these movements to their pitch, they should notice a smoother and more efficient pitching pattern. A more relaxed arm and less hip/shoulder pain are good signs that the athlete is beginning to use their entire body to throw, not just the arm or front hip, AND is an indicator that the movement patterns and drill breakdowns are working!

**Author’s Note: Many of these thoughts/tests are inspired by other strength coaches and professionals such as Cal Dietz, Chris Korfist, Dynamic Neuromuscular Stability, ALTIS, and other pitching coaches. 

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

I could try to hook you with a let’s think outside the box or use equipment as a tool rather than a workout article, but I’ll keep it simple. I don’t have the money for a 1080 Synchro with two kids in expensive colleges, a slow business period, and, well… it’s just a lot of money. It doesn’t help that I’ve been to the University of Minnesota, where Cal Dietz has two Syncros that are rockin’ all the time, and the results he gets with them are incredible. Jealousy and lust prevented me from thinking clearly, which is why it took me years to realize that I could, to some extent, program the settings on my 1080 Sprint and do some of the same exercises.

I admit the initial curiosity was more for myself than my athletes. As a 55-year-old who still wants to feel like I’m 25 and is tired of traditional lifting, I thought I would be a great guinea pig to see what I could do. This would mean that I’d have to get out of my comfort zone, start experimenting with electronics, and go outside the box of what I’m supposed to do or what I’m used to doing.

I would have to convert the speed machine I’ve been using for more than a decade and apply it in a different manner.

Beginning with N=1

I started to look at the situation in a force-velocity manner. Again, my investigation was personal: my two favorite things to do are scuba diving and slalom water skiing. While it is hard to get a soft tissue injury while scuba diving (without the help of a shark), getting up on a slalom ski can hit your front leg hamstring pretty hard, and I have seen multiple people pull their hamstring when trying to get up. So, I trained to not be the skier whose vacation is wrecked by a hamstring pull.

I remembered a JustFly podcast where the interviewee thought that hamstring injuries in sprinters sometimes resulted from insufficient focus on the amount of force placed on the hamstring in our exercises. If I wanted to train force, I knew I’d need something that moved very slowly. I knew that the 1080 Sprint had a function that could limit the speed of the line coming out. And I knew it because I always kept it at 14 m/s in gear one. But now, I could bring it down to .3 m/s. With the speed limit, the harder I pushed into the handle connected to the machine, the more force I would create.

Now to come up with a basic exercise to try it—I wanted to start with a glute exercise. I knew that if my glute got stronger, it would support my hamstring. I decided to do a full-range leg press. I put the handle around my foot, put my head toward the 1080 Sprint, and laid on my back. I set the pad and pushed. My first reps were wobbly and sloppy: not smooth at all. By my fourth and fifth reps, I could feel all kinds of other muscles trying to help. My groin was even trying to help. I knew I was weak and could understand what happens when muscles fatigue and how compensation patterns work.

My second exercise was an upside-down, single-leg reverse hyper. I’d lay on my back with my head toward the 1080 Sprint, my foot in the strap, and my leg straight up in the air. The movement would be to bring my leg to the floor, emphasizing the bicep femoris—the one that worries me in my skiing. Again, I went to move the line and got the same results; my leg was all over the place, and my groin became involved by the third rep. Two sets of each were plenty. I felt great when I finished the workout but was mildly sore the next day.

I did a similar workout with my upper body. With my feet toward the machine, I could do a curl into a military press. Or, with my head at the 1080 Sprint, I would pull the handle over my head and move into a triceps push. I had similar experiences with the movements and feelings when I was done with the exercise.

Monitoring Progress

I stuck with the protocol and started monitoring the force. Within four weeks, I had a dramatic increase in force output. More importantly, I could feel the muscles working without compensation, and the movement was smooth. I started to gain muscle as well. My clothes fit differently in the important areas.

I decided to try to lift weights to see if I truly did get stronger. What I normally did was now really easy. Even better, I didn’t have the usual neck and shoulder soreness from benching and neck soreness from putting a bar on my back. My typical pattern is to get really dedicated and hurt. This time, my body did what it could without getting hurt.

Over time, I started to change settings to emphasize the eccentric portion of the movement. I could increase the eccentric load and keep the velocity of the line coming back high and fight the machine. Sometimes, this ended with the middle-aged man failing and getting dragged across the floor. But I learned the way the body reacts to this eccentric force—if my body was strong enough, it could absorb the eccentric force, and I could reverse the movement. If I was weaker in the movement, a limb would bend funny to absorb, or it would lock, and I would drag across the floor in the stopped position, which could result in getting pulled over or spun.

But again, as I got stronger, I could absorb more eccentric force. For skiing, that was important to me. I have a 350-hp MasterCraft going full throttle to pull me out of the water: my left bicep femoris has to handle that kind of force.

Expanding the Experiment

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve been waiting for the speed development stuff, right?

Yes, I did start experimenting with my athletes. For a two-week break in the middle of track season, we shifted to a force development workout for hamstrings to take a break from all of the hamstring velocity work of an indoor track season. When track was over, we started tracking data on various hamstring exercises, including traditional leg curls and what I call “hamstring slices,” which I’ve been talking about all summer in conjunction with Ken Clark’s research.

As you can probably figure out, the faster the athlete, the more they can produce in my upside-down reverse-hyper and leg curl. But what is interesting is that while some athletes have similar numbers in the exercises (but their sprint times are different), they all generate their force differently.

What is really cool about the 1080 Sprint products are the graphs generated with each rep. I have learned that faster athletes generate most of their force immediately in the rep, and the slope of the graph declines over time. Slightly slower athletes generate their force as they get moving. Slow athletes have a graph that looks like a silhouette of the Rocky Mountains.

In some cases, you can see this as a general nervous system strategy, as the graph shows in every movement. As they improve and the graph becomes more constant, they run faster. If you come to a TFC, I will show you all of the ways I train for these qualities.

By the way—I didn’t pull a hamstring waterskiing.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

Wait—time out. If you came looking for Dickens or that type of eloquent writing, you’re in the wrong place. You see, writing is actually outside my comfort zone. I am much more comfortable speaking at a clinic or in a video, where I can ad-lib. But this is my attempt to share with you the success we’ve had in our program teaching our athletes how to strain in the weight room.

Recently, I tweeted (I just can’t bring myself to say “I posted on X”) a thread about how our softball team develops the ability to truly strain in the weight room. Learning to strain is about getting outside your comfort zone, pushing yourself to places you haven’t been before. People commented on the tweet, saying it needed to be expanded into an article. I immediately retorted that I’m a bad writer and actually made a joke about it.

Later the same day, though, I began to have pangs of guilt over my insecurity about writing something for the world to see. As stated above, part of teaching our softball team to strain is convincing them to be willing to push themselves outside their comfort zone. I tell the players they each have a “potential tank,” similar to a water heater tank. Their job is to fill that tank effectively…and ultimately try to expand it into an even bigger tank.

I also tell our athletes that using laughter and jokes is a defense mechanism when they’re uncomfortable. I see beginners, especially, nervously laughing and cracking jokes when they take those first steps toward straining. I truly believe straining is a skill that all lifters need to learn, and it takes time and real effort to achieve. Are you seeing where those pangs of guilt I mentioned were coming from? One thing I don’t like is a hypocritical coach, preaching something to young people, then turning around and doing the very thing they’re preaching against. I wasn’t willing to get outside my comfort zone, and I made jokes as a defense mechanism.

So, it’s time to put my money where my mouth is. In this article, I explain how I slowly teach our softball players—beginning in seventh grade—to truly strain in our S&C program. We have a culture built around that effort that I share with the world through X (you’re welcome, Elon). Our young ladies have learned to embrace strength as a quality they seek.

It all starts with Taylor Burt, our head coach. I’ve said this many times before, and I’ll say it again for anyone who’s missed it: Taylor may be the finest coach I’ve ever been around. I enjoy sitting in the dugout and watching her coach, and I’ve learned a lot from her. There’s a standard in the program that everyone is expected to meet, both players and coaches.

Coach Burt gives me the autonomy to design our S&C program how I see fit, but I’m always held to the standard. We’ve won three of the last four state championships and played for it the year we didn’t win it. In 2020, spring sports didn’t play due to COVID-19, and that may have been the most talented team she’s had here. What better situation is there to be in?

Nuts and Bolts of the Program

I begin to work with our girls when they enter seventh grade. Our program begins much like most others: we’re learning movements, chasing kinesthetic awareness and coordination, and learning motor patterns and how to control the pelvis and scapula. We use many bodyweight movements and iso exercises in this phase. Once we get this established, they begin their program using some light weights.

This is where one of the tenets of our system begins to show itself. I never want one of these young athletes to leave our gym tired and get really sore. My main objective during this time is for them to gain as much confidence as possible. I absolutely don’t want them to dread coming to the weight room, so I choose to give them ownership of their advancement in the amount of weight they lift. We simply add 5 pounds to the movement when they’re confident, provided they can lift it properly.

I constantly remind them that they can add the 5 pounds when the preceding weight is done comfortably on the last set. What I want is all sets and all reps completed every time they lift. I very, very seldom tell any of them to add weight to a movement. I want them to make that decision, and when they do, it gives them a sense of ownership over their training, and that breeds buy-in. I had a mom tell me one time her daughter liked me because I “never made her do something she couldn’t do.”

That was music to my ears.

Another factor that contributes to our success is that those same seventh- and eighth-grade girls lift in the same room, at the same time, as our 9th–12th graders. They get to see the older girls lifting, and I remind them that every one of those older girls started precisely where they are now, adding the 5 pounds when they are ready to do so. Regularly, they get wide eyes when they see an older girl trap bar deadlifting 300+ pounds. Those are the girls these younger ones look up to. They want to be like them. What better way to encourage the strain than by witnessing it from those who have hoisted the state championship trophy several times?

Now, some people may wonder how I manage 50+ athletes at the same time in those varying degrees of programming. I had a college student come shadow me one day, and she said, “This is chaos. How do you keep up with what everyone is doing?” In my opinion, if I’ve done my job properly, our older girls can lift safely without me hovering over them every second. They are technically sound, and I prescribe their intensities. I can afford to spend a little more time with our younger girls to get them on the right track. However, this doesn’t mean I’m not looking across the room to gauge what is happening. This system works for us.

The latest proof of concept came this past summer. I program our summer training as in-season because the majority of the players are playing travel ball. One day, I had 4×5 at 75% programmed on the trap bar deadlift. One of our girls asked, “Coach, can I do a money set?” Money set is the term we use for a plus set on the last set. I replied, “Are you playing this weekend?” and she said, “No.” So, I broke out my phone to video her set at 240 pounds. She performed 24 reps (240 pounds is no longer 70%) and immediately laid down on the floor, smiling and out of breath.

While videoing, I turned and looked at our middle school girls, who were gaping at what they were witnessing. Afterward, I went over and told those girls, “One day, that will be you.” The very next week, one of the middle school athletes asked if they could try 45’s on the deadlift: seven girls hit 135 pounds that day, and I never told them to try it.

Boom.

The younger girls will stay in the linear periodization programming until I feel like they’re ready to progress. That timetable is nothing concrete; the decision is made by intuition. It also doesn’t have to be a wholesale decision for every single athlete. Some may stay in the linear periodization for longer than others. If they’re still benefiting from it, they stay on course. If they’re ready to take it up a notch, they move on to the next phase.

Progressing to 5-3-1

I credit the next phase to Jim Wendler. I have found his 5-3-1 program to be a goldmine for our athletes. If you’ve never studied the program, I suggest that you do so immediately—it has been hugely beneficial in training our softball players slowly, over time, to truly strain. I have tweaked his program a little to fit our program, but the main aspects are always present.

I assign a training max to each athlete based on my coach’s eye and where they were in the linear periodization model. I always err on the low side of this training max. I absolutely do not want failure at this time. Remember, we’re trying to build confidence, not break it. There is always a money set on the last set, and I believe this is where the girls begin to learn how to strain.

The program calls for a 10% reduction in the training max for each athlete. In other words, the intensities prescribed are taken from 90% of their training max. This always puts the athlete in a position to do more reps than prescribed. The key is for them to truly push themselves—to strain—and perform as many reps as possible.

That effort doesn’t happen immediately. It takes time, but they gain more confidence each time they put that effort in. This is also the time when they’re introduced to some lower-rep schemes with higher intensities. They perform 4–5 sets of five reps during the linear periodization. In the second week of the 5-3-1, they move down to three reps, with the last set being a money set. This will likely be more weight than they’ve ever lifted, so it’s important that I set their training max at a weight I’m totally confident they can train at.

I want them to smash the three-rep money set. This will build their confidence for the next week, when the money set is at one plus. This IS NOT a one-rep test. They aren’t prepared to give the kind of effort it takes to truly perform a max effort lift. Again, they should be able to hit several reps in this set.

After the third week, I adjust their training max based on how many reps they performed in the one-plus set. Basically, I’m slowly turning up the dial. These money sets have become a source of pride in our program, similar to what you see with max effort one-rep lifts. Our softball players gather around and encourage one another: “Keep going!” and “You’ve got another in you!” are common shouts heard in the room. They’re learning to truly strain, and it’s infectious.

Additionally, as they move through these 5-3-1 cycles, I often set their training max above what they’d be able to perform for one rep. I’ve found that they can do the prescribed work off of a higher training max than what they could actually perform. I believe a lack of grip strength and the general shock of how heavy that weight is when they try it contribute to this. For proof of whether or not what we were doing was working, I compiled our hitting stats, including:

• Slugging percentage
• RBIs
• Home runs

I set those game stats beside their trap bar deadlift maxes, and the results were telling, to say the least. Our strongest girls were our most productive hitters, and I shared this info with them to further motivate them to work hard in the weight room.

They will use other set/rep schemes as they progress through our program, but the 5-3-1 has become our foundation. Also, money sets are always used regardless of the scheme. Sometimes, our older girls want to perform a one-rep max, and I let them because they have learned the effort it takes to do so. And they are supremely confident.

A Look into Our Annual Plan

Off-season training begins for softball when school starts in August. At this time, the girls are coming off the summer travel ball season, so the main objective is to build work capacity in the weight room. We train volume as well as some complexes for 4–6 weeks to achieve this. Following those 4–6 weeks, we begin a series of four-week training cycles.

The linear periodization and 5-3-1 programs are started here. As I stated earlier, I’ve taken the liberty of fitting the 5-3-1 model to work best for us. There are times in the off-season when I will add a set or two to the model. We may begin with a lighter set at around 50% to attack some speed work before the strength work. This is a great way to hit the entire force-velocity curve. Another adjustment may be to add a second working set at the same intensity that the last set—the money set—will be performed.

I should note that we have some pretty advanced girls, and I will program for them specifically if I think they would benefit from different programming, such as speed strength work. The off-season will run through Christmas and into the middle to later third of January.

Following the off-season program, we shift to in-season. The linear periodization and 5-3-1 schemes remain, but I add “caps” to the money sets. For instance, I will cap the total reps on a 5+ set at eight reps, 3+ at six reps, and 1+ at three reps. At this time, I may manipulate the weight being lifted with an intensity regulator in my programming sheets to account for the capping of the money sets. The reason I cap the sets is to keep the total volume down because they are in-season—the last thing I want is to send them to practice tired and/or sore.

Generally, we lift twice a week during the in-season, but there are times when the girls will ask for a game-day lift. This is just a primer lift, with medball throws, speed squats, and some sprints as examples of what we may do. As we head into championship season (May), I really back off the volume and mainly focus on speed and explosive work.

The summer training season, June–July, is a time when we want the girls to try to lift twice a week. The vast majority of our girls play travel ball, so I program it just as I would in-season. We set the sessions up for Monday and Wednesday so the girls can travel and play Thursday–Sunday. These are not mandatory lifts by any means. We just tell them that if they’re in town, come lift. We also want them to be kids, so vacations aren’t only okay but encouraged.

Main Lifts Used in Our Training

This is an area that can lead down a rabbit hole that is outside the scope of this article. There’s always discussion about “sport-specific” lifting and whether that is a real concept. I do believe certain things need to be focused on depending on the sport. However, the vast majority of high school-age athletes simply need strength.

Softball specific training.

Reminder: RDL’s are awesome#DoHardThings @hewittsoftball pic.twitter.com/HHZsE5ACt0

— Brandon Herring (@BrandonHerring0) September 29, 2023

Video 2. Softball strength: “Do hard things.”

If you ask our softball team, I’d venture to guess they’d say the trap bar deadlift is the bell cow of our program. It is a weekly lift in our program, and we have some athletes who can move some weight. The TBDL is the lift we use to compare to hitting statistics, as stated earlier. There is a significant grip strength demand, and I believe that translates well to hitting. Also, the TBDL is a lift that, once taught correctly, I trust our older girls to load heavily and perform well while I spend time with our younger girls.

We use the TBDL in varying intensities, and when 75% or lower is programmed, we’ll actually shrug-pull the bar, focusing on bar speed. The barbell RDL is a close second to the TBDL, and I’m constantly amazed at the amount of weight our players can execute in it. Rounding out our bilateral work is the clean pull. In our softball program, we don’t teach the clean. But I always offer the opportunity to learn, and we currently have four girls turning the bar over in the clean and having fun doing so.

As far as squatting goes, we are a major gait stance and single-leg program. Our beginners will goblet squat and front squat, but once they advance, we focus mostly on the unilateral domain. The safety squat bar reverse lunge and RFESS are mainstays in our program. The single-leg squat from a box and lateral lunge also find their way into our program quite often.

Our upper-body work is divided between horizontal and vertical movements. We bench press (we haven’t had a single girl experience a spontaneous explosion of the shoulder) along with various single-arm dumbbell exercises in the horizontal push category. We vary quite a few exercises in the horizontal pull domain, but the single-arm dumbbell row is a mainstay.

For vertical pushes, the landmine setup is a constant. We perform presses from kneeling and standing positions and also do some rotational presses. The chin-up would probably be considered the bell cow in our upper-body work—we make a big deal about it when one of our players hits their first chin-up.

Do Hard Things

This article is a look into our program and by no means a blueprint for anyone else. We have had some success, so hopefully, there’s something here you can use in your program.

The last thing I’ll leave you with is our team motto in our S&C program for softball. We simply say, “Do hard things.” This encompasses many things in our program, but none more than having the guts to come out of the loser’s bracket to win the state championship this past year. So, be well, and #DoHardThings!

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

In terms of specific pieces of training technology, I believe the timing laser is undefeated—it’s affordable, specific, and simple for measuring speed. However, timing lasers should not be left to collect dust in your closet between pre-tests and post-tests. Your timing lasers should be used as often as you sprint (which is every session, right?).

Here’s an anecdote to illustrate my point: a high school baseball player of mine who—over the course of the first year he started training with me—consistently ran 1.03 seconds or lower on his Fly 10 Yard Sprint, with a personal record (PR) of 0.981. This summer included him playing in 3- to 5-day-long tournaments, as well as trying to see me once to twice a week. Eventually the back half of summer came, and he was a little sluggish and didn’t have the same energy as usual. For two weeks in a row, he ran Fly 10’s in the 1.06’s and 1.07’s. Although this might not seem like a big drop—just a few hundredths of a second outside his normal range from 0.98 to 1.03—it is a lot in the speed world. This data stood out as a particularly red flag because I knew how consistently fast he could run because I had his data from across the entire previous year.

I inquired about how baseball was going and what he was doing on his own. Shocker, it was the usual culprit for most of my high school boys: too much lifting on his own plus a bunch of sports that rendered a lot of systemic fatigue. He was lifting once or twice A DAY on his own on top of everything else. I’m all for hard work, being self-motivated, and learning how be self-sufficient with training, but there can definitely be “too much” in training just like there could be “too little.”

So, what was I going to do about it?

Having seen some of his slowest sprints of the previous 12+ months and knowing the likely cause, I suggested a deload week (which I’ll explain later), recapped the total volume of sport and training he did throughout the summer up to that point, and explained how everything in training is a give and take between performance and fatigue. I ended with why I believed he should consider taking a deload week and what actions to take to turn this theoretical deload week into real life. Solutions included:

• Turning “light days” into 100% off days.
• Cutting the total duration of running sessions in half.
• Cutting total lifting sets in half.

I assured him that we would still run fast and lift heavy, but successfully decreasing the volume was the most important variable to achieve our deload.

Fast forward a week from that conversation, he came in and said “Coach, I feel great! I did what you said and actually took an off day yesterday and only went to the beach.” Then, during our Fly 10’s of that session…a new PR of 0.977.

If I didn’t have weekly Fly 10 data from him and if I didn’t have a percentage threshold to use (+95%), I might not have known when to open up that conversation and how to justify my recommendation. Weekly sprint times (both acceleration and top speed) are the most specific readiness numbers you can get, an awesome training stimulus, and objective justification to help guide every other conversation and decision relative to training.

Four reasons you should time your sprints every week are to:

1. Hit the right speed thresholds with sprints.
2. Increase opportunities for peak/PR numbers.
3. Assess readiness.
4. Build athlete buy-in.

1. Timing Sprints Makes Sure the Athletes Are Actually Sprinting Fast Enough

I’ve written on Charlie Francis’ 95% threshold before, which simply states that 95% or better of an athlete’s best time is “high intensity” and fast enough to cause speed adaptations over time. For example, if an athlete’s best is 1.00 second, then they are trying to hit 1.05 or faster. In theory, this concept makes a ton of sense. Although you can say you’re training top speed and your athletes can do flying sprints, how do you actually know if they’re going fast enough?

By timing the sprints.

That’s a core principle of sport science: answering “are we actually doing what we say we’re doing?” Are we hitting +1.0 m/s on a barbell squat jump? Based on training load during the past week, was it actually a deload week? When it comes to speed training, are you actually hitting speeds that are fast enough to get faster? It’d be pretty tough to know without a doubt if you’re not timing the sprints.

On the flip side, I’ve had situations where my athlete was below 95% on their first sprint and the cause was a too-relaxed effort or a too-relaxed warmup. But again, it justifies that conversation, so I truly know what’s going on with my athlete regardless of whether it’s positive, negative, or neutral.

Additionally, we know the training residual for speed (how long speed lasts after not being trained) is 5 days ± 3 days, or basically a week. When you’re in-season and are programming Flying 10’s once a week and want to make sure your athletes don’t lose their speed, how do you know they’re sprinting fast enough to keep their speed? Because the last thing you’d want is to assume the speeds are being met when they actually aren’t, their speed detrains, then it shows up negatively on the field a week or two later.

2. Put Your Speed Eggs in Multiple Baskets

This next story actually comes from a friend of mine, who’s a performance coach for a professional soccer academy, where not having weekly timed sprints actually came at a detriment to training. In Week 1 of training, he tested all his athletes and baseline data was collected. Week 8 came for the follow-up testing and all the players were excited because they felt faster, and my friend was satisfied with how the training went. Unfortunately, the testing day didn’t go as planned and the results were not as good as anticipated. The athletes were discouraged, the coach was confused, and the soccer coaches had a lot of questions about the lack of results. Talking through this with my friend, we figured out the reason was because the athletes tested directly after a week-long vacation/break in training. It’s not that the athletes didn’t get faster, it was that the day they decided to test wasn’t the best day to do so.

Contrary to the initial story where my own athlete was still training during his deload, just at a significantly reduced volume, these athletes returned home and had no formal organized training for an entire week. Although their bodies were technically fresh after the break, their nervous systems were not primed and consequently not ready to sprint at very high speeds.

Not timing your weekly sprints is like taking a road trip and not checking the speedometer until you’re 1 hour away. If you know it’s supposed to be a 5-hour trip and a total of 350 miles, you would need to be traveling around 70 miles an hour the entire time. What if you go too fast and get a speeding ticket? What if you go too slow and miss an event you planned on being on time for? Although with 1 hour left you can make adjustments, that just might not be enough time to follow the original plan. But if the speedometer was checked more frequently, like every 30 minutes, although the original plan was very solid, you can make slight adjustments as you go to be as effective and efficient as possible.

Hindsight is always 20/20—but had the coach been timing the sprints every week, or even every other week, he could’ve shown improvement despite what would’ve been just one bad week at the very end. The coach could’ve reassured the athletes that they did an awesome job during the 8 weeks beyond just one week of regression and could’ve explained to the soccer coaches that athletes need a workout or two after a break to get the rust off and back up to speed.

3. Provides a Specific and Consistent Readiness Check-In

Sports performance as whole is centered around two things:

• Reducing the risk of injury.
• Increasing performance.

For most sports, sprinting faster is one of the main objectives and key performance indicators. The more specific the readiness check-in is to the sport and training objective, the more significant it is and more impact it will have in adjusting along the way.

We already know this in other sports. Baseball pitchers have their throwing velocity measured during a velocity improvement program to make sure it’s working, Olympic weightlifters measure their bar speed to make sure they’re in the appropriate zone to achieve the desired adaptation, and soccer players wear GPS to make sure the practice plan is being followed to be the freshest for game day. But if a bar speed is too high or low, the weight is increased or decreased to give their body specifically what they need that day.

Although there will always be ups and downs with how athletes’ bodies are feeling—training is hard and practices can be fatiguing—athletes can consistently hit the +95% threshold for sprints. As I found in my own data—presented in this article—my athletes are only above their 95% around 87% of the time. Knowing this, around 9 of every 10 workouts (if not more) my athletes can hit +95%—I consider anything below that threshold a red flag and I open up a conversation about how the athlete is feeling.

Readiness, at its core, is how ready the athlete is to attack an intense workout. Hence, this concept often applies to taking a deload as illustrated previously. Should you take a deload because it’s been a standard 4 weeks? What if the athlete has been getting faster and faster each week, should you keep going? After a deload, if the athlete was under 95%, was it effective enough to where they returned to above 95%?

4. Building Buy-In in the Speed Development Process

I hate to break it to you, but you can’t set a new PR during every training session. How else can we define successful individual training sessions? By hitting +95% of an athlete’s PR. Sport coaches use a “deposit” or “rent” analogy all the time, saying every day you must contribute towards the goal. But if we only counted new PR’s as paying rent, there would be a lot more evictions…

For athletes, this is a huge mental barrier they must overcome. Contrary to lifting, which is intentionally programmed with sub-max intensities like 75% or 90% of their 1 rep max, athletes sprint at 100% effort every time they sprint. Challenges arise because 100% effort doesn’t always mean 100% speed. Many factors must align to achieve not only 100% but also +100% (a new PR). Of the previous few days, they must have optimal sleep, nutrition, physical readiness, mental readiness, hydration, etc. What happens when one of those things is off? What about two? Not necessarily poor sprint times, but that isn’t going to lead to PR’s either. By timing sprints on a weekly basis, athletes can buy in and believe they are putting in deposits (because they actually are) when hitting +95% regardless of how often the PRs come.

Practical Action Items

A big assumption I’m making with my argument is that you’re doing full sprints with your athletes in the first place. And odds are, that’s true if you clicked on an article called “The Value of Weekly Timed Sprints”… so I’ll also assume that a speed training session for you looks something like this: warmup, jumps, sprint mechanics (slower drills), integration drills (medium speed), full speed sprints, then some sort of finisher. You’re doing full sprints anyways, so you might as well time them. Below are three solutions to help you time sprints with your athletes while still maintaining a high-quality training session.

1. Racing

Although I’ve written in the past about the performance benefits of increased output when athletes race, it also applies to this situation. One athlete inside the lasers being timed, one outside the laser racing the other athlete. Twice as many athletes moving at once.

Training is a trade-off: the more athletes, the fewer individual things you can do. But let’s just assume you’re going to do three sprints anyways. One athlete in the lasers and one on each side of them on the outside racing means three times the athletes sprinting at once. Although you only get to time one of the sprints instead of all three, one timed sprint is exponentially more valuable than zero timed sprints.

2. Complexes

A complex is multiple exercises put together, going from one to the next to the next. Traditionally, complexes are used for potentiation: the prior exercise helps get more output on the next. For example, doing dumbbell squat jumps before a measured vertical jump can help the jump be even higher than if it was done on its own. Although that could be a benefit in a speed complex, the main benefit is fewer athletes per exercise (fewer athletes in the timing lasers as once).

Let’s say you have 30 athletes. Instead of trying to time 30 athletes at once, doing a three-exercise complex cuts that number to 10—10 athletes are doing a horizontal medball throw, 10 athletes are doing sled sprints, 10 athletes are being timed; then, they rotate so everyone does every exercise for one or two rounds. If you want to do fancy things (like timed sprints), it won’t always be the most optimal (like timing sprints first instead of using the other two drills to sprint faster later).

3. 95% Chart

You don’t even have to do any math. (Most) athletes are extremely attuned to their training processes and often remember their PRs. Having a chart like this below saves a ton of time with a quick check-in for each athlete’s 95% threshold either before, during, or after the training session.

Final Thoughts

A common saying nowadays (and the slogan of 1080 Motion) is “training is testing and testing is training.” Every time you do a Flying Sprint in training, it can be tested; every time you have a testing day, it’s also a great speed workout. The two are much more similar than dissimilar. You’ll ensure you’re actually doing speed training and you’ll be spreading out the importance of timed sprints over every week, as opposed to a bunch of pressure just one week every 8 to 12 weeks. Additionally, you’ll have an extremely specific readiness check-in for each athlete, which translates to more buy-in in your training.

If you’re going to have your athletes sprint anyways, you’ll get so much more value out of your sessions—in the short and long term—by timing the sprints.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

Football is played five months out of the year, which leads to a huge chunk of time spent working on general abilities in the off-season. I’ve seen a surge in the popularity and research of skill development and pedagogy, which has led to the emergence of more comprehensive training timelines that bridge general and specific. This culminates in the notion that strength and conditioning works remotely from sport training for half the year—in training environments where movement and reaction sequences similar to game play are absent. It hinders the athlete’s growth and lessens the transfer of newfound abilities into game play.

Developing skills takes reps and time. Skills need to be progressed, and athletes need to be allowed to self-discover and fail before increasing the accuracy of skill execution. Small-sided games provide the appropriate space and environment to develop desirable skills that reduce game-play-induced, non-contact injuries.

Skills enable the exhibition of athletic traits such as speed, power, and strength in play. You don’t win games by having the strongest team; you win by having the most skilled team. Players will have to abandon the ladder or four-cone box drill, and the S&C coach has to ask whether they are ready for the completely reactive environment associated with field sports.

In this four-part series on small-sided games and how to properly prepare players for both the physiological and mechanical demands, we are now at the portion where I discuss the creation and progression of drills. In the last article, we mailboxed our players into four categories based on GPS data and movement signatures associated with each group. We utilized an analogy system of four subgroups:

1. Tanks/Bigs – Interior Defensive Line/Offensive Line
2. Pickup Trucks/Big Mids – Tight Ends/Outside Linebackers/Defensive Ends
3. Hellcats/Speed Mids – Running Backs/Boundary Safety/Quarterback/Inside Backer
4. Motor Bikes/Skill – Defensive Backs/Wide Receivers

Using that information allows us to build a progressive model that closes the gap between general and specific training as it pertains to developing particular qualities that will reduce exposure to non-contact injuries. This prescription of specific preparation will benefit the players, as it prepares them for the games and practices in-season, which should be one of the goals of off-season training. The theoretical model should reduce non-contact injuries and build skills that help players cope with the chaotic environment of play with more speed and movement accuracy.

Layered Approach

When looking at programming drills and progressions, end-game goals must be at the forefront: to produce faster, more accurate versions of game play and players that are robust and resilient to injuries. Programming is very much like entering a desired destination into a GPS—you have to know where you’re currently located and where you want to end up. Coaches who layer drill progressions that lead to SSGs can avoid an issue that was a theme of the previous two articles on SSGs—just throwing athletes directly into completely chaotic training without the appropriate build-up.

There are three themes when training and teaching skills that will be exemplified in play:

1. Block
2. Serial
3. Chaotic

Block Sessions

These have very specific and targeted teaching elements. There’s not much variation, and they’re very “fundamental” driven. These sessions are meant for developing very general skills such as:

• Acceleration
• Deceleration
• Max speed
• COD

The game of football is extremely complex, and many biomotor abilities contribute to an athlete’s success. All football players experience these movement demands in some capacity (proportioned differently based on position). These movement signatures are seen in every play, at every position. The ability to express these movement demands acts as a prerequisite for playing time—without them, the players won’t be able to keep up, no matter how great their reaction times are. These are the athletic foundation that must be increased to help overall performance.

The prescription of these training elements will be built upon the necessity of each positional demand for the four general skills. How much and how far are the biggest considerations in developing the workouts that fall under “Block” sessions. For the off-season, knowing the maximal thresholds of key performance metrics associated with general skills gives coaches the roadmap for where the athlete currently is and their final destination, which is the start of practices in the competitive season.

There has been much written on the majority of these training components, so I will focus on the creation of SSGs, starting with Block COD sessions, but more on the creation of serial and chaotic training sessions.

Block Sessions and COD

Within the scope of change of direction, there are four subcategories that I think distinguish specific plants/cuts and have distinct mechanical stress associated with them:

1. 45-degree cut
2. 90-degree cut
3. 180-degree cut
4. Maneuverability

These four specific change of direction components will be the starting point for any SSG progression. As we develop competency in these movement patterns, we move to a Serial approach, where there is an interweaving of these activities.

Creating block sessions where coaches can teach the biomechanics of these movements not only sets the foundation from a motor ability standpoint but also creates tendon and tissue prep for more intense and higher volume sessions. These block sessions are “closed drills” in that they don’t have any reactionary components. This allows the athletes to focus solely on developing the movement skill emphasized. We don’t want to build a house on sand, so starting with movement competency makes sense before we layer in complexity to the drills.

Our drill dimensions in these block sessions have the most individualized specifications based on the subgroups mentioned above. All groups do a 90-degree roll cut, but our Tanks do it with a 5-yard lead-in versus our Motor Bikes, who have a 15-yard lead-in. It is the same task for both groups, but the Motor Bikes have a higher demand because they experience a far higher entry velocity in game. Matching the demands seen in play will be enforced and kept accurate through the GPS data. Coaches have the athletes’ “dashboards” and should lean on this available information.

Serial Sessions

These contain multiple training targets but are still specific and play on the recall of skill acquisition. One drill may feature a specific general skill that will be called on later in the session in another drill or later in that drill. Serial sessions allow the linking of movements together. An example of a serial drill could be transitioning from sprinting to backpedaling into sprinting again.

When designing this set of drills, the only restrictions are in creativity and specificity. Combining movements in drills will illuminate the retention of the block sessions. The ability to transition from one movement to another is an important and highly desired athletic quality.

It’s great if an athlete can run 22 mph in a straight line, but the game of football rarely sees players moving in exact angles. Serial training takes movements and enables athletes to make connections that link general skills into the more complex patterns seen in play. These drills are still “closed,” but multiple movements in the drill demand recall and challenge transitions.

Serial drills are the last stop before integration into Chaotic or “Open” drills, where reaction is present. The dimensions of drills will help create specificity in terms of mechanical demands that apply to specific subgroups similar to the block sessions. Particular patterns are still emphasized within the four components of COD.

Chaotic Sessions

These open and reactive drills shift focus from solely executing the movement with pre-planned timing to making the patterns unpredictable and the sequences random. Adding reactionary components into drills will really reveal how well the players have mastered the movements. The cognitive ability to recall the right motor pattern in less than 300 meters is a skill that increases performance and is trainable. The faster the athlete can flow into better biomechanical positions based on environmental cues, the safer they are from a non-contact injury standpoint.

We want to build on complexity and challenge movement retention systematically as we travel through the off-season. Coaches can’t just throw players into the final exam on day one of class after reading the syllabus. Learning progressions built into weeks allows the recall of efficient movement patterns and also builds the body’s resilience to the mechanical demands of the drills.

The progression we utilize is:

Block sessions (closed singular-focused), one specific training response targeted.

Serial sessions (closed multiple-focused), linking of two movement patterns and a test of retention.

Chaotic singular auditory reaction—verbal reactionary stimulus initiated by the coach to a basic change of direction drill; an example would be adding a switch or directional call.

Chaotic singular visual reaction—visual reactionary stimulus initiated by the coach to a basic change of direction drill; an example would be pointing in the direction.

Chaotic opponent response—reaction based on an offensive player dictating the drill’s tempo, speed, and direction. Still using basic change of direction drills with the opponent stimulus.

Chaotic multiple reaction (addition of obstacles, multiple defenders, multiple ball carriers) creates competition areas emphasizing specific situations in games, such as sideline tackles, gap selection, open field tackling, releases, and combat drills.

Restricted game play—1 on 1, 7 on 7.

Actual game play

Position Considerations and Specificity

Now that we’ve pinned down our progression from a modality standpoint, it’s time to discuss individual specificity in the drills dependent upon the subgroups of players. The game of football is pretty simple when you break down underlying fundamentals. The offense tries to create as much space as possible between the ball carrier and defenders, whereas the defense tries to eliminate space and suffocate the ball.

Knowing that certain positions have high open field demands with high reactionary components helps structure the creation of drills. Incorporating evading and tracking through different movement patterns that were emphasized in the serial training block dramatically increases the overall demand and specificity of the drill. With the addition of obstacles, coaches now have a highly complex environment that challenges the athletes’ ability to move and react cognitively in game-like situations.

One of the biggest examples of chaotic situations is running down on kick-off. Imagine trying to run across a crowded highway. There are many fast-moving objects looking to take you out while you are running and navigating at high speeds while trying to find the ball carrier, who is actively avoiding you.

Processing information through the OODA loop is crucial and can be trained. The less complexity, the easier it is to cycle through the OODA loop. Adding space and multiple stimuli slows down the OODA loop and requires more time for movement execution. Adding time to plays is a luxury we do not have in game. Therefore, increasing the ability to process is a strategy and training intervention that should take up a good percentage of training. Including additional reactionary components in the drill will drastically increase complexity and provide stimulus overload.

When looking at controlling intensity and distances, we try to match the playing area with the subgroup that repeatedly experiences in play:

• Tanks: 5-yard x 5-yard minimal, 15-yard x 15-yard maximal
• Trucks and Hellcats: 10-yard x 10-yard minimal, 30-yard x 20-yard maximal
• Motor Bikes: 10-yard x 10-yard minimal, 40-yard x 20-yard maximal

The playing area and movement requirements help fulfill the mechanical specificity while having the appropriate work-to-rest ratios to prepare for the physiological demands of play. The average play is around 4–6 seconds, so most of our drills are in that range. Special team plays or extended plays have been, on average, in the 8- to 10-second range in duration; we want to provide that stimulus, so we consider allowing drills to run that period by holding the whistle or the distance dictating the work time.

To control rest periods, we break the team into subgroups to manage the wait period at each station. We want to be in the 25- to 40-second rest period range because that is the average time between plays. We add or subtract players out of groups and make more groups to allow for shorter rest periods. Junk yardage, such as sub 4 mph and walking volume, needs to be taken into consideration as well, and we get a lot of this volume in the transitions from drill to drill. In a given practice, there can be up to 3k worth of junk yards, so spacing between stations aids in accumulating junk yards.

The time between stations is also planned and progressed. It starts at two minutes and 30 seconds and drops to one minute and 30 seconds as the training year advances. This simulates the average rest periods between series in games and practices.

Drilling Down on the “How”

We have covered the what, why, and how. In the final piece of this series, we will cover the where—which may be the biggest piece of the puzzle since training complexity and compatibility are key components to increasing performance.

SSGs provide many training responses that bridge the gap between general and specific training. Injury reduction and faster game play accompany the addition of this training. Using GPS and subgrouping the team adds the positional distinctions that prepare players for the demands of game play.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

By Bill Miller and Barrett Snyder

In its simplest form, fatigue can be described as a temporary, reversible reduction in strength as a result of exercise. We can better gauge our level of fatigue before, during, or after a workout by a change in force production and our ability to voluntarily activate a muscle (think jump height or isometric dynamometer strength). The reduction of our ability to voluntarily activate a muscle is a direct result of changes occurring inside the brain and spinal cord.

Losing our ability to voluntarily activate a muscle will correlate to:

• Diminished motor unit recruitment and firing capability
• Inability to access high-threshold motor units required for muscle growth
• Dampened force production and velocity

This is the second of two articles in which we identify methods coaches can implement to provide their athletes with enough stimulating reps in the weight room to ensure progressive overload is achieved while minimizing the amount of muscle damage and fatigue accumulation during the process.

In the first article, focusing on calcium ion-related fatigue, we discussed three key metrics that, if not properly accounted for, can lead to excessive muscle damage, extensive fatigue, and reduced performance outcomes:

1. Fiber type proportion
2. Level of voluntary activation
3. Working sarcomere lengths for each muscle group

This piece will focus primarily on the more well-known performance inhibitor, central nervous system (CNS) fatigue, and its relationship with programming.

Lastly, we will provide sample weekly programming primarily aimed at overhead athletes who may have weekday or weekend tournaments but also want to ensure they make progress in the weight room.

Drivers Behind CNS Fatigue

There are a handful of training modalities commonly witnessed in the weight room that we believe deserve a second look. We are not suggesting the training modalities below should be avoided at all costs. They each can provide benefits in the proper context and/or with the proper athlete. We utilize them ourselves during programming. It just needs to be noted that with these program implementations comes an increased risk for CNS fatigue.

Light Load and High Reps

It is typically assumed that heavy loads are to blame for an increase in CNS fatigue. However, it might be time to reexamine that notion.

CNS fatigue probably arises from the extended exercise duration needed to reach task failure at reduced forces, which manifests itself in the form of training with light loads and higher reps. As we increase the number of contractions that inevitably occur over a longer duration set due to the lighter weight, we can think of our body accumulating greater amounts of inflammation, metabolites, and afferent feedback—all resulting in heightened CNS fatigue. By contrast, heavy loads that result in fewer reps performed are less likely to induce accumulation of inflammation, metabolites, and afferent feedback to the same degree.

Eccentric Training

Although a popular and beneficial modality for athlete training, eccentric training is not without its drawbacks. Similar to the light load and high rep training mentioned above, eccentric training has been shown to result in a greater bout of CNS fatigue when compared to regular strength training. This is likely due to the increased muscle damage that accumulates as a result of eccentric contractions. However, as you will see in the programming examples below, we utilize eccentric training with our overhead athletes due to the eccentric role certain muscles play during the sporting movement.

Eccentric training has proven particularly valuable in shoulder health and training the deceleration muscles needed to complete a throw. It is just necessary to recognize the importance of spacing out eccentric exercises over extended days during the training week, particularly if games are being played.

Short Rest Periods

Using shorter rest intervals will accelerate the buildup of CNS fatigue and prolong its duration compared to longer rest intervals. This is due to the increased cardiovascular stress caused by shorter rest periods, which in turn exacerbates CNS fatigue. Shorter rest periods will prove beneficial if endurance presents itself as the main goal, but it is important to note that a handful of field sports—particularly baseball and softball—present as more anaerobic and power-based compared to soccer or cross-country. As such, we want to ensure we are training the appropriate energy systems and characteristics required to excel in our sport of choice. Not only will shorter rest periods result in greater CNS fatigue, but athletes will also be prevented from fully expressing their power and high-velocity capabilities.

Programming Principles

By better comprehending the drivers behind CNS fatigue, we can draw careful conclusions as to how to program effectively without overburdening our athletes with too many fatigue-inducing activities.

• Order exercises from their greatest to least significance in terms of the athlete’s goals and training principles. This ensures the athlete will receive the greatest benefit and adaptations from those movements performed first during the workout. Considering the importance of throwing velocity and power output during baseball, we usually program medicine balls, sprints, and/or plyometrics first.
• Space out sets using extended rest periods (three to five minutes) to better limit cardiovascular strain. This is of particular importance during power movements where we want the athlete to demonstrate their highest velocity on a repeated basis as much as they can.
• Avoid extensive sets that include light weights and high reps. Instead utilize heavy loading with fewer reps. This will limit the number of contractions during a given movement and give the athlete more energy to get through the remainder of their workout.
• Be careful about programming exercises that have an eccentric component too closely together in a program without adequate days of recovery. As noted above, the importance of exercises that utilize an eccentric component should not be undervalued or neglected, but the timing with which they are performed should be carefully considered during the season.

Application for Overhead Athletes

By knowing the extent to which CNS fatigue is manifested based on various training variables, we can now explore training methods to improve performance while minimizing fatigue during competition.

While these programs were crafted with a baseball player in mind, many of the exercises and principles can be applied to other overhead athletes as well.

Don’t undervalue or neglect the importance of exercises that utilize an eccentric component, but carefully consider the timing with which they are performed during the season, says @billmills. Share on X
As you review these sample workouts below, here are a few ideas to keep in mind if you were looking to implement some of these exercises in your own programming.

• The set and rep numbers are merely arbitrary samples and should be altered based on the athlete’s training age, experience, and recoverability.
• If velocity is the goal, and the velocity of the given exercise begins to diminish during a set or workout, a coach should consider stopping the exercise or the workout entirely to prevent a continual manifestation of fatigue or injury.
• Consider placing exercises that involve an eccentric component farther away from game days, and take advantage of concentric-only exercises closer to game day. This would include pin presses, squats from pins, and concentric-only rows.
• The amount of stimulus an athlete needs to progress in a training program will likely vary from athlete to athlete. There is no shame in reducing or increasing sets or reps depending on whether progress is being achieved.

*Please note: While the programs below call for three sets, some athletes may only require two sets, with three sets being too fatiguing. Most exercises involving a high power and velocity component or that are done prior to throwing will usually only require two sets and a limited number of reps. However, some athletes, perhaps during the off-season, may want to push the limit and attempt three or even four sets if the number of reps is smaller enough. Regardless, this points to the importance of measuring various metrics to see if the athlete is progressing or regressing as a result of their training.

Sunday: High-intensity throwing day:

Pre throwing

1. MB slam, 3 sets x 3–5 reps
2. MB chest pass, 3 sets 3–5 reps

Post throwing

1. Rotator cuff rhythmic stabilizations, 3 sets x 10–15-second hold
2. Shoulder external and internal rotation overcoming isometric, 3 sets x 6-second hold
3. End-range bicep curl isometric, 3 sets x one 10–15-second hold
4. End-range triceps extension isometric, 3 x one 10–15-second hold
5. Wrist end-range isometrics—pronation, supination, ulnar deviation, and radial deviation, 3 sets x 1 rep of 10 seconds each position

Monday: Lower body lift:

1. Sprint x 5 @ 20 yards
2. Unilateral or bilateral squat variation, 3 sets x 4–5 reps @ 80%–85% 1RM
3. DB split stance RDL, 3 sets x 5–6 reps per side, 75%–80% 1RM
4. Pallof overcoming isometric, 3 sets x 3–5 reps for 5-second hold

Tuesday: Low effort throw, followed by upper body lift:

Pre throwing

1. MB slam, 3 sets x 3–5 reps
2. MB overhead throw, 3 sets x 3–5 reps
3. MB chest pass, 3 sets x 3–5 reps
4. Shoulder external rotation isometric test, 1 x 6 seconds (Note: Check to see what the fatigue of the fatigue is compared to Monday’s test.)

Post throwing

1. Chest press variation (we suggest pin press or DB), 3 sets x 4–5 reps @ 85% 1RM
2. Isometric lat pushdown, 3 sets x 6 seconds, or lat pulldown, 3 sets x 6 @ 80%–85% 1RM (sometimes we superset these as well)
3. DB eccentric overload external rotation, 3 sets x 4–5 reps
4. Overhead triceps extension isometric, 3 sets x 3–5 reps for 10–15-second hold (you can monitor fatigue with a crane scale or dynamometer)

Wednesday: Power and velocity

1. MB overhead throw for distance or velocity, 3 sets x 3–5 reps
2. 15-yard dash, 3 sets x 3–5 sprints
3. MB kneeling chest pass for distance, 3 sets x 3–5 reps
4. Sled sprint, 3 sets for 3–5 reps 15 yards each

Thursday: Medium effort throwing day:

Pre throwing

1. MB overhead throw, 3 sets x 3–5 reps
2. MB chest pass, 3 sets x 3–5 reps
3. Shoulder external rotation isometric test, 1 x 6 seconds (Note: Check to see what the fatigue of the fatigue is compared to Monday’s test.)

Post throwing

1. One-arm DB concentric row, 3 sets x 4–5 reps
2. Rapid drop catch shoulder raise with light weight, 3 sets x 6–10 reps
3. End-range bicep curl isometric, 3 sets x 3 reps for 10–15-second hold
4. End-range triceps extension isometric, 3 sets x 3 reps for 10–15-second hold
5. Wrist end-range isometrics—pronation, supination, ulnar deviation, and radial deviation, 10-second hold 3 sets x 1–2 reps for 10-second isometric holds

Friday: Concentric focus full-body lift:

1. TB deadlift, 3 sets x 3–5 reps @ 80% 1RM superset with DB box squat to vertical jump 3 sets x 3–5 reps @ 10% BW (after a rest period of two minutes or more)
2. MB slam, 3 sets x 3–5 superset with lat pushdown, 3 sets x 3–5 reps @ 80%–85% 1RM (The lat pushdown is not commonly seen in most commercial gyms so here is an example of how to perform it.)
3. Pin press, 3 sets x 4–5 reps @ 80%–85% 1RM
4. Sled sprint, 3 sets for 3–4 reps 15 yards each

This is an example of a position player who has a more strenuous day-to-day schedule, considering they are throwing, batting, and playing the field on a much more regular basis.

Monday: Concentric focus full-body lift

1. MB slam, 3 sets x 3–5 reps
2. Concentric row, 3 sets x 4–5 reps
3. Split squat from pins, 3 sets x 4–5 reps @ 80%–85% 1RM
4. Pin press, 3 sets x 4–5 reps @ 80%–85% 1RM
5. Sled push, 3 sets x 3–4 reps, 15 yards each rep

Tuesday: Low-fatiguing day

1. Isometric mid-thigh pulls, 3 sets x 4–5-second hold superset with DB box squat to vertical jump @ 10% BW
2. Isometric lat pushdown, 3 sets x 1 rep for 5-second hold with MB slam 3 sets x 3–5 reps
3. End-range hamstring stretch isometric, 3 sets x 3 reps per set for 15–20-second hold (We have seen good results with end-range ISO holds within this time duration.)
4. End-range hip-flexor stretch isometric, 3 sets x 3 reps per set for 15–20-second hold
5. Shoulder external rotation isometric test, 3 sets x 3 reps per set for 15–20-second hold

Wednesday: High-intensity lift

1. Bulgarian split squat, 3 sets x 4–5 reps @ 80% 1RM superset with DB split jump, 3 sets 2–3 reps per leg @ 10% BW
2. MB chest pass, 3 sets x 3–5 reps each set superset with DB bench press, 3 sets x 4–5 reps @ 85%–88% 1RM
3. Two-arm concentric to one-arm eccentric cable row (eccentric overload), 3 sets x 4–5 reps each way (This is a more fatiguing movement, so be careful with the sets, reps, and upcoming game schedule.)
4. Nordic hamstring curls, 3 sets x 4–5 reps

Thursday: Power and velocity

1. MB shotput, 3 sets x 3–5 reps
2. Half kneeling start sprints, 3 sets x 3 reps at 15 yards
3. MB kneeling chest pass for distance, 3 sets x 4–5 reps
4. Sled sprint, 3 sets x 3 reps at 15 yards

Saturday: Low-fatiguing day

1. Tall kneeling MB overhead throw, 3 sets x 3–5 reps at 4–6-pound medicine ball
2. RFE overcoming isometric, 3 sets x 3 reps for 8-second hold
3. Four-way kneeling drop catch shoulder raise, 3 sets x 3–4 reps at each position, 5–10 pounds.
4. Shoulder external rotation PAIL/RAILs, 3 sets x 1 rep for 15-second hold each way

We are fortunate to live in an era when we have multiple tools at our disposal to measure force, velocity, power output, and speed metrics. We should take advantage of these resources and use them to our advantage when it comes to programming.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

I ventured into training in the private sector in the fall of 2020, working with groups of 1-8 athletes at a time. To my surprise, it was something I ended up enjoying. As an assistant track coach with a large roster of athletes, I am typically pulled in multiple directions with groups of 15-50, covering multiple events. Training in this new setting allowed me to work with much smaller groups with a common purpose (primarily speed). I found it to be a nice change of pace and I certainly feel that it has caused me to level-up in the craft of coaching.

In the winter of 2021, I knew that if I was going to continue training people out of my garage, I would need to invest in some sort of equipment which would allow for athletes to perform maximal (or near maximal) sprints. One problem with living near Chicago is that it gets pretty cold in the late fall and winter (and even on random days in the spring/summer). Weather can certainly serve as a guiding factor in regards to periodization, so the winter served as a nice time to focus on typical weight room qualities. However, that was not what all of my private clients needed, so I began thinking about which road I would go down. In true math teacher fashion, I created a table involving the devices I was considering:

• SHREDmill
• Variable resistance/assistance device (such as 1080 Sprint / Dynaspeed)
• Sprint treadmills (such as AssaultRunner Pro)

Each type of tool/technology comes with its own strengths and weaknesses. The transportability of the Dynaspeed made it very appealing to me, as it could have been used with the track athletes I coach in the spring (I would have gone with Dynaspeed over the 1080 Sprint because I already have a contact grid, and would have hoped to get a laser down the road). However, it would not be as functional for me in the cold months during private training in my garage due to lack of space.

Coincidentally, in the early spring of 2022, I learned that Tony Villani was in the process of increasing the production of the SHREDmill. Based on my constraints, the functionality of the device, and the insane results Villani, Matt Gates, and the rest of the XPE team have achieved at the NFL Combine, I made the decision to roll with the SHREDmill. Within this article, I will share some SHREDmill basics, my overall experience, and how I have used it in training.

Gears

If you walked into a room of trainers who use the SHREDmill, you would no doubt hear a reference to gears. The SHREDmill utilizes three main categories of sprints:

• Gear 2—High resistance, zero incline. Target is approximately 50% of an athlete’s maximum ground speed velocity. Villani refers to this as the “force” phase. Gear 2 reps are five seconds in duration and focus on improving steps two to five in a normal ground sprint.

Video 1. In Gear 2, the athlete stays in the same position for the duration of each rep, getting continuous reps simulating reps two through five in a sprint.

• Gear 3—Medium resistance, 10% incline. Target is approximately 75% of an athlete’s maximum ground speed velocity. Villani refers to this as the “force to form” phase. Gear 3 reps are traditionally five seconds in duration and focus on improving an athlete’s transition to maximum velocity.

Video 2. In Gear 3, the athlete completes six big “pushes” like Gear 2, but then slowly rises to just short of vertical by the end of the repetition.

• Gear 4—Low resistance, 15-20% incline. After an extensive introductory period, a possible goal is to get the athlete as close to their maximum ground speed as possible. Villani simply calls Gear 4 reps “form,” and he admits that athletes rarely hit their maximum ground speed on Gear 4 (hence why there is not a Gear 5 reference with the SHREDmill). Gear 4 probably has the most built-in flexibility, which goes along with athlete familiarity and their individual needs. Durations are typically five to ten seconds, but can go longer (excellent for track sprinters). To me, Gear 4 is like having a really long hill in the friendly confines of my garage.

Functionality

A perk for me was the ability to address acceleration and maximum velocity mechanics with resistance in a small footprint (94” x 41” x 75” at highest point). The SHREDmill uses magnets to create an eddy current, which creates resistance based on the resistance setting (see Video 4) and the speed at which the user gets the belt to move. What is important about this is that the faster an athlete gets the belt to spin, the more resistance is created. This is a huge time-saver, because once the desired resistance is set, you can simply cycle athletes through—the magnets create the level of resistance that is required to hit the percentage of max speed desired. I will not say every rep is “just right,” but I think it is pretty darn close.

I have used all sorts of resistance devices and this is, without question, the easiest. No transporting weights and altering them for each athlete’s needs like one would do with a sled. No worrying about varying degrees of friction with sleds. No worrying about athletes getting a fourth degree burn with an Exer-Genie (no hate—I have four and use them often!). No worrying about a band snapping and an athlete face planting. No need to set up timing gates to see if athletes are hitting certain percentages of maximum velocity in their resisted runs. And, unlike the other items mentioned, it all happens in a 94” x 41” footprint with the SHREDmill.

Video 4. How to adjust the incline and magnetic resistance on the SHREDmill.

A common topic discussed amongst sport and strength and conditioning coaches is workflow. In my opinion, there is no better product on the market than the SHREDmill for resisted sprints when it comes to rate of athlete repetitions, quality of stimulus, consistency of desired resistance, and sprint footprint.

While variable resistance and assistance devices are the gold standard due to versatility and data captured, their workflows are well below the SHREDmill. For comparison, it is possible to get through a group of 40 athletes who each get 3 x 5 second sprints on the SHREDmill in well under an hour. In our track practices with a 1080 Sprint, it often takes 1.5-2 hours to do the same for a group of 15 athletes.

The Exer-Genie, meanwhile, can be set up in a “yo-yo” fashion to get through a high number of athletes with one unit, and the low transition time with a band allows for a high number of athletes to be pumped through. Sleds have a higher transition time, so the rate of repetition is lower.

• A greater number of units can be used with all three, but more units require more space, which is not always an option.
• The quality of stimulus also takes a dip with all three of these in my opinion when compared with the other two modalities.

Difficulty with the SHREDmill arises if athletes within a group need to train on different gears. It is simple to change the setting from Gear 2 to Gear 3 but doing it multiple times in a session can be tedious.

• One solution is to have more than one SHREDmill.
• Another solution is to split workouts. For example, in a physical education class, athletes who are focusing on Gear 2 could train on the SHREDmill on Monday and athletes who are focusing on Gear 3 could train on the SHREDmill on Tuesday.

A common knock on the SHREDmill in Gear 2 and Gear 3 repetitions is the arms not being free. I think the arms are definitely important in accelerating and sprinting at maximum velocity, but at the same time, athlete’s arms are not what is directly putting force into the ground. The gains that athletes experience in sprinting away from the SHREDmill has made this a non-issue for me. Athletes will still get plenty of reps where their arms are free, allowing for corrections when needed.

Experience: 7 Takeaways

I have used the SHREDmill for almost a year, and it has been a very positive experience thus far. Here are seven of my most notable takeaways:

1. 1. Get fast, fast. I don’t believe in shortcuts, but I also always look for ways to be efficient. The SHREDmill has led to improvements in speed unlike any I have seen in two decades of coaching. Ironically, “get fast, fast,” has a dual meaning. Users experience improvements in speed in a short period of time, and the main means where this happens is through their improvement in acceleration.

1. 1. It teaches athletes how to “push” better than any tool I have used extensively. Athletes have the ability to stay locked in a “push position” and learn how to strike with force. This is a skill that many field/court athletes struggle with and can reap benefits from learning.

1. 1. Improvements in speed can be found regardless of weather conditions, even in a small space. Although my private training will rarely go over 10 athletes, the SHREDmill has the ability to put 40 athletes through 3+ repetitions in an hour.

1. 1. Range and data. The SHREDmill works initial acceleration, transition to top speed, and top speed mechanics. Athletes are given a unique pin number and every rep is recorded to their profile. Athletes can monitor their own progress. What is measured can be improved.

• Coaches can also use discretion when they do not want a rep to be captured to an athlete’s profile by using the “free run” feature. Here, the coach has the ability to set the resistance, incline, and duration of repetition. Data will still be shown, but not saved. I have found this valuable for technical sessions, determining athlete readiness, using the SHREDmill for a different type of rep (bounding, single leg runs), or just trying something different with the settings that one thinks may help.

• You cannot outgrow it. The unique magnetic resistance increases as your speed increases. The harder you push, the harder it pushes back. This makes it a fantastic tool for novice through professional athletes.

• Most importantly, athletes love it! Athletes are excited at every session to hop on and see where they are at. As with timing sprints, athletes are also invested in their performance. Just this week, I had an athlete who hit over 10 mph on Gear 2 after flirting with it for a few sessions. A couple days later a teammate of his saw me in the hallway and said, “Athlete X called me and told me he got above 10 mph. He was PUMPED!”

Training

The SHREDmill came with a suggested training structure:

Coaches in the private sector know that consistency of training sessions with athletes can be a challenge. In my context, I meet with athletes once or twice per week, but I am always battling the other demands they have in their schedule (and my own).

I followed this guideline the best I could because I believe in the results that XPE and trainers like Josh McClure have produced. To accommodate the inconsistency in meetings with some athletes, I simply tallied their workouts. The first 10 SHREDmill sessions would be focused on Gear 2 while learning Gear 4. It took some athletes 10 or more weeks to get through that progression; others zipped through it in five weeks. In a strength and conditioning course in a school setting, or as part of sport season, athlete training should be more consistent, making this guideline more attainable.

A common approach to utilizing the SHREDmill effectively is utilizing circuits. This would especially be true in a large group setting. Here are a few examples.

Regarding the table above, the number of cycles completed in a circuit is typically three or four and the SHREDmill placement is different in each. I have experimented with multiple sequences. Some athletes perform best when the SHREDmill is first; others respond well to a lift or plyometric immediately prior.

I kept the sprints and fly lengths short on purpose—if a lift is involved in the circuit, I personally would not go above a 20m sprint, and that 20m distance for me is at times questionable as evidenced by not including a lower body lift in Circuit 2, where there is a 10m fly with a 10m build. If I wanted to address maximum velocity in a session (3 to 60m blast/bleeds), I would almost always do it prior to a circuit or SHREDmill session.

Sprint drills are often a hot topic—I personally think they can have value if there is context. One concept which can be addressed in Gear 2 form is to create a big thigh split (opening scissors), followed by an aggressive close. This movement is found in speed bounding and acceleration wall switching. Circuits are a great way to link them to the task they are designed to assist.

In terms of data, two of the main metrics the SHREDmill captures are peak velocity and distance, so auto-regulation principles can be followed if desired; however, I have not been afraid to go beyond a traditional 3 to 5% drop early in the athlete’s exposure to the SHREDmill circuits. They can be a challenge initially, with athletes showing big drops during the third (or even second) cycle, but most develop an ability to handle the density fairly quickly.

• • I constantly go back to this Boo Schexnayder quote from deep in the archives of the Just Fly Sports Podcast – Episode 14: “I am always looking for ways to subject my athletes to lactate in mild to moderate doses. In an acceleration development workout, if you hit the recoveries right, you’re getting speed and power development and restoration, all in one nice tight package; it’s like your birthday, it’s all there for you.”

• While I do not have the ability to test lactate levels, the outputs athletes show on the SHREDmill serve as a guide to how to adjust rest periods. I have also used heart rate to assist. After a few circuit sessions, the metrics rise and the athletes are able to complete more cycles at their new level. Win-win!

A common approach I use with my private clients is to allow them to chase PRs early in a session with full recovery between SHREDmill reps, followed by a circuit where outputs are still high despite fatigue setting in. If you are looking for high outputs, simply cut out exercises in the circuit and increase the rest. This will require you to be okay with loitering! Two go-to circuits for me are:

1. Plyometric, SHREDmill, isometric lunge
2. Altitude drop, SHREDmill, plyometric (hopping or bounding), isometric lunge

In my role in the private sector, most of the athletes I train are lifting outside of their meetings with me—because of that, we will not perform traditional strength work because it would be beating a dead horse. That being said, I do think there is magic that occurs with traditional strength work and the SHREDmill in the same session. Adding in plyometrics and drills which link to specific skills create a workout with a huge bang for your buck.

One weakness in comparing the SHREDmill to a motorized variable resistance/assistance device is the inability of the SHREDmill to access precise decreasing resistance in a single rep. I feel this is a powerful stimulus for athletes after initial exposure to traditional resisted sprints. One work-around here is utilizing Bullet Belt release sprints. I am in the early stages of using this with a handful of athletes, but the results have been promising. Another possibility was recently pointed out to me by Josh McClure: manually lowering the resistance while the athlete is completing a repetition. The switch could happen after a specific time or number of contacts. I am excited to give this a try!

Looking Back

I feel like I did quite a bit of research when I was looking for a tool to upgrade the services I could provide clients; however, I took a substantial risk purchasing a SHREDmill because I’d never used one.

I am now 11 months in and I can say that I am 100% satisfied with my purchase. While no tool checks every single box, the SHREDmill certainly checked nearly all I needed for my small private training business, and there is no doubt that it does the same for large group settings as well. If you are ever in the Chicago-land area and want to give one a try, you are always welcome!

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF

In the ever-evolving world of basketball and training, we’re constantly striving to find ways to push boundaries, help our athletes gain a competitive edge, and hone our professional skills to make an impact on our athletes. Deconstructing—or reverse-engineering—movements and allowing that to guide my programming has definitely become an edge for me as a coach.

In my previous article, “Deconstructing 3 Common Basketball Moves (to Train the Underlying Qualities),” we dove deep into the critical components that underpin three common basketball moves (jab steps, hesitations, and misdirection steps) and the essential athletic qualities needed to help elevate a player’s ability to master those moves.

Guided by feedback from readers, I was motivated to add a second installment to this article series. This time, instead of all offensive moves, I will look at three common defensive tactics and break them down in the same format.

Teaching defense is a passion of mine, probably because I wasn’t very good at it as a player…and I now know how much of a positive impact improving my defense could have made for me. It’s a great skill to focus on from youth to pro—nobody has ever been benched because they played tenacious defense.

I’ve run a series of defense-only camps over the past few years where I not only instruct defensive principles but also aim to shed light on some of the longstanding myths and misconceptions about playing good defense. For example, why a plyo step (or false step) is more useful than a pivot step, and why it’s actually advantageous to cross your feet on defense rather than always being in a lateral slide. We drill, we watch film, and we compete, and every player goes home with a better understanding of efficient defensive movement skills.

Defense is complex. It requires both team and individual responsibilities. In this installment of the series, I’ll break down three of the most crucial, fundamental components of being a great defender:

1. The closeout
2. The lateral shuffle
3. The crossover run

1. Closeout

Starting with one of my favorite topics, the “closeout” is truly a fascinating part of the game. A closeout is probably the defensive movement with the most variations, the largest number of different coaching philosophies, the most nuances, and the most myths surrounding it.

I’ll preface this by saying that there is no one-size-fits-all right way. Closing out is very situational, and it also depends on your skill set as a defender combined with the skill set of the offensive player you’re closing out on.

With those obstacles under consideration, we must adhere to the principles or goals of an effective closeout. Two major objectives in every closeout are:

1. Close space.
2. Follow the game plan.

Let’s unpack this.

Obviously, on defense, we’re trying to stop the opposing player from scoring. You’re assigned a player to guard, but that doesn’t mean the other players on the court don’t matter, including your teammates. Defense is not only an individual task but a team strategy.

Take face-guarding, for example. It’s highly effective for keeping the ball out of a particular player’s hands, making them work extra hard to get open and potentially stopping them from impacting the game. But, on the other hand, it takes you completely out of the team’s defensive scheme, removes you from help situations, and puts much more pressure on your teammates. Not to mention, face-guarding a player will wear you out as a defender, potentially decreasing your energy to produce on the offensive end. It can be good or bad, depending on the situation.

Closeouts are similar. Each style of closeout has pros and cons—and most coaches will assign a closeout style to each of their players and how they should close out on each of the opposing team’s players.

We can close out aggressively or recklessly to ensure we take away the catch and shoot by a knockdown shooter, but this usually takes us out of the play and creates an advantage for the offense if they decide to pump fake and attack. This is referred to as running a shooter off the line. And if a coach asks an athlete to run a shooter off the line, it’s because the other four defenders are prepared for the help needed.

We can close out conservatively or “short” if we want to ensure that we take away a driving attack to the basket by a dynamic playmaker. However, this usually leaves the door open for great looks at three-pointers with a late contest or no contest at all. This is referred to as containing. And if a coach asks an athlete to simply contain the drive, they’re willing to live with a few open shots knocked down by that player.

So, as a defender on a closeout, we need to consider these two scenarios and dozens of others because that closeout will have an immediate impact, whether good or bad, on the rest of the defense.

If we pretend for a second that basketball is purely physical and the scouting report doesn’t matter for how coaches create a defensive game plan, chances are there is a common denominator for how we can achieve our first goal in a closeout.

Sprinting.

If we simply sprint to a closeout, we can close space and make plays. Then, we can layer in the X’s and O’s of the game plan on top of that, depending on the coach’s instructions on how to close out on who.

We don’t want choppy feet.

We don’t want high hands.

We want an all-out burst of speed to close the space and then decelerate, contest, or react however our game plan is designed for us. But the key is to sprint.

The two most important qualities needed to be an effective defender in a closeout will be acceleration and deceleration. We need to be able to get going in a hurry and stop on a dime.

General strength training can help athletes check both of these boxes, giving them the ability to produce a ton of force as well as redirect that force (not absorb it) when it’s time to stop.

Other lifts like box squats and any compound lift with a pause rep will also be great options for mastering the skill of going from a relaxed state to an explosive state, similar to accelerating and decelerating.

Of course, sprinting is one of the absolute best ways to get faster. Short or longer distances. Standing or kneeling start. All curves and angles. Just sprint. Combine this with a solid strength program, and we’re cooking with fire now

And lastly, the most specific of them all, practicing a sprint-stop closeout. A full sprint to a two- to three-step deceleration. This is the most versatile, general, and effective closeout style if we don’t consider individual game planning. This closes space and allows the players to get into the best positions to make the next play.

2. Lateral Shuffle

The lateral shuffle is the most popular defensive footwork strategy that we have, but it is also the most misunderstood. The lateral shuffle, of course, is the defensive slide. This is a fundamental aspect of basketball, considering nearly half of your time on the court is spent defending your basket and trying to prevent the opposing team from scoring on you.

Drills like lateral lunges will help you build the strength and stability that apply to this movement. Lateral bounds will help you develop power in the frontal plane. Resisted shuffles will help you bridge the gaps between strength, power, and speed. But before we dive into the training, I’ve got to get a few things off my chest about the defensive slide.

What I was taught about the defensive slide growing up largely turned out to be incorrect and inefficient. The most important message I want to convey in this segment about the defensive slide is that it is okay, and normal, to have some uniqueness in biomechanics from athlete to athlete. It is widely accepted in the basketball community that nearly every athlete will have a slightly (sometimes drastically) different form with their jump shot. No two players shoot exactly the same.

There is a technical model of a “perfect” form jump shot that we base our fundamental teaching on, but over time, each athlete’s execution will turn into a form of its own based on several factors, such as limb lengths, lever angles, strength levels, and so much more.

Also, guess what? Rarely do the best shooters at every level look identical to that “perfect” model.

• Reggie Miller’s elbow sticks out.
• Kevin Durant begins his shot on the weak side hip.
• Steph Curry’s feet are never squared.
• Ray Allen flicks the ball with his guide hand thumb.

These are widely accepted nuances of jump shot form. But still, when it comes to the lateral shuffle, we expect there to be ONE way to perform the defensive slide. That doesn’t seem fair to the athletes.

Just like a jumper, the defensive slide will vary from athlete to athlete based on many factors.

The shooters listed above were able to find success because even though they may deviate from the norm, they adhered to some best practices or principles of a jump shot, such as having your hand under the ball, having the ball roll off your pointer and middle fingers, snapping your wrist as you follow through, etc.

A defensive slide also has principles that help an athlete use this movement efficiently. Slides will look different, but the best lateral shuffles have these principles in common:

1. Initiating the shuffle with a push from the top leg.
2. External rotation of the non-pushing leg and hip.
3. Moving with aggression and anticipation.

That’s it. If those three things occur on a slide, I am not too concerned with how it looks in any other way. So many fake fundamentals have been assigned to defense over the years—many of them are inconsequential.

A defensive stance height and width are completely individual preferences. Do you think Nikola Jokic can get as low as Jamal Murray? Heck no. Different body types, limb lengths, joint angles, etc.

What an athlete does with their arms/hands while they slide is also completely an individual preference. This can also be an element of team strategy based on where you have help-side defense, who you’re guarding, and who else is on the opposing team.

And now, the elephant in the room: the feet. Can they cross? Do we want short, choppy slides or longer strides? What if the feet come together during the slide?

Honestly, I’ve seen some of the best defenders in the world do all of these things. I don’t think they matter as much as people want to believe.

At one of the last clinics I went to, one of the presenters spent 20 minutes of his presentation teaching the slide. He taught the best stance, the best slide technique, the best footwork. When the athletes went live, all the drills went down the drain. Literally everything they worked on NOT doing happened.

False steps happened.

Feet crossing happened.

Not being in a low stance happened.

But…defensive stops also happened.

Feet crossing or coming near each other in a slide is not as detrimental as we once believed. If you watch athletes perform the action, when one leg pushes, the other leg externally rotates and pulls with the heel to continue the flow of that energy and continue to move laterally in space. After those two actions, there is a recovery phase in which both feet are underneath the hips and off the ground for a split second; in certain cases, those feet will actually slightly cross.

This can happen due to circumstances and the context of the game that are out of the player’s control.

Sometimes, the athlete loses their balance, gets bumped, or simply gets their feet tangled up in the traffic of the game. This may cause an athlete to need to cross their feet to regain balance or stability and try to get back into position to make a play.

Also, an athlete’s limb lengths contribute to this happening and can make it inevitable. Basketball bodies come in many shapes and sizes, and long legs are common. I’ve noticed that having long legs and a little more vertical displacement on their shuffle will lead to an athlete’s feet coming close together or crossing. This results from their legs being off the ground for a slightly longer amount of time and just needing some more space and time to recover before the next shuffle—it’s not necessarily a good or a bad thing, just something that can naturally occur.

With that being said, am I advising coaches to teach athletes a shuffle with the legs crossing? Absolutely not. But if an athlete is making consistent stops, moving well, staying healthy, and just so happens to cross their feet every now and then during a slide, I think it’s safe to let it slide (no pun intended). It’s not the deadly mistake we once thought it was, especially because the offense is so talented in today’s game; you really shouldn’t be sliding more than two slides in any direction anyway—it’s too slow.

Again, the most important components will be a powerful push with the top leg, the external rotation of the other leg, and approaching each slide with aggression and anticipatory movement.

Let’s look into the physical qualities needed to build up a really strong lateral shuffle. From a mobility standpoint, we need to access decent ranges of external hip rotation and internal hip rotation, as well as adduction and abduction. These give us the fluidity to move our hips through space at various angles and through all three planes of motion.

I’m not saying we need to get a goniometer out and measure exact ranges, but a simple eye test should get the job done. Generally, if it looks or sounds painful for athletes to showcase their ranges of motion in these areas, that’s a good sign it could use some work. Also, if there are majorly apparent discrepancies between sides, that could be something to look further into or have a medical staff member perform some joint range testing.

The consequence of not improving and/or maintaining these hip ranges would be an inability to execute one of the three major principles of the lateral slide: the external rotation of the non-pushing leg. This would leave our athlete with a very squared-off, slow, and inefficient shuffle that looks like defense from the 1930s.

To address these mobility demands, I really love these three drills that have remained a staple in our programs over the years.

• 90/90 switches with lift
• Hip airplanes
• KB weight shifts

From a performance expression standpoint, it is crucial for athletes to have strength in the frontal and transverse planes. This not only provides stability to the system but also serves as a baseline of force for creating power and speed.

Although the above exercises build strength, they also have some built-in mobility benefits as a secondary use, even if they aren’t the main lift of the day.

Another general quality we can help our athletes build is a base of plyometric fundamentals. Using plate straddle reaction hops or lateral rebound jumps to increase elasticity, lateral bounds or slant board lateral bounds to increase lateral power production, or even practicing the lateral shuffle skill (especially under load) are all great ways to enhance athletic outputs.

Lastly, the ultimate specificity would be simply going out on the court and guarding people. I love implementing small-sided games to put the defense at a disadvantage and force a chaotic environment for athletes to grow in.

For the drill above, once the ball is released, the defense can slide or run and touch the cone that is one to two strides away. This takes them out of position by one to two steps. The offense then attacks, and it’s a live one-on-one. You can set constraints like spots on the court, maximum dribble count, driving direction, or pretty much whatever your imagination can think of.

While you may not always get the perfect lateral shuffle—or maybe the athlete will use a completely different strategy—you still help them build up a valuable accumulation of reps. That is helpful for future scenarios when they can pull from those past training experiences to make the right play.

In fact, one of the other footwork strategies you may see during these live drill interactions is…the crossover run.

3. Crossover Step/Run

Aside from the defensive slide, the crossover step (or crossover run) is the most prominent and effective defensive footwork strategy basketball players use. Sliding laterally is far too slow for playing effective defense. We need an alternative method to make up ground if we get beaten and also potentially beat the offensive player to the spot to play aggressively and proactively on the defensive end.

The crossover step is the bridge that takes us from the shuffle into a sprint-like posture so we can turn and run or at least square back up with the ball handler to get back into a slide.

Quick terminology check: I am describing what some may refer to as a lateral run and a lateral run step. Those terms were coined by the legendary coach Lee Taft, a pioneer in teaching authentic sports movements as it relates to speed and agility—one of the most valuable resources in the field.

When I was introduced to this concept, it had slightly different terminology, so I’m in the habit of calling this the “crossover” version. More importantly, this has been the term that works well for my athletes and in my setting. Although it would be nice, having one set of nomenclature that spans an entire industry is difficult. My two cents here would be to choose the terminology you can be consistent with and that your athletes understand.

One of the best things about the crossover step is that it can simply be a step that bridges the gap between two movements, such as a slide to a sprint, or it can also be a continuous action that turns into a movement of its own, such as a crossover run where the athlete sprints on a diagonal path for a distance of several steps.

Just like the defensive slide, some principles need to happen to make the most of the crossover step. Those principles are:

1. The movement must be initiated by a dynamic repositioning of the lead foot, never a static start position.
2. As the lead leg repositions and initiates the movement with a push, the opposite leg will externally rotate (similar to the slide) and strike down under the athlete’s center of mass.
3. The athlete’s torso will rotate toward the direction they want to travel as they bring the initial pushing leg across their midline.

While principles 1 and 2 are similar to the defensive slide, it’s the third principle that separates the two. When the torso rotates, it allows the athlete to commit to a diagonal path rather than staying on a lateral path like a slide. The external rotation of the non-pushing leg in conjunction with the torso rotation clears the way for this movement to occur. As the non-pushing leg strikes under the hips, the initial pushing leg will recover and swing across the front side of the body to then repeat the gait process for as many steps as needed before moving to a new strategy or change of direction.

When it comes to strength, many of the same general strength patterns we covered already are also applicable. Lateral lunges, transverse lunges, Cossack squats, and other frontal and multiplane movements are key.

From a mobility perspective, we need to be able to tap into the same elements discussed for the defensive slide. The only major difference in focus with the crossover step is ensuring we have adequate adduction ranges, especially in knee and hip flexion. Other than that, we still need great foot and ankle stiffness, strength, and power production capabilities.

There are many variations of this, many ways to load it, and even machines you can use to set this up. In general, just try to load this movement pattern moderately to build up a foundation of strength. You can then build onto it with some more specific training.

From a plyometric, something like a rear foot elevated lateral rebound jump can be a great drill to isolate both adduction and abduction of a single leg, forcing the foot to respond and stabilize from the ground up as the leg swings across the body’s midline.

Basketball movements occur at many different angles, and the crossover run is an excellent way to access those unique angles of the game. Linear speed is a massive bang for your buck when it comes to speed, but don’t neglect the curves and angles of sprinting to help bridge that gap from training to on-court speed transfer.

Another great small-sided game to throw in—perfect for a group setting—is the closeout to one more drill. There are two offensive players; I like to play corner and wing. The defense or coach begins with the ball, and the drill is initiated with a pass. The offense has zero dribbles, one pass, and one shot as a unit. They can use the shot or pass however they want.

Defense can earn one point if the offense misses a shot that is well contested and two points for pass deflections, turnovers, blocks, or shot clock violations. The offense can’t hold the ball for more than two seconds before passing or shooting.

As the drill begins, the defense must take the shot away on the closeout, force a pass, and then sprint to a contest on that shot. Players will get creative and find ways to naturally evolve the drill as they get more and more reps. This incorporates every movement that we discussed in the article.

Mastering the art of defense is a process, but it can be one of the most rewarding efforts a hooper can make. Defense is truly a game-changing skill to have and makes any player a valuable asset to any team.

By reverse-engineering the physical tools athletes need to build a robust foundation of strength, speed, and agility, we can help them transfer those gains to their sports skills and become lockdown defenders.

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF