Speed Report – Multi-Dimensional Movement Speed Before the Season Begins

The essence of football speed is velocity with control. Many sports require movement changes. However, football is more challenging than other team sports due to the amount of contact during practice and games that other team sports don’t have.

Football has multiple requirements. Add the speed and movement factors involved and movement becomes challenging. Good movement positioning and control is the backbone of performance. What makes for an outstanding performance is not solely the level of an athlete’s skill but the level of movement skills that accompany the athlete’s natural ability. Every athlete on your team can and should strive to develop quality movement skills. Here’s how:

Multi-Dimensional Movement and Football

The key to this topic, multi–dimensional speed, can be directed toward the specifics of movement for any given sport. That being said, we must not buy into the concept that we must be working on exact and specific position movements that occur all the time. We might be missing the mark for the term multi-dimensional. Multi is usually construed as being many in number. We should be careful when looking at football movement skills as they are sometimes extremely specific. Movement patterns can vary due to a number of different factors.

First of all, replicating all movement combinations in football would be an impossible task. One of the keys to developing football movement lies in the way skills are taught. Skills are learned by knowing the rules of how the body functions during the performance of any given movement. The athlete must be focused on the kinesthetic feedback by mentally being tuned in to body functions as he executes movement changes.

Whenever there is a new movement, conscious awareness must be the main focus felt of each athlete. At the precise moment of a movement transition change, the athletes’ mind will be recording all body movement. Many times they are focused on getting to point B and fail to be aware of the body motion positions as they occur. Having a recall capability is a very important factor to teach them.

How Do You Know What’s Key

When evaluating a drill designed for movement execution, we must look not only at the speed of movement but also its efficiency and effectiveness. The ultimate test is the ability of players to perform the skills of the game at high velocity while having control. Although speed and agility are crucial elements in a movement training program, they can’t be considered successful unless they directly improve performance. Mechanical effectiveness will always be an overriding application.

You may assume that if they run through a designed pattern repeatedly, their skills will improve. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s going to happen. They will memorize the objective pattern that they run through unless you constantly change it. The movement patterns are not always the same. Therefore, you must create different patterns outside the normal movements that are correct for each specific position.

Agility Stations and Circuits

Coaches run circuit agility drills from station to station. Some believe it’s a great warm up series before an on the field practice. This type of movement training can become more of a conditioning drill than improving movement patterns.

Remember, whatever movements an athlete goes through biomechanically, they are psycho-motor recorded. We must build motor patterns that become spontaneous so whatever goes in will be activated during performance. Only accurate imprints of motor functions are useful for developing accurate and precise results. Movement is best learned by slow-to-fast teaching applications. Teach the skill positions at slow controllable speeds and then increase the speed of the drill on a weekly basis. This allows for solid motor imprints to be recorded.

Some athletes run at 100 percent without the positions of body angles being in place for the accuracy of performance. The focus of a good movement program needs to center on the end product. Coaches should also be aware of the fact that as the circuit drills are performed, the athletes are beginning to tire. At this point, the aerobic energy system begins to cut in and the anaerobic energy system is gone. This simply means you are now giving up high twitch training and adapting the contraction properties for lower effectiveness. Muscle contraction needs to be at a high quality level when you perform movement skills as well as speed work. Proper recovery cures this issue.

The result is that you must structure the correct rest periods between speed training programs for proper heart rate recovery before the next agility skills are performed. This will help for better movement control and work the nervous system properly for maximum execution.

Multi-Dimensional Movement and Your Program

The end product will be your final measuring stick. But you need to monitor this well during the process so you don’t waste time and find out later during the season that you should have performed this process differently in the off-season. Players who are able to produce movements in optimal positions and perform related skills fast is what all coaches desire. The goal of every movement program should be make athletes faster.

Football speed requires movements that are executed effectively while remaining aggressive. This calls for players who have been trained to move more effectively in game situations. This requires responses to key perceptual cues and decision-making factors that stimulate movement.

Other factors will ultimately require that sound movement patterns are stable and automated, enabling players to be focused on reading and responding to game situations where speed is a factor. In the end, the players must be trained to get to a level where they no longer have to pay as much attention to conscious thought. Instead, they see and automatically move quickly. When that happens, your mission as a coach has been accomplished.

Here are several training points that will improve your off season program -

 LINE-TO-STRIKE POSITIONING - Your leg, upper body, and head must be aligned at all times during any running activity. Each foot strike must be slightly in front of the LINE for each step, including all plants taken.

 VISUALIZE before ACTION and PRIOR to MOVEMENT CHANGES.

 VELOCITY DISPLACEMENT - Whenever you apply a direction change of any type, the elbows must remain in and close to the torso so the limb rotation will not decelerate. This causes the lose of transition speed.

 WHAT TO LOOK FOR DURING AGILITY MOVEMENT TRAINING - Eye positioning must be level and forward during lineal and movement displacements. This will stabilize alignment positioning. When planting to change direction, watch for breaks in the alignment at waist level. The upper torso stays aligned over the foot-strike placement steps during movement changes. During lateral running applications, athletes must keep their hips up. Don’t sink the hips – they will limit limb frequency.

  MULTI-MOVEMENT CHANGES – Apply varying frequencies and movement changes during the course of the same drill. Be sure that the last phase or section of any drill performed is always executed well. Players have a tendency to shut down early and automatically. 

To learn more contact me at my e-mail address.

Coach Baskett began his career as a football speed coach in 1979. During the last 33 years he’s consulted and trained hundreds of coaches and thousands of athletes nationwide. In the last year he has worked directly with high schools in California, Texas, Minnesota, Kansas, and Pennsylvania. Over the last few years he has also consulted with Texas Tech, Ohio State, USC, University of Washington, and the University of Mount Union. You can reach him directly for more information or if you have specific questions on your training program. Coach Baskett is at dbspeedt@hotmail.com and 858-568-3751.