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AFM Magazine


Football Coaches are Football Savvy, but Just How Movement & Speed Savvy?

by: Dale Baskett
Football Speed Specialist
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For nearly 30 years I‘ve worked toward becoming an expert at movement and speed for sports performance. The time spent has been a labor of personal gratification. I’ve worked with the old pros and today’s modern superstars of the NFL. My forte has been developing players at the novice to elite levels. Over the last 29 years, I’ve consulted with 11 NFL teams on speed development and was once on the staff of the Seattle Seahawks. Three years ago, I was approached by Pete Carroll from USC after he watched one of my high school teams train for field-movement speed. He said he had never seen anything like what the athletes were doing movement and speed wise. He wanted me to contact him the following day to talk about working with the Trojans.

As the first nationally-recognized speed coach in America, I’ve seen the field grow and change. Some of the changes have been positive, some not.

In my opinion, football hasn’t yet fully come to understand movement and speed aspects as they should be applied in athlete development. The marketplace for speed has become engulfed with gadgets and gimmicks that don’t cover the basis of movement and speed science required for specific training results.

The difference between using implements and teaching pure athletic movement is two completely different worlds. One has a fixation on fast-track results and the other requires more extensive knowledge. The implement craze is driven by this fact, and not only in the football world, but the general area of speed training.

Rubber Meets the Road

Football coaches face a dilemma: understand how to train your athletes for speed development or fail to take the time away from traditional football training to learn something new. Since I believe the most important aspect of athletic performance for football is speed of movement, I recommend the former.

Almost every college and many high schools have a strength and conditioning coach on staff. Weight room knowledge is far ahead of speed training in the world of football. Due to the importance of speed in athletics today, I believe that we will begin to see a trend in hiring qualified speed coaches at the college, high school and professional levels.

How to become sound for football movement and speed training:
First, coaches and strength coaches should assess their knowledge of speed training for football. A lot of speed coaches today come from track backgrounds. Football requires a different type of training process for adaptation to field speed. Linear speed is only a small portion of the actual speed utilized on the field of play. Although it has its place, it is not the premise for developing useful football speed. Linear speed work also does not prepare an athlete for the multi-dimensional nature of movement training. Movement training should be focused toward establishing motor base programs indigenous to the specific movement patterns required at the specific performance level.

Getting a great start:
Let’s start with some quality movement and speed ideas you can plug into your training that will start you in the right direction this off-season.

Quality Practices:
• A high-intensity mental focus during practice reps.
• Run-throughs are performed consistently by each or individual returns for correction.
• Each athlete must understand the drill and strive to execute as a unit with all executing properly.
• Players are required to give you feedback as to what they’re feeling and what could be better?
• Make them think – tell them just enough to understand the drill and see how they mentally process performing the drill.

Quality Coaching:
• Speed requires step-by-step instruction. Be patient. Motor processing is built on little successes with daily improvement being critical to speed progress.
• Use terminology that fits the activity – examples:

1. Rotate – arm/leg movement action front-to-back

2. Eyes Level – Controls center of body mass relation to foot-strike during all movement transitions on the field. I don’t use ladders for speed training because the eyes must be down during movement patterns – and thus, the athlete will learn to keep their eyes down.

3. Foot-Strike – Landing on the ball of the foot each contact step. Watch the athletes and if this is an issue tell them to get their hips up while running.

4. Allow only minimal run-throughs on a drill, to many reps equal too low of positive recalls for the athlete.

5. Fast twitch fibers fatigue fast. Watch for frequency dissipation even though you are using high recovery. Eventually contraction dulls and is no longer spontaneous for quality production – stop the workout.

Movement & Speed Quiz

Take this short movement and speed quiz and evaluate your speed and movement understanding. E-mail me your answers (dbspeedt@hotmail.com) and I’ll grade your quiz and return your results directly.

1. Jumping rope definitely helps speed & Quickness? True or False

2. Running up steep hills promotes good mechanics while developing useful power for speed. True or False

3. Using Ladders helps with what speed aspect?
a. Total speed & quickness production
b. Your toughness on the field
c. Neither of the above

4. What following item is critical for maximizing acceleration?
a. Being light on your feet for quickness and frequency
b. Force applied to the surface
c. Neither of the above

5. Field Speed must be trained properly to enhance
a. Strength
b. Cycle quickness
c. Transitional velocity

6. Football speed must consider stride length as important for overall speed development. True or False

7. Running track workouts definitely increase your 40 time? True or False

8. Weight Training adds what percentage to developing Speed ?
a. 50%
b. 80%
c. Neither of the above






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