Football Toolbox

Improving Game Speed: Isometric Speed Holds

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This post provided by ONEighty Athletics

By Michael Cano

I’m always looking for ways to get my athletes to ⚡️Accelerate & Change Directions⚡️ better.

How many of us have those slow, stiff, athletes that can’t bend or move well? . 🧘‍♂️I know I work with a ton!

We’ve been implementing these ISOMETRIC “SPEED” holds before our dynamic warm up and I love the results.

The first 2 Isometric drills, split stance ISO Holds, hammer home that 45% angle from the start position.

The ankle, knee, and hip will be on FIRE🔥 .

The 3 and 4th drills focus on strengthening the Psoas / Hip Flexors.

Trying to give our guys the image of staying VERTICAL during their top-end speed drills.

Kids are moving, bending, and showing an increased range of motion!

The YouTube video below reviews coaching cues and mistakes to keep an eye out for when conducting the following Isometric Speed Holds:

1. Split Stance Iso hold + Arms in Sprint Position
2. Split Stance Iso Hold + Hands on Hips
3. Standing Psoas Iso Hold
4. Standing Psoas Iso Hold + Kick Out.

The video reviews coaching cues and mistakes to keep an eye out for.

🔑 Remember DOMINATE The Details, BETTER Your BEST, and ATTACK every set and rep!

Coach Cano Win The Kids!

FYI – next week ONEighty will be releasing their brand new “GAME Speed System” – How To Develop True SPORT Speed

This program will include ALL our linear speed progressions, advanced plyometrics, and cutting edge change of direction agilities!

ONEighty Athletics GUARANTEES YOUR ATHLETES WILL RUN FASTER, JUMP HIGHER, & MOVE QUICKER!

Fit & Finish Drill

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Mental Training Enhances Strength Training

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By Chris Beardsley

Chris Beardsley  graduated from Durham University with a Masters Degree in 2001. He since contributed to the fields of sports science and sports medicine by working alongside researchers from Team GB boxing, the School of Sport and Recreation at Auckland University of Technology, the Faculty of Sport at the University of Ljubljana, the Department of Sport at Staffordshire University, and the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University. He is also a Director at Strength and Conditioning Research Limited 

For more great information regarding strength and conditioning follow Chris on Twitter ,Instagram, and Linkedin

Only a small amount of research has assessed how deliberate changes in psychological factors through “mental training” programs can affect force production, and thereby help prepare athletes for sport.

Mental training programs can involve either the development of valuable psychological skills, such as controlling self-talk, or the immediate application of simple methods, such as mental imagery and/or modelling.

Mental imagery is often (but not always) done by simply visualising performing an exercise in-between sets of normal strength training with the same exercise. In such training programs, adding mental imagery training on top of normal strength training produces superior results.

Recently, new research found that it was possible to produce strength gains in a multi-joint lower body exercise in a group of subjects who already had experience in performing that exercise, by using mental imagery training.

What is more, these strength gains occurred in just 3 days, in which the subjects did no strength training at all.

Interestingly, in many studies investigating mental imagery (like this one), the changes in strength seem to occur alongside increases in self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy is a key psychological quality that determines how confident an individual is at succeeding at a task or exercise. Mental imagery (visualization) training seems to be effective at improving self-efficacy, thereby changing the way in which athletes approach a task.

Mental toughness has also been identified as a key quality that determines strength, athletic performance, and even predicts success in the sport itself, among high-level athletes.

Although mental toughness is anecdotally believed to be either innate, or developed by gruelling workouts, the evidence suggests that even a very low volume of psychological skills training (including self-talk) can improve measures of mental toughness in high-level athletes.

This suggests that mental toughness is also trainable with the right approach, and does not require strength coaches to use otherwise unhelpful physical training methods in an attempt to encourage that psychological trait.

Overall, there seem to be very close relationships between key psychological qualities like self-efficacy and mental toughness, and athletic performance.

Given the evidence suggesting that these qualities can be enhanced by mental training, strength coaches will likely benefit from devoting time to understanding these methods and liaising with sports psychologists, so that they can be implemented with their athletes.

Big Bag Drill

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Transcription of the discussion (Video is below)

Big Bag Drill, Big Bag Drill. This is the drill to keep ya, alright. Try to get your back to balance okay. Both guys hit their necks gonna get turned. They’re gonna get shocked, and how ya gonna get them out of it?

You go to the weight room and everything is balanced up for you. Got 25LBs on each side, you could do your drill. You could bench press, you can squat, power clean everything is nice and even. okay, now you got a center with a 300 lb nose guard hitting you in the left shoulder. And there’s nothing balanced nothing on my right side, i got all the weight on my left.

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How am I going to get past the base? This is a good drill to get them pass the base, get your hands back inside, because the play is not over once you get your self out of position. Look at this spine, spine’s all bent okay, and you gotta be able to get back to base and if both guys work hard, stay low and don’t raise up til you get the thing going.

It should end up that this bag pops up in the air. Its unbalanced weight. unbalanced weight. OK now now when I was in Indianapolis we use to do fundamentals with all people. There’s a full back, there’s a tight end, there’s an offensive linemen. Big guy against little guy, now his necks getting twisted right here but its not over, you got to be able to block a defensive end.

Everything’s not going to be all matched up for you. How we gonna help the guy get back to base. It’s not over, you got hit, its not over get your hands back inside, okay get your balance back, get your feet spread get your good base, get your hands and shoulders.

Everything we do you want to have your feet in your shoulders gotta get back in line okay let your body work for ya, this guy right now if we put a squat rack up there that guy can do squats in that position right there. He can do a power clean, that’s football position. Get back to base.K you got a fullback that going to have to kick out, walk on a linebacker, ok, its the same thing. Alright, lets look at a little video and see if we can find it on the tape. K you’re going to get wrenched, you’re neck’s gonna get bent over here okay, tight end right here is the big bag. Okay, keep your feet moving…

Improving Change of Direction

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By Chris Beardsley

Chris Beardsley  graduated from Durham University with a Masters Degree in 2001. He since contributed to the fields of sports science and sports medicine by working alongside researchers from Team GB boxing, the School of Sport and Recreation at Auckland University of Technology, the Faculty of Sport at the University of Ljubljana, the Department of Sport at Staffordshire University, and the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University. He is also a Director at Strength and Conditioning Research Limited 

For more great information regarding strength and conditioning follow Chris on Twitter and Instagram

 

Change of direction (COD) ability is a key component of agility. Biomechanics research can help us identify which factors lead to better COD performances. In a comparison of rugby athletes, starters were able to accomplish the same COD tasks in a shorter period of time.

Importantly, it was the deceleration phase (the time before the knee starts extending) that was the main contributor to this difference. So deceleration ability (which is determined by eccentric strength) may be a key factor.

In another comparison of athletes, stronger subjects were faster, displayed higher ground reaction forces, had a more horizontally-directed force vector, and adopted a lower body position (greater hip and knee flexion) in a COD task.

This suggests that the stronger athletes were able to produce greater maximum force, more horizontal force, and greater force at longer muscle lengths.

One final comparison of athletes found that the horizontal propulsive force in a final step was positively associated with faster COD ability, while the vertical braking force was negatively associated.

This finding also supports the role of a more horizontally-directed force vector for optimal COD performance.

Taken together, these studies imply that certain strength qualities are very important for COD ability.

Eccentric strength, maximum strength, horizontally-directed strength, and strength at long muscle lengths may all therefore transfer very well to COD performance.

Long-term training studies are still catching up with these biomechanical investigations, but we can already see that eccentric strength is able to improve force production preferentially in the deceleration phase of COD tasks, which may be key to enhancing agility.

Hopefully, future studies will also investigate the impact of other specific strength qualities, such as maximum strength, horizontally-directed strength, and strength at long muscle lengths, so that we can identify all the essential strength qualities that transfer best.