Today I wanted to bring to you a guest post from my friend CJ Easter. CJ is an awesome young coach out in California, who is just blowing things up by training athletes to get faster and more powerful. Before coaching CJ had the distinction of wearing #12 for the Stanford football team before this year’s number 1 draft pick in the NFL, Andrew Luck, wore it for the Cardinal.
CJ and I share the same viewpoints on how to truly train athletes to get faster and it doesn’t have a lot to do with “quickness”.
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“Quickness” has been abused and misused…
And today, I am mercifully allowing it to rest in peace…
In the dictionary, quickness is defined as moving or functioning rapidly. Sounds like a desirable trait for our athletes, right?
And you are right… Quickness does have its place in our sports (especially mental quickness), but think about when we see an athlete move and say, “Wow, he’s quick!” we are most often referring to an athlete’s ability to change direction.
This type of “quickness” is not about how rapidly the arms and legs move. It is a powerful movement that consists of a number of other athletic qualities that we must understand to be able to train our athletes to change direction efficiently.
So let’s break down the athletic qualities that go into changing direction:
Reaction speed
The first part of changing direction is knowing when to do it. An athlete must sense (see, hear, feel) his opponent and be able to translate this sense to action in as little time as possible.
Strength and stability
The next part of changing direction is decelerating the body. To do this, an athlete must be strong in the muscles and stable in the joints to absorb the force. The stronger and more stable the athlete, the more efficiently he will absorb this force. By building strength and stability, we are also preventing injuries. Non-contact injuries to joints occur when an athlete is creating more force than their body can absorb.
Mobility
Once the force is absorbed by the athlete, the next step is to put the body in a position to recreate force. A more mobile athlete will much more naturally end up in the proper athletic positions and be able to change direction without wasting time by having to shift their weight.
Power
Now that the athlete has absorbed force and is in the proper position to create force, the final component of changing direction is reapplying force in the new desired direction. Power is maximized by producing more force in less time, so a more powerful athlete will cover more ground with a lesser transition time.
So as you can see, “quickness” is the end result of a bunch of athletic qualities working together in a coordinated fashion.
We don’t train for quickness, we train for reaction, strength, stability, mobility, and power and “quickness” is the end result.
As one of my speed training mentors taught me, “don’t chase quickness, let quickness come to you.” Chasing quickness and coaching our athletes to “move quickly” often results in a lot of rapid and inefficient movements from our athletes.
We’ve all seen that athlete who looks fast because his arms and legs are moving fast, but you look up and all the other athletes are blowing past him because his “quick” movements are inefficient lack power, strength, and stability.
And this is not what we want to cue or coach. So shift your mindset on “quickness”, and see how often your opponents are saying, “Wow, they’re quick.”
So let this obituary for quickness be a lesson… Let’s not rush our athletes to be quick, but instead train them to minimize reaction time and be stable, strong, mobile, and powerful in their movements.
RIP Quickness…
But before we put it to rest, here are 3 great drills that will teach your athletes to create and absorb force in multiple planes:
And if want a completely done-for-you game plan on how to instantly develop reaction, strength, stability, mobility, and power with no fancy equipment, check out the XFT Speed System: www.xftspeedsystem.com
Great words! Quickness as the end result makes so much sense. In order to be quick, athletes need ALL of the attributes mentioned. Thanks for expanding my thought process!
It is very important quality for players of all sports today is the capability to move their feet speedily. If you are looking for some great exercises for your speed training, it’s tough to beat the agility ladder.