CrossFit Athletic Group

In 2014 every Michigan football junkie was busting their nuts over a 3* prospect out of Maryland named Freddy Canteen. It had nothing to do with game film or how many offers he had, rather it all revolved around one video clip:

He's the last guy going solo.

Jacob showed me, my dad showed me, Fred Jackson hyped him up as Mario Manningham But Faster. And then that's all I really remember about Freddy Canteen.

...........

Since yesterday's workout had a shuttle run I figured it would be a good time to talk about good ol' fashioned "Speed and Agility" training.

I would never say doing cone and ladder drills on the regular is the biggest waste of time for an athlete; I would just say that it's a normal waste of time. There are two potential outcomes to practicing cone and ladder drills:

1) developing muscle-tendon elasticity, especially in the Achilles and calf

2) getting better at running around cones and ladders.

The first point is a good thing. That springiness is a gratuitous force - meaning it's available to us for free, like gravity and ground reaction - that can help us get our feet off the ground quicker. It's really useful in general running, and absolutely essential in changing direction.

The second point is worthless. Fast Feet Freddy will never run a route like the gif above.

It is really easy to get sucked into getting better at exercises and drills for the sake of the exercises and drills. The concept of skill transfer should always be in mind when deciding what to spend time on. Yesterday for example, the exact pattern of the run you guys did applies to nothing at all in real life. The only time Jessica, Dillon, and crew are going to run in that pattern is when their soccer coaches are trying to fill the practice hour, and the only time Crystal and Evan are going to run in that pattern is when we do it in the gym (which has happened 14 times in 10 years). So there had to be something in mind that went beyond just trying to run the course as fast as possible. That answer came in bodyweight perception - specificially unweighting.

When we run and our feet sound heavy, it means we're losing track of how much we're falling and the frequency of our pulling. This gets amplified when we have to change direction the same way handstand walks amplify our perception of falling. So we went through the shuttle course today at about 80% speed in order to try and coach ourselves out of the heavy feet. This specific way of practicing it probably won't happen again for another 3 years or so.

Muscle-tendon elasticity can also be developed through jump ropes and box jumps. Those, in my opinion, have more skill-transfer than cones and ladders, but that is definitely up for debate. Either way, the reason someone wants this elasticity is so they can run better. What isn't up for debate is that the most effective way to run better is to, you know, actually learn the techniques necessary to run better. You can spend a 1 hour session a few times a week trying to develop the raw stuff to make you faster, or you could just learn how to fall and get faster in anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 minutes, depending on how coordinated you are. Same goes for running routes, dribbling a basketball, stealing a base, shuffling at a volleyball net, or moving around a tennis court. The best speed and agility training does not involve cones or ladders, but rather learning how to eleminate unnecessary crap from the movements you repeatedly do in your sport.

Practice time is precious. Killing time better be saved for when Jay is running late to the 6:30 session, and gimmick movements better be saved for the Space Jam Workout. If you have a group of talented wide receivers on the field for a training session and you're spending more than 2 minutes doing cone drills, you're wasting time, and if I only get to see you guys for an hour a day, 98% of that hour needs to be dedicated to things that will translate outside of that hour.