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5 drills/exercises I hate the most

amsp83


There’s a lot to be said for the suggestion that it’s the execution of a drill that makes it good or bad, rather than the drill itself - the idea that they are just tools in the toolbox and it comes down to the coach to decide how to use them.


Ultimately, as a coach you have got to do what you believe works best, and I’m sure others will disagree (and that’s fine - my views are certainly open to challenge!) but here are my top 5:


No 5 - Parachute runs


I am definitely in favour of resisted runs, but you need to think about what you are using them for.


The reason I like resisted runs is because they encourage the athlete to apply force horizontally and enable the athlete to maintain a more acute shin angle (and corresponding torso angle) for longer.


So why are parachute runs the first item on this list….? The nature of a parachute is that the tension is not there instantaneously. It will be several strides before the athlete is experiencing any meaningful resistance. Given that elite sprinters are already up at a shin angle of around 90 degrees by 10m, and a sub elite sprinter will rise sooner, waiting until an athlete has already taken several steps before any resistance kicks in is far too late.


Sleds are a far better and easily accessible option as they provide instantaneous resistance. If you have use of a 1080 machine or an exergenie, those would be great alternatives too. Hills are also another good option, where gravity provides the resistance, and the angle of the hill creates that changed orientation of force.


In short, there are far better options. Leave the parachutes for the skydivers!


No 4 - Standing sagittal leg swings


Probably one of the more surprising items on the list, but the issue here is more about how easily sagittal (forwards/back) leg swings can be done badly.


I will admit that if the ground is wet and the group cannot do their usual warmup, I will include these, but when they do it’s usually met with a very authoritarian supervision to ensure they maintain pelvis stability.


I see so many people doing these with enormous amounts of lumbar flexion and extension, cheating the move to get an enormous range without actually getting a great deal of movement from the hip itself.


It can be a perfectly good exercise, but it is so rare I see it being done well, it’s something I would favour avoiding where possible.


My preferred alternative is to get the athletes into a shoulder stand, before having the legs scissor forwards and back. As well as the shoulder stand adding a nice element of trunk activation, it is extremely difficult to maintain the position without keeping nice and stable.


No 3 - Hurdle isolations in warmups


Another case of a good drill often used poorly…


It’s pretty common to see hurdlers including several runs over hurdles using either only the lead or only the trail leg as part of their warmup. It is something that has been prescribed for so long that for many it’s a bit of a comfort blanket and they don’t feel ready to hurdle without doing. For those that have built up that mental dependency, they are likely better off carrying on with it.


However, when working with new hurdlers that present a “blank canvas” I’d strongly urge against these becoming a standard, mindless part of every warmup.


Isolation runs can, when used well serve a really useful purpose as they allow the athlete to focus on a particular part of the hurdle movement. However, it must always be remembered that they only form part of a whole movement. The trail leg action is hugely impacted by the take-off, which occurs whilst the lead leg is already committed to its trajectory. The beauty of isolation runs is that they break the usual movement patterns so offer an opportunity to address an issue outside of the entrained sequence of movements.


Where I would use them is as a discreet block within a session - if there is a particular issue with the lead leg extending too early for example, we may spend a session doing lead leg only runs putting greater emphasis on driving the knee. We would then transition that into full hurdling, trying to carry over that feeling the athlete had on the isolation run.


Where they are prescribed as a generic part of their warmup, I believe they are either a comfort blanket “because we’ve always done it that way” or simply busy work where people just haven’t given any thought to what they want to achieve with them.


No 2 - Heel flicks


A staple of warmups since primary school football, this one really grinds my gears!


They may be called heel flicks, butt flicks, but kicks… but essentially, it’s trotting along, flexing your knee behind you so your heel hits your butt.


One of the main things I spend time working on with new sprinters is breaking the habit of knee flexion occurring before hip flexion, which leaves that tell-tale dangling leg behind the body. Therefore, anything that encourages knee flexion separate from hip flexion is a source of huge personal frustration!


I have given this a surprising amount of thought and struggled to identify many actions in sport that involve knee flexion without hip flexion - the only two I’ve managed to find are a footballer performing a rainbow flick, or a martial artist finishing off a reverse heel kick. Unless either of those apply to you, it is probably a drill best avoided.


A simple adaptation, which makes this an infinitely better exercise in my opinion is to cue the athlete to pick the heel up underneath the hip, instead of behind the body. That will see the hip flex too, just as it would when sprinting. Confusingly some will also call this a butt kick - I’ve always called them “pickups” in part to create that separation between what I want to see, and what will drive me up the wall!


No 1 - Speed/Agility ladders


This will come as no surprise to anyone who has spoken to me on the subject!


In theory, I can see some potentially useful applications for these yellow plastic ladders you see put down on the floor. You could perhaps use it to climb a tree, or as coaching legend Boo Schexnayder tweeted, you could burn them for warmth. Employing them in the pursuit of developing speed or agility however is a colossal waste of time in my view.


Speed/Agility ladders are commonly used to emphasis foot speed, as athletes adopt a fast cadence to squeeze dozens of contacts into a few metres. Social media is full of videos of flashy routines using these ladders, often with some cheesy mantra like “slow feet don’t eat”, (side note - don’t mistake rhyming for efficacy). However, if the ability to flap your feet around quickly was the key factor in locomotion the cast of Riverdance would have been securing the Olympic 4x100m gold medals for Ireland for the last quarter of a century.


Speed is about moving from one place to another as quickly as possible. That requires displacement of the body. Generating force from the hip is a key to producing that displacement, yet tap-dancing through a ladder actively discourages it as the athlete will try to stay close to the ground and not let the centre of mass travel beyond the next rung of the ladder. The constraints of the drill teach the exact opposite of what we want from a sprinter, or any sports person where the ability to accelerate is important.


Some coaches will argue that, in a team sport context, ladders help develop agility. It is hard to deny there is impressive lower leg dexterity on display in some ladder users. However, in the context of field sports agility is really about changing direction and not being in the same place. If you ask a rugby player whether it would be easier to tackle a player working their way through a ladder or moving free from any constraints, which do you think they will decide is the easier target? The true key to evasion of other players is effective acceleration and de-acceleration. The same restrictions on force development covered above prevent this being effectively trained though the use of a ladder.


Some drills or exercises are ineffective but harmless, it is the ability of speed/agility ladders to actually de-train the movement patterns needed for athletes that earns them their place at the top of this list.



So, do you agree? If not, that's fine - I've certainly had different drills that have come into and out of favour over time. I think the key thing is just ensure you have a clear rationale in your head for why you've chosen what you are doing.


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