Don’t do things that don’t make sense and you don’t see in sports

In a follow-up to his Tri-Phasic presentation Minnesota’s Cal Dietz gets into the goods when it comes to training that will transfer to speed on the field. This starts with an understanding of a definition of agility. He then touches upon each portion of the muscle action that occurs in all change of direction movements. Cal then gets into the meat and potatoes of the talk and starts to break down each component with the key points for coaches to address when it comes to acceleration, deceleration, and the role of specific muscle groups/joints and how to improve each. He then shares not only exercises but actual progressions that he utilized with his athletes to help improve their outputs on the field/court/rink. These progressions (all shown with video) include work for the hamstrings specifically, for squatting, lunges, leg presses, and a few different types jumps. Each of these progressions keep one thing in mind, improving the specificity to have greater transfer to speed and agility actions in the sporting exercise. He then discusses the role of technique and posture, some limiting factors in traditional training, gets into ways to help coaches improve these aspects for their athletes ranging from breathing to programming considerations, and shows some examples of what coaches can look for, both good and bad, with technique in cutting. He finishes out with some common errors he sees with coaches using drills that can limit transfer from those drills because of “how things have always been.”