Technique
Many coaches, trainers and scientists assume that athletes know how to run correctly. WRONG! Many athletes don’t.
Many coaches, trainers and scientists also assume that athletes know how to change direction at speed (cutting) correctly. WRONG! Many athletes don’t.
It is often these assumptions that are the underlying cause of many non-contact injuries. Note the fact that between 50 – 80% of all injuries are non contact injuries!
Coaches often prescribe agility or speed drills to athletes without consideration of these issues and then get frustrated when the athletes don’t perform the drill as well as expected or get injured!
A piece of research carried out in medicine and science for sports and exercise by Dempsey et al. (2007) looked the effect of different “cutting” techniques on a number of things including peak valgus moments at the point of weight acceptance during the “cut”.
The term valgus refers to the outward angulation of the distal segment of a bone, in the case of this study the knee.
Previous research has identified that peak valgus moments increase the risk of ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) injury.
What Dempsey et al. (2007) found was that different cutting techniques produced different peak valgus moments. The technique that had the greatest potential ACL injury risk was an excessive outward step in the opposite direction to movement (around 49 cm foot distance from the pelvis), followed by a technique whereby the trunk was rotated so it was leaning away from the direction of movement.
This study provides an excellent basis for further research in this area but as coaches we need to identify athletes with techniques that increase risk of injury and modify these techniques. Even better than that, we need to teach correct cutting technique before we identify technique problems!
This way you won’t get frustrated and your athletes won’t get injured!
Peakspeed.net, helping you break the speed limit.
Alan Ruddock CSCS, YCS
Sometimes stepping backward to move forward isn’t totally bad. As a young soccer player, probably about 8 years a go, our coach brought in a “speed expert”.
He asked one of the players to perform a sprint and asked the rest of us “what did you notice about that sprint?” We came up with all sorts of answers except the one he was looking for.
The answer he gave us was that when the player reacted to the call to sprint, he took a small step back, and according to the coach this cost him time.
This lost time could be critical to the outcome of a contest when two players are reacting and challenging for the ball. The small step back he was referring to is known as the “plyo-step” (Lee Taft) or “False Step”.
The speed coach then tried to teach us some drills to eliminate the plyo-step which were centred around body position.
Unfortunately, he had little success with our particular group. Furthermore, as soccer is a random multi-directional game, it is hard to position your body to eliminate the plyo-step when you don’t know what direction you will be moving in!
Interestingly, a piece of research by Brown and Vescovi (2004) found that the plyo-step allows for the greater force development with the shortest impulse time compared to the “drop and go” and “staggered step” techniques. This doesn’t mean to say that the plyo-step your performing correct. Lee Taft offers some technical advice in the International Youth Conditioning Association Developmental Essentials.
Your push off leg should be aligned directly behind the body. Your upper body and shoulders should assume a forward lean to line up the angle of push-off. The aim is then to generate lots of power into the ground by aggressive arm and knee actions so to transfer force into the push off leg.
If your looking at improving acceleration, it’s worth analysing your starting technique.
Alan Ruddock CSCS, YCS
