By Cal Dietz, Thomas Miller and Jonathon Janz- University of Minnesota
It may be safe to say that if one walked into any high school weight room in the United States, roughly 80% would have either a dot drill mat or a speed ladder. Many coaches believe that these tools will help improve foot speed, which will in turn make their athletes faster. In reality, speed is not produced from the knee down, but rather from the knee up. Figure 1 illustrates this point. Regardless of how fast an athlete’s feet move in a dot drill or speed ladder exercise, real-world speed utilized in actual practice or competition will depend on two other critical factors: Exceptional knee drive and hip flexion. While the athletes may see improvements with how fast they move their feet in a ladder or dot drill, they will not receive the necessary amount of stress required to make them stronger at pushing their center of gravity around the playing surface.
|
Instead, they will simply become more proficient at jumping on dots or running through a ladder. Once the athletes have adapted to the dot or ladder drill, they will no longer see any further improvement.
Figure 1
. ...full article |
