Jump and stick drill
We can do this free, with an obstacle or even a box. We are using a cone to simply give us a little bit of lift. So we lift over, jump, stick, and hold the landing. We do not want any movement on landing. We want good athletic positioning posture, head up, good stability at the knee ankle and hip joints.
Next, go to single leg. These are a lot more difficult. You really have to control your center of mass, center of gravity here by keeping the back flat and chest up. Another key to this is keeping the eyes up looking at the horizon. If the eyes look down, the body is going to pull forward.
Kinesthetic awareness board
All this is—is a piece of plywood with an inch and a half runner down the middle. This will really challenge athletes to control their body weight through the center of mass, center of gravity. If the chest is too far forward, the board is going to snap to the ground. If we over compensate, we go back. Try to keep the chest up and the back flat and work to stand in a good, solid stable position.
Always contrast this with stepping of the K-board and just holding a good stable position for between three to five seconds. Step back on and repeat. This can be done single leg for a lot more difficulty.
As you can see this is not an easy drill to perform. We can also perform this drill working in the same direction as the runner or turn sideways and do on single leg. This will really help your cutting skills.
Here is another simple agility device. It is just a round disk of plywood with a piece of PVC pipe and a tennis ball attached to the bottom. Set the disks approximately the same distance apart that you would for good proper athletic positioning. Step on and try to control yourself.
This forces each leg to work independently of each other so that one leg can not dominate and control the body’s movement. This is a difficult skill to perform.
Athletes will play and change of direction sports and chaotic movements need to learn how to control their body mass. This is a tremendous way to teach that body control.
Balance beam
This is just simply two, two by four sandwich together. The athlete is going to address the board, getting into a good athletic position and then walk down the board trying to maintain a balance and coordination. You can increase speed but you always want to stay centered on top of the board.
For added difficulty, add a partner and a ball and simply play catch. Keep the actions moving across the balance board, now the ball seemingly destroys the whole drill. The idea here is to get positive response of controlling the body’s mass while doing multiple skills. We do not only want our athletes to develop just walking on the balance beam, we want them to develop upper body and lower body skills while controlling the body’s mass during performance.
Now let us try an old grade school version of red light and green light or stop and go—whistle stops. What we are looking for is tremendously good body control for our athlete on the coach’s command. This can only be done on your own using lines just so that we get this stimulus to stop and control the body and then accelerate and stop and control the body. We can use multiple directions. In this case we are going to show you straight ahead.
Go, stop, go, stop go, stop, go, stop!
Now let us try backwards.
Ready! Go, stop, go, stop, go, stop, go, stop, go, stop, go, stop!
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