Track and Field vs Football

Two weekends ago I spoke at the University of South Alabama's Strength and Conditioning Clinic.  Justin Schwinn, Head S&C Coach, did a great job in his inaugural year.  If you weren't there you really missed out on a great clinic. 

Louie Simmons opened up the clinic with a talk that only he could deliver.  He discussed issues of strength and power development, and did a great job in coaching everyone up on technique questions.  Kudo's to Louie.

My portion of the clinic was focused on multi planar movement development.  I opened the discussion by showing Veronica Campbell running the 200m in Beijing...and winning!!!  Had to throw that in there.  And then I followed that with a clip of an ordinary football play.  My point was that most sport coaches spend way to much time training linear speed development, when football is a multi planar sport.  You see, speed doesn't just exist in a straight line...speed also exists in the vertical plane.  We spend too much time training our football players like track athletes, when the requirements are totally different.

I then discussed the four qualities that must be trained to improve movement speed: relative body strength, hip strength/stability, elasticity and rate of force development.  We spent about 30 min on each of the topics, but there were two topics that caught most people by surprise.  The issues of hip stability/hyperextension and elasticity of passive tissues really raised some eyebrows and questions.  There isn't enough time to go into this right now, but if you are interested in this lecture contact Justin Schwinn at University of South Alabama and you can purchase your own copy of this DVD.

Also, everyone of these qualities is directly addressed/trained in Football 360.  So if you haven't bot a copy of Football 360 you need to.  Check it out at www.highschoolstrengthandspeed.com