The Best Speed Drill Ever !?!?!

When you have two kids who play sports and you train athletes for a living, it is only a matter of time before the other moms and dads pull you to the side and start picking your brain for info on how to make their son or daughter a superstar.

“Do you do classes for speed training?” is the question they ask me most often. My reply is always a non-committal, “kind of”. I’m reserved in my answer because most importantly I don’t want to get lumped into the other “McSpeed” warehouses that pack 20+ kids from all ages, shapes and sizes into classes every night running them through ladders and over hurdles with false promises of lightning speed.

Before we go much further, we should address the semantics of what “speed” actually is in exercise science terms. Speed is an attribute that best describes the activities of sprinters and wide receivers, but isn’t primarily what the layperson most commonly is in search of for their young athletes. Sure a great 100m or 40yd dash time would be great in some cases, but for most young kids getting started playing soccer, baseball, basketball, etc., they really need first to build a foundation of quickness, reactivity, agility and body control, also known as “athleticism”.

So do you have classes in that???

Sure, but before I tell anyone to join a facility or sign up for a bunch of classes I tell them the best advice I can give them is to go invest $10 into a good jump rope. That’s right, a old school jump rope.

Jumping rope addresses all of the things I mentioned above and more:

–Quickness – If you don’t pull your hands through quick enough, the rope will drag and hit your toes. If you don’t get your feet off the ground fast enough, you will get caught and trip. It’s a great self-limiting exercise that has a natural governor that won’t allow you to go much beyond your physical capabilities, as opposed to many other training modalities which allow you to continue train with poor form when fatigued

–Reactivity – Jumping rope is a great entry level plyometric exercise that teaches how to decelerate, ammortize energy and reaccelerate on the balls of your feet and utilize ground reaction forces

–Agility – Once you can master the basics of a two-legged hop jump rope, you can begin to work side to side, front and back and single leg variations. You can also develop your ability to feel your feet under your body, which we will discuss in a moment

–Rhythm – If you watch the most successful, smoothest and fastest athletes in every sport, they all possess one common trait: They all have great rhythm. Watching them perform has an artful and musical aspect to it. Pay attention to the cadence when your feet hit the ground and the rope whips through and it should have a consistent and rhythm beat.

Some Jump Rope tips:

-Use the right size rope. When holding both handles at your armpit, the far end of the rope should just reach the floor. You can tie a knot or two if you need to shorten it

-Spring from your feet and ankles like being on a “pogo stick” and do not get off the ground by bending your knees and pulling your heels to your butt

-Maintain good posture and imagine a straight line from your ears that goes down through your shoulders, hips and knees and to your ankles. Keep you head straight and eyes forward.

-Pay attention to your foot position and try to land in the same footprint every time. Closing your eyes from time to time will heighten this awareness and really test your proprioception

-Land softly and aim to be silent during your foot contact

-Be efficient! Try to make it look easy and keep the same cadence with the least effort possible. A trick I will do is ask clients to smile. It automatically gets them to pull back on the teeth grinding, inefficient effort that actually slows us down and burns more fuel. Breathing should be steady and through the nose.

-Count your touches/reps for each given time period. Try to get at least one more rep in the same time with each successive round

-Use upbeat music to set a tempo and try to keep pace with the beat to develop rhythm

-Start with as little as 30 seconds continuously and then build up from there. Various combinations of work/rest periods can be used based on the goal. The variations I use most often are rounds of 20 to 30 seconds of work with 10 to 30 seconds of recovery repeated for 4 to 5 minutes.

In addition to all of the benefits listed, jumping rope is also a great calorie burner and awesome for developing cardiovascular fitness and work capacity, and doesn’t require much in the way of time, space or budget!