“Absolute strength is the glass. Everything else is the liquid inside the glass.”
“Absolute strength is the glass. Everything else is the liquid inside the glass. The bigger the glass, the more of “everything else” you can do.” – Brett Jones
At @bodybyboyle we consistently find that the athletes who jump the highest, run the fastest and change directions the quickest are also the strongest.
In order to accelerate and decelerate efficiently on the field athletes need to develop a solid foundation of lower body strength in the weight room.
The limiting factor in many athletes agility and power work is that they are simply too weak to absorb and reproduce force efficiently. Athletes who engage in high volumes of jumping, hopping and running but are deficient in lower body strength and connective tissue resiliency will see diminishing returns from training as well as a higher likelihood of lower body injury.
No matter how many times you say “Knees out” or “Chest up” you won’t coach an athlete out of a bad landing if they don’t have the requisite stability to create a good joint position.
A balanced, multi-planar strength training program will do wonders when trained consistently to support jumping, hopping, cutting and bounding. I personally like to see athletes master goblet squat, split squat, single leg squat and lateral squat before programming repeat and elastic power exercises.
Are you consistently programming these drills?