I’ve had the pleasure of coaching some of the fastest athletes in the world from a variety of sports ranging from Track & Field, bobsled, skeleton, football, and baseball. Many coaches like to use??ladder, ‘agility’ and ‘quick feet’ drills to enhance the speed of athletes such as these. I tend to look at these applications as?being the worthless tools of trainers who prefer to use a gimmick than understand the fundamentals of what it actually takes to run fast.
Running speed (and change of direction) is a function of how much force you put in to the ground. It has next to nothing to do with how quickly you can reposition your feet. You can coach someone to the highest level in ‘quick feet’ activities with little to no carryover to running speed, agility or change of direction capabilities. For this reason I stay clear of it for most athletes. But soccer’s a little different. There are times in the game where your effectiveness can be greatly enhanced by having agility, dexterity, and coordination of the extremities even if the force application to the ground is minimal.
Mike Young
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” I tend to look at these applications as being the worthless tools of trainers who prefer to use a gimmick than understand the fundamentals of what it actually takes to run fast.” – That’s a pretty sweeping and damning statement to make with no evidence to support it.
There’s definitely evidence that supports the notion that faster feet don’t make faster runners. Pretty definitive actually. If it’s being used for coordination or as a tool in the warmup to switch things up and introduce variety that’s fine but the entire genre of equipment used for developing ‘fast feet’ has little use in the development of actual speed. If developing ‘fast feet’ is your goal (which is an appropriate goal in soccer) then perhaps they have use…as I tried to imply in my post.
I agree fully with Mike. Training the footladder has very limited implications for the soccer athlete. Perhaps some loaded single leg stuff on the ladder can serve as a lower limb strength stimulus and maybe barefoot work as a form of injury prevention or re-integration training, but Mike nailed it, speed, jumping, change of direction is about relative force output. To add, I bet C. Ronaldo would have very fast feet on the ladder as he does with the ball at his feet, however for an athlete to pull those moves off with the ball they will be better served training with a ball like the Coerver coaching stuff. That kind of limb speed is somewhat inherent, much like hand speed of a boxer. Add the ball in and a lot of those moves become a specific skill or skills.
[…] using a ladder. I’ve spoken about my thoughts on ladder use for soccer athletes previously here and here.? I will?occasionally?use a ladder in our warmups but rarely if ever when actually […]
Mike, I think your comment about the speed ladder is too simplistic or naive about what it takes to develop a good/effective top soccer athlete.
A speed ladder is a tool and I believe it’s quite crucial for training faster soccer players. I played 10 years of pro soccer and run Soccer SAQ programs.
What I think you are also saying in your post is that it’s not the Be-All-End-All for speed. But, it’s also not a gimmick.
There are two ways to develop faster athletes:
1 – Increase Strength 2 – Teach and Refine Form/Technique
It sounds like you are only focusing on the benefits of increasing strength for speed, or force production.
I use the speed ladder to develop coordination for speed (or technique and form) before the application of strength/power. The speed ladder helps me control the athlete’s movements and speed while introducing and refining new techniques that make them faster.
It also allow me and them to get in as many repetitions as I feel the athlete needs in order to solidify the techniques for speed in their nervous system.
I use the speed ladders to introduce speed technique, then build strength and explosiveness into those techniques with resistance/plyo’s/etc.