Anyone else watching the World Junior Hockey Championships this week? Awesome isn’t it? You can really see the difference in level of speed and agility between the different teams can’t you?
The top players on the top teams can get separation from their opponent, which lets them make plays. Gaining that distance is related to speed, but more importantly the ability to stop, start and change direction quickly. The standout players have that extra ‘jump’ in their legs. You all know what I mean.
To be agile like that – you definitely need power BUT you may not realize how much stability you also need in the torso, hip, knee and even the ankle. The ability to decelerate or accelerate all of those segments with the proper alignment helps the players put more force in the direction they want to go, but it also keeps them on their feet.
Hockey Agility Drill For Speed And Strong Ankles
This simple drill will help you take some of the ‘lag’ out of your movement initiation and will definitely tell you how your dynamic stability is.
If the video will not play in the viewer above, simply click on this link
http://youtu.be/-wBdeKcH8_w
Key Points
- The movements are as fast as possible, but try to be light on your feet
- Make sure you land with good alignment – watch in particular for your knee-cap pointing inward on the landing. You want to keep that pointing straight ahead
- Absorb a little bit of the landing your hip knee and ankle rather than being stiff in the knee and making the ankle and hip do more work
- Pay attention to what your arms are doing – can you do the drill keeping your arms crossed or with your hands on your hips?
How Much? How Many?
This is a drill where we do not want a lot of fatigue to have an impact so do 1 rep each direction with each leg – allow at least 60 seconds rest between sets (go and work on something else and then come back).
You can work your way up to 3-4 sets of 2 reps in each direction (clockwise and counter clockwise).
Have an awesome day – talk soon.
Cheers,
M
PS – if you missed out on the 28-Day Transformation we did back in December – stay tuned there is another one coming and this one is specifically for skaters.