Lacrosse/Soccer strength and speed work

[James Evans]

Originally Posted by Jay Ashman

I generally don't do single-leg work too much, its worth a shot to try it out, but I always had great results with the basics, especially with young kids. Imbalances tend to work themselves out when you get a kid stronger.

plus I'm not Mike Boyle, I believe in the power of the squat

If I had this kid more than 2 days a week 1 hour each shot, I would experiment more, but results need to happen so I don't usually try out new theories in situations like this, I stick to what is proven to work.

And I always go speed/explosive/skill/lifting. My reasons are because I don't want to train a kid to be explosive when his muscles are fatigued from a 8x2 box squat session.

My reasons for box squats are simple. I don't give a shit about his back squat, athletes don't have to be powerlifters, they have to be strong and explosive, having a strong box squat always translates into a strong squat, so why not get the best of both worlds by adding the element of explosiveness to it?

I will argue that I can train high school kids just as effectively as most, if not better, because I will work more on the core movements and not try to prove how smart I am or how many apparatus I can put them on.

Pro-athletes; however, is a different story, I am working on getting more knowledge so I can take a good athlete one day and make him better... that takes time and experience and I hope one day I will have that chance.

Good stuff Jay. Keep us updated.

2 hours a week - do the stuff that's proved to work.

[Steven Low]

As long as you teach your guys to get strong you should be fine.

ALL of the non-contact problems I've seen in soccer are valgus injuries because of collapsing knees etc. (because of cutting and such) ESPECIALLY in girls.

As long as you're making them strong with correct biomechanical patterns you're doing a great service by cutting injury potential down. Performance is just gravy.

[Jay Ashman]

Yea for some reasons girls are more susceptible to knee injuries than men, not sure the exact reason why... strength?

I'll do my best, talked to the mother yesterday, she said he loved the training. I stressed to her that I want to work with him for a while because I feel he will be an excellent college athlete and he'll need to be physically ready for that beyond his natural abilities. She agreed.

One brother isn't doing it because he doesn't have much interest in training hard, but the other brother (who is looking at Duke for soccer) is all for it.

[Steven Low]

Q-angle in the knee (from wider hips) = greater torque on the knee = more valgus problems.

Plus they have less muscle mass than men from less testosterone.

So you get something like a 6-10 fold increased knee injury rate depending on the sport. Hence why proper strength and conditioning is critical for women in particular.

[Allen Yeh]

Originally Posted by James Evans

Try this version if you haven't already, DeFranco stuck it in the WSFSB lite article he did for T-promo:

Skater Squat - Rear foot elevated, lower yourself, come back up half way, go back down, back up to the start = 1 rep.

Evil mofo.

You're an evil mofo for bringing this to my attention!

At least I wasn't foolish enough to try these with a load today. Talk about leg burning, regular BSS's are bad enough. I did BW with sets of 6 and it was bad.

[Rafe Kelley]

@ Jay Ashman girls are more susceptible to knee injuries because of the q angle, that is severity of the ankle from the hip joint to knee joint the more severe the angle the higher the potential forces on the knee. I also think that heels and less general activity agrivate the problem as I see many girls who have severe medial collapse at both the ankle and knee joint due to limited dorsiflexion and poor glute function.

[James Evans]

Originally Posted by Allen Yeh

You're an evil mofo for bringing this to my attention!

At least I wasn't foolish enough to try these with a load today. Talk about leg burning, regular BSS's are bad enough. I did BW with sets of 6 and it was bad.

Ha! Good man.

At least I didn't get you do any running.

[Mike Dykstra]

As an ex college D1 soccer player I would recommend single leg work. I ran into problems where my main plant leg would be stronger than my main shooting leg. Which in turn caused back issues and muscle in-balances.

[Andy Robinson]

Are you Lennie's boy?