Applying Acceleration Mechanics to Game Play Situations

fig 1

Ever put an athlete into a wall drill (fig. 1) while working on acceleration and heard the following question..."Coach what does this have to do with my sport?" I get this all the time from athletes, and I understand where they are coming from. It can be difficult for an athlete to understand how something so fixed and stationary can help them in their dynamic and chaotic sport.

What I tell my athletes is that once they master proper movement mechanics in stationary and unobstructed drills they can then learn how to utilize these new or refined skills into actually game play. This all comes down to motor learning, and there are 4 levels of motor learning 1. Unconscious Incompetence 2. Conscious Incompetence 3. Conscious Competence 4.Unconscious Competence.

Unless you run track you will likely not often be in a stationary position and then run completely unobstructed to an endpoint. So therefore the key to using or applying acceleration mechanics is to learn how to get back to proper positions if you wind up getting into a bad spot due to the chaotic nature of sport.

Allow me to illustrate my point with the pictures and video below. A few years ago I had the privilege to work with Juan Pablo Angel who at the time was the Captain of the New York Red Bull (MLS) and currently plays for the LA Galaxy. We had just finished working on Acceleration Mechanics and he wanted to do some drills to integrate the acceleration work into his game. So I stood about 10yds away and delivered a ball to him that he played through his feet and sent it off to his left and began to accelerate after it.

Well what I had failed to realize until I kicked the ball was that it was darn near flat.....so after he made his first touch on the ball it did not travel nearly as far as he was expecting it to go. The end result was that he had to hit the brakes to adjust to the ball and as you will agree the position he got into was far from an optimal acceleration position.(fig 2)



fig 2



The significant part of this drill was not that he got into a bad position....that happens all the time in sports. The real beauty of this drill and the proof that he was working at a level of Unconscious Competence came from what happened after he adjusted to the ball, and he RE-ACQUIRED his acceleration position (fig 3).



fig 3


 The better an athlete moves, the better an athlete plays! Speed, Agility and Quickness are all part of movement and movement skills can be taught, improved and refined. Take a look at the video below to see the sequence with JP Angel in real time.