Lateral speed, the forgotten art of cat-like quickness.

I call lateral speed a “forgotten art” because it escapes most athlete’s radar in the gym. Often athletes bench, squat, or do plyometrics (which are great) but cat-like quickness on the court cannot be complete without excellent lateral speed.

Why should you focus on lateral speed weekly?

Lateral speed will tighten up your defense, afford your more steals, and make you one of the coaches favorites.

If your lateral speed and coordination is well tuned, you will find it surprisingly easier to lock down your opponent. You will also be able to react on defense and capture that split second opportunity to snatch the rock from an unsuspecting opponent.

That split second that takes you from moderately fast to dangerously quick is a small window, and it’s one that lateral speed is very fit to take advantage of.

Lateral speed makes you more ferocious on offense.

Winning the battle on offense is often about getting around your opponent, and unless you want to commit a charge, you are going to have to go around or get your opponent moving the other way.

Effective slashers like Derrick Rose, Dewayne Wade, and Allen Iverson do so by their ability move laterally faster and more unexpectedly then their defenders.

Regardless of how fast you are, if you cannot move side to side faster than your opponent, you are going to be struggling all game long.

I hope I’m driving this home. Improve your lateral speed, and the effects will enhance various aspects of your entire game. Do it now.

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Your crash course increasing your lateral speed.

An athletic stance is your foundation. Without first mastering this, you have nothing upon which you can build lateral quickness.

For side to side movement, your athletic stance dictates which muscles move you.

If you are standing straight up, you are limited to your hip abductors, and you medial glutes. Why? Because straight legs can’t push with quads, glutes (gluteus maximus), and calves.

A proper athletic stance should:

· Have your knees bent slightly greater than a 90 degree angle,

· Knees slightly behind your toes, and your shoulder leaning slightly forward lining up with your knees.

· Your hands up and eyes straight ahead.

· Keeping your legs at least 1 ½ shoulder width apart.

In this position your body is now loaded for side to side with more muscles, greater form, and increased levels of control. With you lowered level of gravity you will be more stable, and ready to spring up or from side to side at any point without any countermovement. You are “poised.”

For many of you this is not very comfortable, and this means you can improve fast.

Solidify your foundation.

This position needs to be second nature. You have got to feel comfortable and powerful here.

Assume and hold this position often, and train your body to find this groove with ease.

If fatigue is setting in quickly, static holds (holding the position for long periods with or without weight) can be used. If you are fatigued in this position it will be very hard to spring up or side to side, especially in the fourth quarter.

Develop the strength, and explosive abilities of the involved muscle groups for lateral movement.

Some folks skip right to the agility drills, but you will be limited if you are not increasing your muscular ability concurrently with your agility drills.

Your entire hip complex, adductors, abductors, glutes, core, quads, hams, and calves must be stable and explosive. The good news is much of your speed and vertical jump training will work these same areas.

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Train wide, and side to side.

This means that you need to train 1 leg at a time, as well as with a wider stance than normal. Moving side to side will require that each leg can handle the body’s load without your other leg to help.

You also need to train at wider stances to engage the same muscle groups that will activate during lateral movement.

1 leg squats, lateral squats, lunges, wide leg squats, isolated hip adduction and abduction, and elastic training are all appropriate and effective.

Have a strength and a speed day for the appropriate muscles.

Make sure you are getting stronger, but also make sure you are training those muscle to move more explosively and efficiently. While it is ok to do sport specific agility drills on strength day, make sure you have a speed day where the focus is on specific skill building.

Your speed day is a time to get very specific. Your strong, your explosive, but now you need to apply that to a specific skill group; the general speed and strength alone do not guarantee the skill will be improved. You can use training aides such as lateral plyo blocks but don’t let it over shadow the specificity of your training.

· Watch video if you need to set up the exact situations and skill sets you want to build.

· Setup time drills that improve the exact muscular coordination for the skills set.

· First do explosive drills with plenty of rest.

· Later you can work into fatigued movements and build up anaerobic endurance.

· Time and record each drill and create a competitive atmosphere to product new personal records.

There are a lot of potential drills to set up to emulate the varied lateral, and combined forward, backward, and lateral movements. Use variety to keep it fresh, but also use some staple exercises to set targets for breaking new personal records.

Lateral training is exciting because of the fruits it yields so quickly. You’ll feel an increased prowess on the court. Train with those results in mind, achieve them, and then keep the cycle going!

To your success,

Jacob Hiller

Creator of The Jump Manual

http://freeverticaljumptraining.com