What Agility Really Is & How Do Master Multi-Directional Speed w/ Jason Feairheller (SSOF Ep 189)

James de Lacey2:50

So, what is that one of the main challenges you have in kids are literally playing or training their sport most of year or doing multiple sports most of year and they're just not getting in

Jason Feairheller3:00

And I'll say it's mostly one sport all year.

James de Lacey4:13

Yeah, that sounds nuts. One sport all year round, it's you don't see it as often in other countries. Typically you have a summer sport and a winter sport. And you usually

Jason Feairheller4:25

what we all grew up doing, right? It's almost like seasons. As the seasons change, your sports change.

James de Lacey4:31

And now it's hyper-specialized, but at the same time with the amount of I guess private money or private businesses going to the space now that are leveraging skills camps, sports summer camps, whatever it is for those sports, parents are putting them into the skills camp for hockey and then they go into this for hockey and then this whatever it is for summer league.

Jason Feairheller4:53

do skill work. They'll do power skating work.

James de Lacey4:57

Yeah, and then it's crazy. It blows my mind the stuff that I've seen here and how much parents are invested into the training of their kids.

Jason Feairheller5:09

Yeah, Leif talks about this a lot, about the AAU basketball model and about how it is just such a money grab versus actually developing athletes. And to the point where it's even if you're a parent, you go watch your kid play a tournament, they'll charge you 100 bucks to watch them for the weekend or something like that.

James de Lacey5:32

Man, sometimes I think I'm in the wrong business. Just get into bloody youth sports tournaments.

Jason Feairheller5:38

Yeah, that's it.

James de Lacey5:41

That's nuts. So, you came down this multi-directional speed. Obviously that's not the only thing you do, but I guess that's kind of your online niche persona that's kind of going there. So, run us through then this kind of idea of multi-directional speed.

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Do you find many or most athletes maybe neglect some of this since most training is typically up and down, forward and back? And how can someone start to incorporate just some I guess basic multi-directional work into their training, and we can go into some more in-depth stuff after that?

Jason Feairheller7:10

Sure. So, let me first define change of direction training is a rehearsed drill where the athlete knows what they're supposed to do, knows where they're supposed to go, and they choose when they're going to do the drill. Agility training has a cognitive component. So, that means one of those components the athlete doesn't know, and it could be when they're going to do the drill, exactly where they're going to go if they're reacting off of someone else, and when they're going to execute it.

So, I started thinking, all right, I got in I did a speed retreat with Lee Taft in 2019. And part of that speed retreat is truly understanding what are the patterns of movement in sport. And when you start to look at sport based off of movement and not based off of, oh, this only happens in this sport or this is basketball specific training. This is football specific training. There are little nuances to those things and they're more position specific rather than sport specific.

But, when we look at the movement patterns in sport, athletes will perform a shuffle. They'll perform a lateral run. Think of, I'm moving to the side while running while kind of keeping square and keeping my eyes forward to survey a play. They'll perform a back pedal. They'll do a curvilinear run. And they'll perform a hip turn, meaning they'll let's say our feet are in line, they're going to perform a repositioning step where they put a foot in front of them to direct themselves backward and open their hips up. And then of course we have linear speed.

So, when we look at those six different patterns and then you start to look at sport based off of those, you're like, oh, this happens in every single sport. And then, from there, you can say, all right, now that we have a model of movement. I know how a shuffle should be executed. I know how a lateral run should be executed, a curve run, all of those things. Now, let's look at them when athletes perform them.

And when you're doing agility scenarios and something with a cognitive component, sometimes it's tough to understand and to assess whether the athlete didn't perform the drill well because they either didn't read the play, it was a poor pattern recognition, poor visual ability, any of those types of things, or whether they just didn't have the physical capacity or the tools to execute that movement. And part of this was I always thought the idea of oh, just have athletes play more although great is missing a key component to it.

So, I always think of game speed and I use this term a lot as the ability to read and read the drill, know where you're going to go and then also to execute the drill as you intend to go. So, for example, let's say I'm a defender and someone tries to juke past me going to my side. Now, in order for me to keep an angle on them, I need to transition straight back. Because if I kind of round my turn initially, now I'm chasing that person as they're going behind me and I've lost that angle.

So, now I need to know, all right, in a rehearsed scenario, do athletes execute that well? And I found most of them do not. So, then it's, all right, how can I expect someone to go through movement well in reactive scenarios when they don't necessarily know how to do it in rehearsed scenarios?

So, that got me down the path of all right, let me go through each of these movement patterns. Let me make sure athletes do that well. And then what is sport? Sport is just linking those movement patterns. You go from a shuffle to a sprint ahead. You go from a lateral run into a curved run. You'll perform side steps.

All of those types of things. So, now it's, all right, are you executing these movement patterns well? Yes, once we do that, now can we link movement patterns together? Great. Now, how can we progress that further? And you progress that with more speed going into a turn, more difficulty in terms of coordination. You can change the angle of the drill.

And that's kind of led me down this big path of all right, I'm going to try to create as many movement options as possible. And in the book How We Learn to Move, Rob Gray references this. So, he talks a lot about agility type of cognitive component and changing drills focused on that. But, he also said that your perception of movement changes based on your physical capacity.

So, when I read that, it was kind of like a light bulb went off. It's, okay, if I get athletes to move well in these scenarios, and let's just use a defender as an example again, if I know I can have this amount of buffer zone and I can quickly close out space to make a play, or I can take a chance to try to make a play and I can still recover doing that because I know I have that capacity, it will change how I play on the field.

So, long story, but there's so many different topics to get into with that. But, that is kind of the general idea is increase the capacity of movement, how athletes actually move in rehearsed scenarios to give them a better physical component and perception when they go into rehearsed drills or when they go into reactive drills.

James de Lacey12:54

And that agility aspect, I think people really need to make sure they take in because most people online will confuse agility with change of direction speed and not understand that there is a cognitive component that makes agility what agility is. And it's the only thing that separates the elite from the sub-elite athlete within sport is the ability to read the play and essentially react to what's happening or anticipate what's happening and then execute that, whatever the physical thing is, versus just changing that direction.

Jason Feairheller13:27

I'll go into a little rant about agility here, too, if you don't mind. So, the agility that you see on Instagram all the time, where it is just made up games, they're cool if you want to do those for a warm-up. But if you're telling me that you are doing those to improve decision-making and those types of things, then sport is very specific. The tools that are used, the implements, in lacrosse, you have a lacrosse stick in their hand. The spacing's going to be completely different when you have a stick in your hand, especially a defenseman that has a much longer stick.

Even in basketball, you can get much closer to an opponent, and because you just have a ball, you can move a lot faster. So, the implements, the tools, even the rules of the game, will dictate a little bit how you move or how you possibly could move and the spacing between players. And agility is pattern recognition. All right, so we can recognize the patterns and start to see, oh, how are people moving?

We have a visual ability component. And that is how well you are visually, meaning your clarity that you have when you are scanning a field and quickly finding a target or assessing what you're seeing on the field.

And we also have anticipation. What has the athlete done before, what might they do again? And then we have situational awareness. Score in the game, that might dictate how someone changes how they play. If they're behind, they might take more risks than they were before. If they're ahead, maybe they play back and commit to a more defensive style of game.

So, having rules and saying, oh, let's play hot potato with a basketball or something like that, I don't necessarily think that's doing what a lot of people might think it is. So, in my mind, athletes play their sport how often? They go to, especially we talked about athletes going year-round. They are, let's just use a AAU basketball player. He might have practice three or four days a week. He's playing six games probably every single weekend.

There's no way that little game that you had is going to make up for all of the time that he's already getting agility and cognitive work. So, we need to work on the actual physical capacity of how they're moving. Otherwise, if agility just took care of everything, we have elite athletes on every single team. Everybody would be the best because of how much time kids are putting in now. That's my agility rant.

James de Lacey16:15

I love that rant. And Warren Young's paper in 2015, I think covers all those cognitive aspects, too, if anyone's interested. I actually had a, during my postgrad, Warren Young came and presented at our uni. We had people coming every week or month or so present. And he had some really, he basically went through all those data from those papers on agility.

And one of the common definitions, even I think in his papers, kind of a rapid change in velocity, paraphrasing, basically in reaction to a stimulus. But when he was presenting it, he made sure to reinforce that it's to a sport-specific stimulus, as you kind of mentioned there, because you see people point directions or whatever it is. Tennis ball—

Jason Feairheller17:01

I was about to say that. So, all of those types of things, yeah, they can be used as assessment tools. So, let's say you do a drill. All right, I'd have somebody perform a shuffle. They do it well. Now, I'm going to point to one side or the other, so they don't know where it's going to go. Now, it's, all right, now that they're just reacting to something, how do they move during that reactive piece to it? And there's layers to all these different things. And I'm not saying, don't ever do agility drills.

Scott Leach does an awesome job from University of Rhode Island. I had him on my podcast before. He works with their football team. But if you watch a lot of the drills he does, the main goal of the drill is to either, as an offensive player, create space versus a defensive player, or as a defensive player to close out space. But he puts them in actual situations and scenarios with different how he spaces the players on the field.

And ultimately, one-verse-one, two-verse-one drills, they are my go-to agility drills. Because all sport really comes down to beating somebody one-on-one. So, I'm much more a fan of a one-verse-one drill, use knowing the movement patterns, force athletes into reacting with specific movement patterns, and then kind of see how they move. Go back to the drawing board. What do we got to do after that? Yeah, so, to be clear, I'm not trashing all agility, just some agility.

James de Lacey18:32

I guess a constraints-led approach or dynamical systems theory purist would be like, well, those isolated shuffle drills and back pedaling stuff is useless because it's not going to transfer to whatever it is in the sport. Interesting to know your take. Well, I think I probably would know your take from what you're saying, but even just your take on that kind of thought process.

Jason Feairheller18:54

Yeah, I think about this a lot. And I think we don't trash golfers that go out and work on specific shots, go to a swing coach, and improve. We don't talk about even hockey players, if they do specific skating work, that's rehearsed, they will be much improved when they're skating on the ice. Even basketball players that do skill work, working on specific shots that they have, all of those things aren't necessarily always reactive in nature, yet it helps those athletes out a ton.

I always go back to, if they're not performing a shuffle well, how could you expect them to do it in the game? Now, if someone does perform a shuffle well, now the next step would be, why don't we add more speed and power to it? Let's add a little resistance, force them to get a little more speed when they do that. Because if I'm performing a shuffle, I'm doing it with the intent of staying square to someone in front of me.

And if I am square to them, it gives me more movement options. If I have to commit to one side or the other, now it would be more difficult for me to change direction well. And obviously we want to improve that capability as well, but let's still improve the speed of all of these specific things.

And I think that argument is truly somebody who doesn't know the model of movement and how to coach all of these things. If I were just to tell someone go do a shuffle, but not show them, not put them in a specific position or specific drill to force the intent I want out of it, yeah, I agree. I don't think there would be much to that. There still has to be an intent behind that, and the athlete has to have a framework of movement to know how they should move.

James de Lacey20:46

Are there things you do in maybe some of these drills that would reinforce their movement? So, I'm just thinking from say that CLA approach where if they're not seeing say the proper shuffle mechanics, or they're not getting fast enough across because whatever it is they're doing. Maybe they're jumping in the air and clapping the feet in the air, how some shuffle. Or maybe they're not staying square.

Are there things that you change within the drill itself, say on the one-on-one to be able to kind of force that out of them as a constraint, or is it more as you mentioned, you go back to square one, hey, we need to figure out how to shuffle first on your own, and then we're going to bring that back into the drill decision?

Jason Feairheller21:26

Sure. So, I always say, show me your shuffle first without giving them any cue or anything like that. I just had a college basketball player in last week. And I can't stand up and do it, but it was essentially, it was atrocious. He's kind of just pushing off of one leg and reaching with the other one, but he's not getting any distance. Where a shuffle truly is a push off the outside leg, the inside leg lifts up, repositions, toe points out, and you pull with the lead leg.

And that pulling of the lead leg is what gives you a lot more distance. And by having the toe pointed slightly out, you utilize your hamstring a lot more than just using your adductors. So, you can get much more speed doing that. Now, if I want to change direction, I just want to stop, I square my foot back up, and come to the other side.

So, a couple things first. Let's say I have someone, I start them with a shuffle. We do that, they don't do it well. I give them a model of movement, and now we start to go through the drill. Some of the other things I might do, I might have them start on a line, have them look straight ahead, perform a shuffle, and look where their feet end up. And a lot of times somebody might drift forward, or they might drift backward a little bit. They're not staying on that line.

And once again, we think about game speed as the ability to perceive movement and execute it as intended. So, it's important for them to know, oh, if I plan on shuffling to the side, but I always drift forward, that's not where I necessarily want to be. I want to be exactly where I think I should be. So, now it's, okay, you went forward on that one. Now, you make an adjustment. I'm not telling you how to make it. You make that within yourself.

Let's say somebody is shuffling and they're not getting much distance. Now, I'm going to add just a little bit of resistance on the start with a band or something like that to force them to get a little bit more resistance to encourage that type of movement. And what you see from each drill is essentially an assessment. And especially one-on-one, there isn't always a go A to B to C. There's a million different options and based off of what you see, that's how you choose the next drill. So, although it's rehearsed, it's done with an intent to get somebody to perform something very specific.

I'll give another example, too, here. So, I had a lacrosse player coming off an ACL injury and he was really fast. And when he first came back to me, he would, if I asked him to cut on one side, he'd always take extra stutter steps before doing that. And now, is that a physical capacity issue? He passed all of his strength tests. Super strong kid. No, it's a confidence issue.

So, now it's, all right, I'm going to put him into specific drills where he's not going to stutter step. And it starts off with just push hard off of one leg and then immediately cut off of the other one. All right, now let's add another step to that. Okay, great. Now, instead of cutting at about 45°, let's cut at about 30° or so and make that cut even a little bit tighter.

Great. Now, I'm going to put a box here about a yard in front of you and a yard to the left of you. So, essentially, if he's cutting off of his right foot, he's got to cut in front of the box.

And that little constraint then forces him to get in the position that I want him to do. And if he doesn't strike his foot wide enough, he's going to drift forward into the box. If he doesn't rotate his trunk enough, he's not going to be able to make that angle, either. So, although I'm giving him the framework and he knows what to do, yes, you still create drills where he knows where he's going to go, he knows when he's going to go, but I'm still forcing him to go into a very specific position that I want him to hit.

James de Lacey25:23

Got you. Run us through some of your multi-directional I guess we'd say strength power training or capacity training, whatever it is, basically the physical qualities for I guess changing direction because it is directly relevant to combat sports, too, where there's a lot of lateral movement.

Jason Feairheller25:39

For sure. So, main things that someone needs to do to change direction well, they have to strike a foot outside their center of mass. If they don't do that, they're not creating a shin angle in order to re-accelerate, but they're also not creating a good position to decelerate. So, first step is let's look at how somebody decelerates. And deceleration isn't just stopping. It's stopping and getting you in a good position to take off another direction.

So, especially if I'm thinking about combat sports and you're talking about especially something striking where you're trying to go in and out and quickly get in different positions, you have to make sure that you're hitting your foot where you want to. And if you're too tall, and obviously I'm not by no means am I a striking coach or anything like that, but if you want to close out space quickly, you have to drop a little bit in order to create a better angle, strike further outside your center of mass, in order to create more punch going forward.

So, first thing, we got to get our foot wide. We have to land and change direction with a slight amount of knee flexion. So, we don't want the leg to be straight. That's no good. But we also don't want to sink into it. And a lot of times people think like, "Oh, when I decelerate, I should sink really low into it." When really that's not what we want.

Especially over short distances, we want it to be almost like plyometric, where we are getting in and out of a position. We are attacking the ground to change direction. We're not absorbing force and then coming back the other way. Think about too, if you're squatting and you have 500 lb on your back and you go into a quarter squat, you can still move that fairly well. If you say, "All right, put 500 on your back, go rock bottom." Now that's way harder.

It's the same idea, even though you're just overcoming the force of your own body and the speed at which you had into a turn, we want to have just that little bit of knee flexion to allow us to stop quickly and then push out quickly. We have to rotate the trunk the new direction that we're going. And a lot of that is as soon as we look at a target, we're way more likely to go directly to that target rather than take that extra quarter second, half a second to kind of push and then find our target.

And then from that, we have to increase propulsive force and that's going to be the ability to accelerate out of that position. We have to have minimal ground contact, kind of like what I told you about making it almost like we're attacking the ground and thinking about it more as a plyometric movement and not as a stop and then go type of exercise.

So now from there, first thing we do is we start with short distances. 3 yd, 5 yd. How well can you get in and out of that? Because if you don't own those movements well, then going to higher speeds, tougher angles, we're not going to get quite as much out of it. There's going to be more stutter stepping before a change of direction. You're going to sink down lower and a lot of times people with more speed, they might not get their foot in the right position.

And actually the angle that you have your foot play such a huge role because have you ever been ice skating?

James de Lacey29:04

Yep. I mean I was younger.

Jason Feairheller29:05

So, let's say you ice skate. If you don't turn your blade to the side to stop, you're just going to kind of keep going, right? Your blade dictates how well you can stop. And we want to think of our foot using that same thing.

So, even if I'm going forward and I want to decelerate going forward, I don't want to have my toes straight ahead. That's going to cause more knee flexion causing me to sink down lower. We want to pigeon toe that foot in a little bit so we have a little bit of a wedge to stop when we go into that. So, those are all of the types of things I'm looking at.

Now, as far as how I program drills, how I progress drills, and I'll use a 5-day a week model because I am a fan of doing more rather than even 2 days a week if somebody has the ability to do it. And even if you just microdose it because there are so many different movement options between those movement patterns and between the angles you can choose, it's better to just let's just keep going through as many as we can.

So, couple days a week would still be linear speed, max speed, acceleration work. And you can then progress those volumes as you see necessary. But usually acceleration work, I'll go around 150 to 200 yards total within a session. Max speed work, depending on the athletes I'm working with, right around that same. I might go even a little bit more towards the end of an off-season as we're getting ready for a preseason or something like that.

And then when I'm doing my change of direction work, I'm dividing up into three different types of days. One would be an attacking day. If I were to draw a line by the side of me, anything moving forward, and that can be curved runs, sprints with a cut, a lateral run, kind of angled going forward, any type of attacking movement, and even a lateral and going forward, anything where we end up moving forward.

Then I have a straight side-to-side day, which a lot of people do, but that is just by my arms out to the side. I'm staying on that line the whole time. And then I'll have a retreating day, anything that is going behind me. And I'll say of the three, this is the one that probably gets used the least. That's actually why I came up with a defensive speed program because so much speed work is related to the offensive player, and not quite as much for the defensive player and how people transition going backwards.

So, those are my three days. Now, within those three days, your change of direction, and as I said, the speed going into a cut, the angle of the cut, the coordination level, those all play a factor. And also, the number one thing would be the time of the drill. Keep most of my drills around two to probably two to three seconds for most of them.

I never, I shouldn't say never, but rarely ever exceed six to seven seconds because I'm looking for quality movement. If you're doing change of direction work, if you want it to be conditioning, by all means, go ahead and make it longer, but if you are looking to improve the quality and capacity of movement, then we're going to make it shorter so we can get in way more reps of those things.

And people might think two to three seconds, that's not much. Two seconds, you can sprint five yards one direction, cut back two yards, sprint another three yards the other direction. So, you can get in a couple changes of direction even within that short amount of time. We can do that a whole bunch of times.

And then within that, I always pair plyometric drills with those types of days. So, side-to-side days, I'm doing side-to-side plyos. Attacking days, I'm doing more attacking plyos. Retreating days, retreating plyos. And all of those things have progressions as well.

James de Lacey33:01

So, on those days, you'll be doing the change of direction work first and then doing the plyometrics after?

Jason Feairheller33:08

I incorporate it in. Very similar. So, let's say I'm doing a lateral run retreating. So, I'm performing a hip turn, I'm going backwards, and then I'm cutting back again. As if I'm going one way and somebody cuts back the other way, I got to kind of reposition and go that way.

I'll do a plyo going backwards at that same angle or close to it to try to enforce we need to attack the ground on the change of direction. We are trying to create distance, get a feeling of hitting the ground with your knee slightly bent, and knowing what that feels like. And the more you do those types of drills, just like anything, you can feel like that was a good rep. That wasn't a good rep. I was a little slow. I didn't rotate my trunk enough. I didn't get my foot in the right spot.

So, I will pair those within the drill, and I'll usually do speed drill, speed drill, plyo. Speed drill, speed drill, some sort of jump training in that same direction. Something along those lines.

James de Lacey34:12

I love that little setup, actually. I'm actually might be starting something similar in my own training. I really like that. And you obviously mentioned about deceleration, how we have similar thoughts on deceleration in terms of it being decelerate and then reaccelerate or reorientating or whatever you want to call it. Do you ever program or do you think there is a place for just pure deceleration, like straight-line deceleration training you often see within or some sports and some training?

Jason Feairheller34:39

Some, but not nearly as much as people do. Specifically, the type of sprint forward for 5, 10, maybe a 15 yd, and then just stutter step your feet to create a stop. Very, I don't want to say very rarely, but that is one of the lesser used types of deceleration.

James de Lacey34:59

Very rarely. I don't think I've ever seen it in sport.

Jason Feairheller35:03

Yeah, I mean I'm thinking in American football if a safety is coming up from a far position, and then they slow down, but I don't think they would do that exact type of thing. So, if I'm doing just deceleration work, and I'll shout out Lee Taft again. I stole this from him. Shouldn't say stole it, he gave it to me, but anyway, set up a deceleration zone where you are timing a sprint, and then they have to stop within a certain zone.

So, if you're going 5 yd, time that 5 yd sprint, but they have to stop by 7 yd. And we'll do this by stopping with the feet laterally, committing to a side just for the purposes of slowing down. Because way more often, we are slowing down not straight in front of us. It's at some angle along the way. So, we got to reorientate the feet when we stop and get used to that.

And then, let's say if we go 10 yd, maybe we allow now an extra yard to stop. So, sprint 10, stop by 13. The key though is you are timing that 10 yd sprint. Because true change of direction, and Sophia Nimphius talked about this in a 5-10-5 drill, where linear speed was still the primary factor in how well someone did within that drill. Because there's that 10-yard sprint is enough for somebody who's straight-ahead fast to make up for a poor change of direction.

So, if we timed the 2 to 3 yards prior to stopping at the line and then coming back to that same spot, that would be our true change of direction time. And that's what we would want to look at. So, it's kind of the same idea when we're doing that deceleration zone. We want someone to sprint harder through that 10 before stopping.

And even if somebody's really fast, but you notice their 10 yards is slower because they are preparing to stop quicker, now maybe we need to regress, go back to that 5-yard stop by seven because they don't have quite as much speed build up through that and then decelerate from there and progress up from there.

So, I will do that. And I'll say as far as other deceleration training goes, the end of every one of my drills, I'm having athletes slam on the brakes wherever they're going unless I'm telling them just sprint 5 yards. But if it's sprint 3 yards, go back and retreat 5 yards, all right, slam on the brakes. Great. And that's building it in every single time without having all right, we have a focused deceleration session today.

James de Lacey37:55

I like that. Actually, you brought up a blast from the past. Thanks to Fea Nymphus. Be interesting to know change of direction deficit. Is that something you've used or do use?

Jason Feairheller38:03

A little bit.

James de Lacey38:05

Wait, explain it for us. Explain it for the listeners first.

Jason Feairheller38:08

Okay. So, time someone's 10-yard sprint. This would be the easiest way to do it. Time someone's 10-yard sprint. Good. Now time a 5 yards out and back. What is that difference in time? So, obviously, you want someone's 10-yard sprint to be fast, but you also want to see as little time difference within that five out five back. Because you're comparing total distance or time, I'm sorry, total time between a linear speed and then the same distance with a change of direction. And that can tell you a lot.

Now, I'll say too, so much change of direction stuff, I'll say specifically even like deceleration stuff, is all 180 turns. Where even still in sport, we're not doing 180 turns all the time. There are so many other types of options. So, yes, I'll do some shorter change of direction tests, and I just prefer like a 357 shuttle or a 505 shuttle to a 5105 for the reasons I talked about before.

But, yeah, there's so many other options where the—And I think that's part of the reason why change of direction kind of gets ripped on is because it is hard to quantify, especially if you're talking about all of the different movement patterns, all of the potential angles, direction changes, speed going into a cut, distances, total time of the drill that you're talking about. It's just so much to say, yes, this is specifically the best drill to measure change of direction. When it really only measures one small part of all of these things.

James de Lacey40:01

Would you ever use that change of direction difference, or have you—Like, do you—Would you find any value in the information that it would give there? Would it influence programming in any way for you?

Jason Feairheller40:11

I don't think it would—It would give me value just as far as an assessment. But, it wouldn't give me value as far as how I'm programming because I still find that even if someone's good at changing direction, I've never had an athlete come in and working with pro athletes all the time, high-level Division 1 college athletes, All-Americans, come in and not have something that they could improve on change of direction-wise. Because you could always add more speed, make the coordination tougher, make the angle tougher. And how they go into that, you are just trying to minimize that actual change of direction time.

And there are—it's some of the drills are way harder than you think it would be when you start factoring in the coordination component, too. Because it's not necessarily more difficult in terms of changing direction where you might only have 2 yards before you're going into another change of direction. But that coordination of rapidly changing direction, that's where it gets a little bit tougher.

James de Lacey41:18

How does the weight room work complement—I guess I don't know if it's on those same days, the your kind of change of direction days or how do you look at the weight room to help with some of this change of direction?

Jason Feairheller41:32

A lot of athletes just have to get stronger. I mean, that's the bottom line. So, couple things that I look at. I have them go into—This is one of my favorite kind of just assessments. And this is a linear speed type of thing, but it also applies a lot to change of direction is your shin angle always dictates the direction you're going to go. I need athletes able to access that really low positive shin angle where their leg is almost horizontal or their shin to the ground.

And one of my favorite assessments is have an athlete start in a split stance, up down really slow into—I don't even want to call it a squat because they're not even hinging back. It is just hips directly over the feet and you're going straight to the ground. So, your knee's going forward a lot, really loading up the front of your legs.

And then from there a slow roll forward. And when they do that, if they're able to keep that lean, I know they have a pretty decent base level of strength. If when they go forward their hips pop up a lot and it makes a more vertical shin before they actually push forward, now I know they have a strength deficit.

So, a lot of times it's just—I mean it's—I'll do the speed work first. The plyometrics is integrated into that speed work. Then we'll go into our strength work. And it's nothing crazy. I do like Olympic lifting. I do like Olympic lifting variations. We'll do some of those. We'll run through different types of squat cycles, hex bar deadlifts. Get kids strong.

I will always incorporate some form of hamstring work into it because I do think that hamstrings are neglected sometimes in the weight room. And I'll say even hamstring specific work where I'm not trying to—I wouldn't even say like an RDL, like something even more specific to the hamstrings where yes, the hamstrings are working a ton, but I want it to be more hamstring than just glute.

James de Lacey43:38

What would be some examples?

Jason Feairheller43:40

So, I like a lot of reactive hamstring work. So, one example would be you're in a bridge position. One foot is on the wall. Just the ball of the foot is on the wall. So, ball of the foot's on the wall, shoulders are on the ground. Leg is just barely bent. And then from there, the other knee's over your chest, you're going to switch your feet up. And as you do that, just keep the ball of the foot on the wall, too.

And you're creating that kind of whipping action with the leg. So, it's not just like a punch that people talk about like, "Oh, the hammer the nail thing." No, we're not doing that. We're whipping the foot around breaking it on the wall. So, it's like a very reactive where all of a sudden the hamstring has to turn on immediately.

Some other examples would be like a hamstring drop catch where you're on—shoulders are on a plyo box. Legs on a plyo box. It's going to be kind of harder to explain. One leg is up in the air. So, one leg is bent on the box. So, the bottom of your foot's flat on the box. You push through that leg to kind of get your whole body straight in the air.

As you do that you switch your legs up. Have just your leg bent slightly so your heel hits the box in front of you. Where it's a similar thing where you're turning on turning off very quickly.

I know you've seen before probably the exercise where like someone's hanging from a bar. They have their foot on a bench or some boxes and they're pulling basically doing not just a hamstring curl but like a slightly bent leg hamstring curl essentially where they're just kind of getting into some hip extension doing that with the leg bent just a little bit. I do like that, too.

James de Lacey45:28

Nice. Yeah, there's some nice reactive hamstring exercises that I like—reactive isometrics and eccentrics, too, like in the like a single leg—I was going to say a single leg back extension or glute ham raise. Holding those positions and like doing drop catches there and stuff. Yeah, there's some really cool stuff you can do with that. That's probably neglected for other things like Nordics and like that. Just I guess maybe because it's easier to do Nordics or something.

Jason Feairheller45:54

I do prefer a longer like to train the hamstring in longer positions. So, even if I'm let's say like I'm set up to do a Nordic, but I'm really low to the ground with my chest, where maybe like 45°, maybe even a little bit lower, and I'm like holding a med ball on the ground, and that's keeping me there. And now bring the med ball to your chest and push it back to the ground while trying to hold that position would be another one.

James de Lacey46:22

That one sounds brutal, too. Are there any—You mentioned obviously you do like a lot of the traditional strength movements. Are you ever focusing on like lateral strength movements? Or lunges and all that kind of stuff as a way to—

Jason Feairheller46:33

Some. So, for the most part, it's like if I do a heavy bilateral push lift, they're doing a unilateral pulling exercise. If I do the other way, they're doing a unilateral pushing exercise. And I will get in some lateral lunges occasionally. I do love just a bunch of lunge variations, overhead walking lunges, front foot elevated split squats, and those types of things where we're getting the deeper range of the motion.

But, for the most part, I let the strength stay more general and keep the speed work a little bit more specific, where I'm thinking I'm working specific angles, and I'll say too like this isn't strength work, but it—I wouldn't necessarily say it's true jump training, either, would be jumping off of a box, so like a lateral bound off of a box, where I'm really overloading the eccentric on the landing.

Where it's not strength training in the sense of like lifting a weight, but the load is much higher. It's not—that it's not plyometric or close to it in nature. And I can do that at different angles and positions, which might be specific to the type of speed work I'm doing that day.

James de Lacey47:54

Nice. I have a final question for you. I guess a debate that's gone on forever. I think maybe it's kind of been debunked around the false step. And obviously—

Jason Feairheller48:07

Whoever says don't do that, stop training with them. They don't know what they're talking about.

James de Lacey48:13

Go into detail.

Jason Feairheller48:14

Watch any athlete in any sport. And like all right, so how would I define a false step? A false step being if I just have a square, let's just say a square around my feet and I'm standing underneath my shoulders, moving my foot out of that box anywhere would be considered a false step. Now, a lot of people talk about the false step when someone has their feet in line and they push a foot back in order to go forward.

They have a problem with that. But if someone's laterally with their feet like that and they push a foot to the outside in order to go the side, most people don't have a problem with that, which doesn't make any sense.

And if we go back to change of direction, what is the biggest factor? Striking outside your center of mass. That has to happen. And the reason for it is a couple of things. So, when you create a—when you go into a false step, you are creating a shin angle and that shin angle dictates the direction you're going to go. If my feet and my shins are vertical and I push from there, I'm not immediately dropping down. I'm taking a step or two where I'm too upright a little bit before I'm able to drop my trunk down and go from there.

The other thing too is, if our feet are closer together and we're saying don't do a false step, and this would apply more to moving laterally, if I just push to the side, let's say I push off of my—I'm going to my left and I push off of my left leg, my right leg is not going to have—there's no clearance there. I'm not going to be able to go through that other leg. I got to round my turn a little bit.

So, what the false step allows you to do, allows you to push off of one leg. That step also allows you to reorient your hips whatever direction you need to go. So, as you do that, you strike the false step, the other leg will lift up and should lift up and reposition and drive back to once again create a shin angle to accelerate. And when you do that, now we're in a good position to move anywhere. We're not pivoting our feet at all. We're able to reorient our hips any direction that we need to go.

James de Lacey50:23

Well explained. Well explained. I don't think I, I think I was, I haven't seen that debate in a long time, but as with everything, it'll come back.

Jason Feairheller50:31

Every time I make a post about it, I always get DMs.

James de Lacey50:35

Oh, okay. So, it's still alive and well then.

Jason Feairheller50:36

Alive. Actually, a long time ago, I don't know who it was. It was like somebody's burner account, had just a motorcycle picture on it. But he was like, I've been a strength coach in Division I for 30 years and this is the last straw. I can no longer follow you. I don't know who it was though, but it was kind of funny.

James de Lacey51:01

Definitely just some bot. Some bot saying I'm being ND on. That's funny, man. Yeah, it's, there's all sorts of stuff that goes around in in this kind of S&C space. It's all kind of whack and yeah, that falls through one.

Jason Feairheller51:14

It goes back to coaches not truly understanding the model of movement and what makes someone faster. They just think you're stepping in the wrong direction. That's not going to go faster. But watch any athlete, any elite athlete. If you were to coach that out of them, they would not be at the highest level because they'd be too slow.

Another good test, and this is a good test if, to just do if somebody is unsure about this. To have an athlete line up, feet in line with each other on a line. All right, tell them to not step back. Sprint forward as fast as they can. All right, and you drop a tennis ball when they do that. All right. Now just tell them, all right, I just need you, don't, as soon as I drop the ball you go and just let them react and they'll step backwards and sprint.

And it's faster. You can watch it with your eyes, it's faster.

James de Lacey52:15

For sure. For sure. And do you think there's an equivalent in lateral movement or change of direction there where maybe there's something that people try to coach out of someone?

What's that?

Jason Feairheller52:30

So it's also from a lateral stance, even with wide feet, they tell somebody to push off of the inside leg. So I'll use that example again. Say I'm going to my left. So let's say I have my feet in line, my feet wide now. So we're not talking about even doing a false step. So we'll talk about like someone stealing a base.

Now in stealing a base they're going to the right. But so feet are wide. They talk about pushing off of the left leg if I'm going to my left and crossing my right leg over rather than picking up the lead leg, the left leg in this case, and driving it back and repositioning the leg.

And it's for the same reason I talked about earlier where you have to have clearance for your right leg. Otherwise you're driving it up too high like towards your pocket to get it kind of up and over or you're rounding that turn a little bit and we're not staying in a straight line. I just saw somebody do this the other day. And I don't want to be that guy that starts like commenting on people's videos but it's, it's really driving me crazy sometimes.

And the other thing too is referring to a crossover run or referring to a lateral run as a crossover run. So, crossover run implies that my hips stay square and I am just bringing one leg in front of the other one. While my shoulders are square, my hips are square. Nobody moves like that.

When people are moving laterally and they go into let's say a lateral run, it's the shoulders, although still turned a little bit, are relatively square, but your hips actually turn to the side. I showed a post of this with Andre Iguodala playing defense on somebody where he just takes one step, reorients his hips all the way, and then stops.

It's only 3 yards, but even within that 3 yards, he doesn't do that crossover. He turns his hips, and we call it a lateral run because the legs still go. They're not actually crossing over each other. It looks as if they're just in their regular gait cycle, and then they stop.

James de Lacey54:40

So when do you use the crossover then, right? Because the crossover

Jason Feairheller54:44

You would never use a crossover.

James de Lacey54:46

Because the theory is you cover more space while keeping your stance square.

Jason Feairheller54:49

If you're really good, the only reason, so you shuffle to keep someone square in front of you. When there's too much speed, but you still need to be square to someone, now you have to go into a lateral run. If you're performing a crossover run, if you're good at shuffling, you can shuffle at just the same speed as you could a crossover run. And that allows you to stay even more square and a better position to change direction whenever you need to. So you would never actually do the crossover run.

James de Lacey55:20

Interesting. And I delete that from my memory.

I'll be crossing out of my crossover is gone. Yeah, now that makes sense.

Jason Feairheller55:29

So it's either you have shuffle or a lateral run. It's one of the two. There's no

James de Lacey55:34

Agree naturally, too, because, because you start trying to teach a crossover, it feels unnatural. It doesn't feel

Jason Feairheller55:39

Yeah, because it's like karaoke, but you're not, you just keep bringing the same leg in front all the time. That's not like a natural athletic way to move.

James de Lacey55:49

Yeah, exactly. And you can feel it, too. Like when you feel it if you do your own stuff, like, and then when you see someone in play like that, like it doesn't come back. Like they're not thinking of doing a crossover to do something. They just move as fast as they can in all those ways. Yeah. No, perfect. I appreciate you coming on coming on, Jason. Where can people find and follow you?

Jason Feairheller56:11

My name, I'll spell it. It's a long one. G A S L N Fairheller, F E A I R H E L L E R. I'm sure if you put in something close to that, it'll probably come up.

At Instagram and then multidirectionalpower.com, there's a course. There's some programs on there. Yeah, and even with any of the programs, there's like an intro video talking about a lot of things that I did about, here's how you would execute a shuffle. Here's how you'd execute a lateral run. Here's some of the things to think about when we go in to this actual program, rather than just kind of like here's all of it, try to do your best. At least it gives you some frame of reference.

James de Lacey56:55

I'll link all that up in the description for anyone who wants to to catch up with what you're doing, but appreciate you coming on.

Jason Feairheller57:02

Thank you so much. Yes, sir.