Introducing Lateral Movements to New Clients

During any training week, most of our clients will participate in some form of lateral movement training at least once.   Our sessions are approximately 90 minutes in length and the way the sessions break down goes like this:

10 minutes  - foam rolling, static stretching

15 minutes  - Dynamic Warm up

15 minutes  -   Early in week   -   Linear/Vertical plyometrics,  Linear speed work
                       Later in week  - agility ladder drills,  lateral plyometrics, lateral movement training

50 minutes   - strength and power work

This is just a template we follow for our average 12 - 15 year old client that comes to the gym 2x per week.  For our more advanced athletes that train 3 - 4x per week, their regimen might be different depending on their training cycle.

I feel that lateral movement training is one of the most neglected aspects of  strength and conditioning by a lot of coaches.   As you can see by the template above, we are not spending hours running around cones for the sake of calling it SAQ, Performance Training or whatever BS term is popular to use now.   We are giving kids the right dose of what they need to be well - rounded healthy, strong and fast athletes.  At Soar,  we have a progression of lateral plyometrics that we use to improve lateral explosiveness and deceleration.   Our lateral movements (agility) from week to week could focus on resisted movements, reaction, deceleration or a combination of all.  Typically a lateral day will consist of a few sets of lateral plyos and then 8 - 12 reps of agility work with each rep being 3 - 8 seconds long.

What about our new clients?   Do we just throw them into a class and expect them to keep up in some of our more advanced movement drills?   Absolutely not.    We make sure that the new athlete is first assessed and then prepped with some foundational lateral drills.

This first video is a clip of our two most basic lateral single leg hops.




This next video shows our basic progression for teaching lateral deceleration.


If you are training young athletes as a coach of a team or in the private sector, make sure you are introducing them to all the necessary concepts that will make them a well rounded athlete. The key is using the right progressions and applying the right dose. Remember, less is usually more! Nobody needs 30 minutes of agility ladder training.