Athlete Performance Testing - Part 8

As we touched on in our last article, the “powerline” position is crucial for fast and efficient acceleration in athletics. If your powerline breaks as you accelerate – or for that matter, if there is any accessory movement outside of the sagittal plane – we have a performance leak that needs to be addressed ASAP!

Athletes who exhibit a broken powerline position often fall into one of two categories – those with a broken powerline when starting and those who gradually break their powerline as they accelerate. In either case, there are a few handy tools we can utilize to correct these flaws and improve performance.

First up is the wall drill. This is a great exercise for teaching athletes the basic mechanics of accelerating as well as the “feel” of the powerline position. We start with positioning and progress to single, double, and triple counts, before graduating to rapid fire.

 

 

Once the athlete has mastered the wall drill, we can transition them to a harness. A harness requires considerably more concentration and core strength on the athlete’s end to make sure their body remains in the position it should be. Just was we did on the wall, we can follow a similar progression in the harness, starting with positioning and gradually incorporating marching, skipping, and finally, running.

 

 

Everything is done with a primary emphasis on positioning and core strength. Speed is important, but only when maintaining the powerline position!

Our final performance test is right around the corner! In our next article we'll introduce you to the Pro Agility test and identifying it's most common errors!

Keep Training!
Coach Anthony Colarusso and Akron General Sports Performance