How can we increase lateral movement speed? This is potentially applicable to every dynamic sport e.g. football, basketball, tennis, squash, boxing. The below discussion applies to almost any situation where a lateral movement is intiated from a (close to) static start.
Typical lateral movements from a static position are initiated by a retraction of the target direction leg, with a push from the opposite leg. This can be seen in the movements here of an international quality goalkeeper from the English national team.
Clearly the objective here is to cover as much ground as quickly as possible. In these situations every extra cm covered in the time available, is a competitive advantage.
At professional level sports, where the margins between the best and the rest are incredibly small, every extra % improvement is crucial.
Through the application of movement methods from Eastern martial arts, the amount of ground covered can be increased by activation of the adductors during the crucial initiation phase.
In back to back testing of both methods over a 5 metre distance, the time to cover the distance was reduced by an average of 0.27 seconds. This conservatively translates to a difference of 81cm!
In reality this gap would be even greater as this was calculated using an average speed. A more realistic analysis with time splits per metre covered would provide a higher speed to calculate the difference. This would result in an even greater gap.
The application for this in competitive sports is clearly immense. After video analyses it can be seen that in a dynamic situation, typically there is some degree of adductor activation for most athletes. Though it can be greatly improved. The effect of the technique is largest the closer to a static start (or when going in an opposite direction to the desired!).
