Chaos Drill. Dope for late-offseason reactive agility work. Involves a full perception-action, making this true agility. Progress by what u allow the lead athlete to do: all sprints, or sprint + backpedal + lateral + more. Can limit or open up how much field the initiator has.
Different Curvilinear options I’ve been exploring w/ Football team speed training sessions
- Slingshot Curve (Half Curve to 15yd Upright Sprint)
- Partner Reactive Slingshot Curve (Movement is initiated on “outside” guy’s movement - he has more ground to cover)
- Full Logo Curve
High School Strength Coaches —
Here’s how to build 40+ squat wedges for cheap!
Not everyone can afford 20+ $150 Prime Fitness wedges or even 20+ $50-$80 wedges from Amazon.
These have been a game-changer. Here’s how I did it.
Progressing the Squat Pattern in Youth/HS Athletes…
Here’s what I’ve found to be somewhat successful & repeatable & have built a progression system for athletes in my Facility
Technique is paramount. The previous exercise always builds into the next one
Let me know thoughts.
Thread —
10 different movement flows w/ 24 different variations that athletes can do as an active recovery routine on an “off” day, or as a warm-up before a strength session, or simply as a daily routine to improve their movement quality & mobility.
Explore your ranges!
In the high school setting, kids want to load the bar at the expense of technique.
For me, I am constantly preaching that technique comes before load. No matter what
Thats where youll end up seeing true long term progress. Staying patient and taking it slower at the beginning.
Speed + Strength training session for a sprinter
Feedback welcome.
We’ve been able to “nurse him back to health” after he came to me w/ a bad hamstring injury about a year & a half ago.
He had to take last season off. Almost ready to compete again. Pain free & sprinting fully.
Daily recap at my Training Facility
Landmines, mobility, suitcase marches, lead arm MB throws, bulgarians, jumps squats, single leg hamstring curls, copenhagens, & more 👌🏽
Female athletes need quality strength training as early as possible.
They are 4-8x more likely to tear their ACL.
HS girls should be strength (& plyos + agility) training consistently to reduce their risk!
I am partnering with Allison Pantuso, a Professional Women’s Soccer Player, for a Skills, Strength, & Speed Camp this summer!
More details coming soon. Parents or athletes, please DM me with any questions.
More info on my Instagram.
Purest form of agility training is the sport itself
These drills are one step below, but are still pretty good.
- Open ended & truly reactive (perception-action coupling)
- CREATE space or CLOSE space!
- Constraints built-in to control spacing & leverage
- Athletic development!
Kids don’t warm up before playing at the park, recess, running around at a football game…
I’ve eliminated any traditional warm-ups before any of my youth athletes’ training sessions.
We go right into tag, & then sprints. Not 1 “injury”
Warm ups are boring, & unnecessary?
If we can’t warm-up the right way, or with intentionality, then what are we doing?
The Warm-Up for any session, but for speed sessions in particular, is very important to prime the nervous system to be ready to go by the time we start our first rep.
Overhead Plate Squats are a great option in the team setting for teaching the squat pattern.
- Loaded Mobility
- Postural Strength
- Can be done with large groups
- Becomes a warm-up down the road for actual barbell squatting
- This will smoke a group of incoming freshmen
Kids will rise to the standards you set if you’re bold enough to hold them to it.
Most kids in the high school weight room want to do really well. You just have to tell them how.
Front Foot Elevated Eccentric Split Squats for the HS Football athlete
Here’s what I like:
• Hip Mobility
• Ankle Mobility (Cue knee over the toe)
• Eccentric emphasis to build control, tendon adaptation, and movement competency
• I’ll slowly progress this for several weeks
Soccer training — 11 years old
Simple & quality is all you need…
Plyometrics. Timed Sprints.
Strength —
- Front Squat (3 x 5)
- Nordics (3 x 5)
- Eccentric Chin-Ups (3 x 5)
- DB Bench Press (3 x 10)
- DB Walking Lunge (3 x 5/leg)
- Side Plank w/ Abduction (3 x 20s)
I actually don’t think 12 years old and younger athletes need to warm up at all in the traditional sense.
I’ve never seen any youth athlete ever get hurt from not warming up.
We get right into tag and that’s the warmup. Then into our work for the day.
The Recipe for Speed
Short video I made on some things I think are important to understand in speed development.
Let me know what I’m missing, working on Part 2...
I’ve found just a simple Switch Series can be helpful with youth athletes to find some rhythm, learn good positions, and can slow things down for them enough to help with arm action and posture.
March 2024 Recap at my Facility 👌🏽
SL RDL’s, front foot elevated splits, timed sprints, hill sprints, front squats, more front squats, more timed sprints, single leg box jumps, single arm DB bench, 21+ MPH sprints, & more
Offseason T&F speed & strength training for high school sprinters…
Simple training—with care, consistency, and intent—works wonders in high school.
Priority w/ these girls was exposing them to high speed running 2-3x/wk paired w/ multi-joint full body strength training.
This contrast of resisted power skips for distance + unresisted skips for distance seems to be a great potentiator on acceleration days.
He PR’d on his 20 after this complex. It was also the fastest 20yd sprint I’ve ever seen (10yd build + 10yd fly).
1.03 seconds.
Coaches —
I have a digital library of 200+ different exercises that I’ve filmed (w/ very high quality)
Strength, Plyometrics, Mobility, Speed & More
I primarily use it in my facility to demonstrate exercises to my athletes & teams
DM me if you’re interested in getting access!
I would like to make a formal announcement that I am opening a brand new, 3,000 sq.ft Training Facility in Westlake Village. God has blessed me beyond words and this is surreal... A new era is here—I can’t wait to see what happens now. It has been a long journey up to this point.
Curvilinear Sprints
These are a good way to bridge the gap between acceleration & max velocity in a short-to-long model, because we’re able to decrease overall velocity but preserve intent from the athlete.
Can control their velocity by how you set up the curvature of the rep.
@mgxcoachd
What is the point of this? And why post this video online? Does he know you posted this? How is this helping him? “Physical fitness drills?”
This is not good. We’ve got to be better. Wow.
A recipe for athletes to get faster —
1) Sprint often.
2) Understand sprint mechanics & how they can help you exert force into the ground more optimally.
3) Choose exercises in the weight room that raise the ceiling for force output, & exercises that facilitate RFD.
4) Plyos.
Three useful single leg variations.
- Modified Pistol (Tap the Heel)
- Skater Squat
- Pistol Squat (Off the Bench)
All are useful in their own context.
Imagine an athlete getting 1,000 timed sprints in 1 year…
That’s only 20 sprints per week!
At 2x per week, 10 high-speed, timed sprints per session = very reasonable.
Starting in 8th grade — that can be 5,000+ sprints by their senior year.
Long Term Athletic Development…
I’m not convinced “S&C” or “Sports Science” are as important as we think we are.
We can’t even agree on what measurements even lead to performance outcomes that matter or improve sport skill.
I’m not convinced CMJ’s and/or our “data” even tell us much about sport performance.
Jumps. Sprints. Single Leg Strength. & more.
Athletes —
Pro baseball; college football; college softball; college T&F; college lacrosse; high school soccer, t&f, football.
Building the youth athlete. Basic movement patterns. Building strength. Tempo. Control. Slowly progress over time! Paired with jumping and sprinting.
Works wonders!
(1/2) For 5 years I demonstrated exercises all day every day. With 50-100+ athletes training every day, it became too much & too exhausting. It wasn’t sustainable, at least for me.
So, I created an extensive video library of exercises & got the biggest TV I could find…
Sprints, sprints, & more sprints.
Daily recap.
Can’t get fast if you don’t run fast. Speed is the ultimate x-factor.
Timed sprints. Hill sprints. Compete sprints. Tag. Power skips.
All done on the same day at my training facility in Westlake Village, CA.
This is typically how I use my video library in my Facility to aid in athlete learning.
Don’t use it as much in a 1-on-1 setting, but much more helpful in a group & team setting when learning new exercises, reinforcing proper technique, & always having a visual for athletes.
Coaches —
I have a digital library of 200+ different exercises that I’ve filmed (w/ very high quality)
Strength, Plyometrics, Mobility, Speed & More
I primarily use it in my facility to demonstrate exercises to my athletes & teams
DM me if you’re interested in getting access!
Finished an entire week of familiarization and pre-testing for data collection for a study on the effects of sprint priming.
@HawkinDynamics
was great for our data collection.
Please keep my mom in your prayers. Her cancer continues to spread. Now to the spine, as well as increases in the size of the tumors in both the liver and the brain. God is still good.
She’s here!
Sofie Rae Quinn — 7lbs 5oz
The gift of life and the responsibility of fatherhood is so humbling. 3 kids under 4. God is good!
Mom and baby are healthy. 3rd C-Section ✅
Coaches — I made a simple but useful cheat sheet converting 10yd split times to MPH.
Makes it easy for athletes to see their MPH during a session
Feel free to download it for free (link in bio)
No chart I had seen had just split time in yards & MPH. I didn’t care about meters.
If I can make training so engaging, competitive, fun, & inviting—that kids look at it as the best part of their day, then I’m succeeding!
From how they’re greeted at the door, to how I make them feel when communicating with them, to how I challenge them, etc, then we’re winning!
3 full weeks of Pause Front Squats before regular tempo
Allowed us time to build technical work capacity, build strength, hone in on what the technique should look & feel like, & forced lower loads for intentionally slower progressive overload — which will pay off down the road!
Nothing says basketball agility like a backyard 1 on 1 “keep 1 hand on” game
Gameifying training
Constraints that can be added
- Bigger/smaller boundary
- More groups to the same rep
- More/less time
True agility here & relatively similar to the sport, esp. off-ball defense
If you can teach a high school football team to squat at full ROM with quality technique, you’re probably training better than at least 50% of everyone else.
That is a huge problem. Technique should be paramount, and it often isn’t.
I see it all the time.
True speed training requires applying force intentionally into the ground.
Here is an athlete who has a great understanding of angles, force production, & intent.
Tap dancing/ladder & speed drills for days might look productive to sport coaches but doesn’t move the needle.
Tell me if I’m wrong…
But I can’t think of anything WORSE for speed development than running up a steep sand hill.
Genuinely, can someone enlighten me?
Stride length, posture, foot strike, ground contact time, force production are all adversely effected… No?
This may be the hardest core exercise I’ve ever done
Things I like —
- Stresses anti-extension
- The weight adds external feedback as you must keep the lower back pressed into the weight to avoid over-arching
- Progressively overload this by adding tempo/iso holds/or more weight
If you’re not sprinting, you’re not speed training.
Drills get clicks, but that’s it. Use them? Sure, but..
…speed development requires actual sprinting.
High School Coaches —
I have a complete video library of exercises that is available to you.
All filmed with excellent production quality & filmed with the specific intention to use as demonstrations for athletes to see quality technique.
Send a DM if interested (affordable!)
Chins, more pro day training, filming content, 1/4 squats, curved runs, depth drops, front squats, goodbye photo, my son doing timed sprints, & more
Monthly recap of life at my Facility 👌🏽
We really appreciate
@mboyle1959
taking the time to chat with us while he’s out here in LA
We talked training facility business, coach development, the administrative side of a private facility, & of course training programming on a range of topics
Stay tuned!
@SpeedStrPodcast
Tracking & recording reps during speed training for youth/HS athletes has been very engaging for my kids that I train.
Similar to the “rank, record, publish” mantra from
@pntrack
Here’s the link (⬇️) to this MPH Calculation sheet that I made for 10yd fly times to MPH (Free)
“Agility” training is probably the most butchered quality in all of training.
The videos I see on Instagram and TikTok with THOUSANDS of likes in regards to “agility” training are absurd… Athletes are getting scammed.
God’s Plan. We are excited to announce that come September we are expecting a baby boy as the newest addition to the Quinn family... We couldn’t be happier 😊👶🏻
@samantharaequinn
is going to be the best mom in the world.
Watch Phil Mickelson’s thought process on his wedge shots. Fascinating.
Then tell me how your training program in the weight room for golfers is “sport-specific”
Id argue I want to be as general as possible for these guys, so as not to interfere with their sport skill!
HS Baseball speed & strength session.
Prioritizing high-intensity sprinting, in spikes, being timed, as well as high-quality, max-intent, well-executed movements in the weight room.
I’d like to see a presentation about: “Here’s how I screwed up; Here’s what I did wrong; Here’s what I wish I did better!”
That would be more refreshing. And more realistic. And foster better dialogue & conversations, IMO, rather than how everything is always so black & white…
Quite possibly the number 1 way to increase a young basketball athlete’s vertical jump is to have low rim dunk sessions.
- More “sport-specific”; the footwork is the exact same as the sport!
- Very fun
Probably better than any hurdle jumps, box jumps etc.
Be in prayer for my Mom, who is undergoing her 2nd surgery in the past week in an attempt to deal with liver and lung cancerous tumors that have tripled in size in the past 3 months.
1st “Summer Speed School” I hosted for youth athletes in Thousand Oaks, CA 🔥
Emphasis —
Early Acceleration
1) Projection of the Center of Mass
2) Swing Leg Retraction (“Negative Foot Speed” / pushing BACK)
Brief description of how I use Tempo Runs in my speed programming.
- Primarily restorative in both nature & function
- 70-75% effort
- Designed to also give the athlete the opportunity to rehearse the skill of upright running at lower intensities
This is “Teach Tape” for acceleration!
Phenomenal job here…
Horizontal Projection & big PUSH of the center of mass to actually cover ground, but he was able to do it without over-reaching & still “switching” the knees & ATTACKING BACK with negative foot speed behind the COM.
November 2023 Recap 🔥
Front foot elev split squats, speed RDL’s, front squats, build-ups, max velocity sprints, my kids training, vertical jumps, & more 👌🏽
One of the biggest problems I’ve seen in the high school weight room is loading the bar but ignoring the feet
Particularly, movement of the feet on the descent/ascent
The feet shouldn’t move at all, & the bar path should track over the mid-foot
Depth must be the same every rep
Training Facility Owners…
Here’s 1 helpful thing that I did early on.
Most of my referrals come from word-of-mouth.
However, in 2016, I spent $500/month for 3 months on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in order to become
#1
on Google search results in my local market.
As
@pntrack
likes to say: “Don’t burn the steak.” Just enough work to remain highly intense (in both effort & output) and of high quality. Usually means: (1) Let’s time our reps. (2) Let’s keep our reps low in volume. And (3) Let’s run as fast as humanly possible every single rep
A big problem w/ youth athletes on these is popping up & not projecting out, which is the whole point
But I think a well done job on these prone accelerations from grey shirt athlete here (college wide receiver).
@DrBradDeWeese
@EatSleepTrain_
Thoughts on how grey shirt looked?
Daily recap at my training facility (Westlake Village, CA).
Squats. Squats. More squats. Some chins. Skaters. Barbell Hip Bridge. Some Bench.
Strength matters.
Especially in Football —
HS programs neglect speed and/or only prioritize the weight room.
Speed shouldn’t be an afterthought or seen as less important than the weight room.
Any strength program should consider what stresses are being applied on the field, & plan accordingly.
Following 5 weeks of Acceleration work, I implemented light-loaded sled sprints — w/ the strategy of decreasing sled load & increasing sprint distance over a 3 wk period
It afforded us a progressive exposure to higher velocities, all while maintaining max intent from the athlete
Don’t want to “spam” this post, but, I’ve had coaches from literally all around the world get access to this library — from Iceland to Indonesia to the UK to dozens of states around the US. Pretty cool.
If you’re interested, let me know.
Coaches —
I have a digital library of 200+ different exercises that I’ve filmed (w/ very high quality)
Strength, Plyometrics, Mobility, Speed & More
I primarily use it in my facility to demonstrate exercises to my athletes & teams
DM me if you’re interested in getting access!
Pretty great shapes & pushes here on this Incline sprint
Good initial push, good scissor & push back
But, something I notice. A relatively significant “heel drop” on the ground strike
This lack of ankle/achilles stiffness could lend itself to decreased force transmission…
Pro Day training… Was a good 2 months with these guys.
Thread on my thought process —
Speed was the main priority, & everything in the weight room was about maximizing explosive power & improving the capacity to produce force in the time constraints of the vertical & the 40.
Clinic I hosted at my Facility on Nutrition for youth/HS athletes/parents.
Nutrition and proper fueling is one of the most misunderstood/confusing things for a lot of parents and athletes.
Clips from 7 speed sessions for an NFL player wanting to improve his Max Velocity. Came to me w/ that specific goal.
We had 3 weeks. Here’s some of what we did
Feedback welcome
Obviously not everything we did shown in the video, esp. all of our warm-ups (which were extensive)
April 2023 Recap 👌🏽
Deficit lunges, 40yd sprint PR’s, more podcasts, pistol squats, inverted rows, hill sprints, team training, & more
Month in the life of my Facility (Westlake Village, CA)