The Ultimate Change of Direction Drill: From Beginner to Pro - for Players, Coaches & Physios!

yes folks how are we as you can see we are out on the pitches today and the reason for it is I wanted to take us through a very very simple change of Direction drill which you can do with your squads or individuals to help them get better at the change of Direction but it's also very very good drill for kind of return to play and Rehab settings as well but at that crucial stage of returning you back onto the pitch after injury and getting you back ready for training and matches so I'll break it down for you and we'll go through it in a sec so here's how it looks then all I'm going to be doing even as a team or as an individual I'm going to be working from this blue gate through a certain set pattern through the orange cones to the opposite Blue Gate and stop relax turn around and then go again so if I'm working with two teams one team there one team there and we're going to come into the middle and just change direction through that pattern and come out to the other side okay simple as that but obviously if I'm working as an individual like I said in one of those rehab settings return to play getting players back used to changing direction on the pitch all it' be I'd be working from here to the opposite side now best thing to do is give them a nice easy way to start so this the first time I'm doing it I'm introducing change of Direction really trying to coach say I'm working with younger players what I would try and do is give them a basic turn so a 45 degree turn to start with so something like this all I'm going to do is I'm going to go out to the front middle orange cone with a 45° turn to the right hand middle cone and just jog it through to the other side really really simple starting from the blue gate when I get out to that first one I slow my feet change direction and I just jog through so really simple 145° turn and the rest of it was just a nice simple jog as I then start start to progress it what I would do is I'd start to increase the severity and angle of those change of directions so rather than a 45° turn it might go to a 90 degree turn but what you want to try and do if you're working with youth athletes certainly if you're starting to really trying to coach the basics of change of Direction start simple start with lower angles you know 45 degree angle turns build up into those 90° turns and then you can start to add you know changeing Direction quite sharply coming back on yourself 180 degree turns things like that okay but I will show you in a second some nice easy ones that you can do and include and which will help your athletes with some coaching tips and some cues so I'm starting from back here because I want to show you how I would change direction from front on and how I would also coach it and give you the cues you can use with athletes now obviously it's really important that I don't just set this drill up and kind of give them a pattern to follow and just let them crack on willy-nilly I need to give them the coaching cues the advice so that players can change direction safely but efficiently and quickly as well so I'll show you what that looks like now how this one's going to look I'm going to start from my blue gate going to go to the very middle cone of the grid I'm going to do a 90° turn to the right hand side I'm going to do a quick left hand 90° turn as well and just jog it back around to the blue near where you are now but the cues I'm going to use certainly when I use this it's slow low and go when I change direction so obviously when I'm accelerating from the Blue Gate I'm going at a little bit of speed so in order to turn quite sharply I need to slow my body down so slow with little steps low through the turn so I'm going to load my outside leg so so in this case it's my left leg obviously you're looking from the other direction but this is my left leg here I'm loading that I'm getting low in the turn and I go and explode away hopefully you can see those steps as I do it so I accelerate get slow get low get slow get low and I just drive away and back through okay so as you can imagine if I'm doing this with the team really really simply I want the team starting from the top blue gate to kind of come down this side turn right turn left and go through now if there a team starting on this blue gate they come down on this side turn right turn left and go through so there should be no collisions in the middle I've run this drill so many times with young players older players just teaching them the basics of changing direction and I've never had any collisions today if you're sensible with the direction you give them so give it a go it's a great drill and I'll show you some more severe ones in a second right so hopefully we're remembering that slow low go phrase and if we keep repeating it to our athletes as we're working with them throughout the drill maybe do a little recap session at the end just see if they remember it kind of say you know how can we change direction efficiently hopefully they will recite that back to you which is a great sign it means they're learning but now what we've just done there is we just done two quick 90° turns so as you see I'm not getting much speed between this turn and this turn yes so how can I increase that speed how can I increase that difficulty how can I make it a little bit harder once you've kind of understood the basics well obviously I'm going to try and increase distance and I'm going to try and increase the angle at which we change direction so all this one really really simple I'm going to come to this left hand cone closest to me so the left hand cone out here I'm going to change Direction across the front of the grid and then going to hit a 90° turn here and back in but as you can see now we've doubled the distance after that first change of Direction and then we what I really want to try and encourage them to do is once they've done that slow and go phase really encourage to go you know say how quick can you get back over there okay don't just try and let your athletes jog through it because you want to encourage that intensity in the change of direction and you also want to encourage that rapid acceleration phase once they've got nice and low and they really kind of push away they get that go phase Okay so like I say left hand cone across and then back through and it will work for both sides I'll show you in a second so when I'm here I'm going to get my acceleration going I'm going to get nice and slow low and then go into this harsh 135 degree turn are you ready so I'm in I'm slowing and I'm low I'm slowing and I'm low it and I'm going away okay so again if I'm coming from this side it works still so you can have two groups of players working at the same side now you can look from the back it's exactly the same thing I'm out slow low slow low and really acceler and it's really good once to try and practice that acceleration phase as well with those harsh decelerations in four so that's a really good way of increasing the distance increasing the intensity of it now can we add in multiple different directions you know back tracks and things like that of course we can and I'll show you those now we're going to go right out to the very middle cone stop quickly and backtrack back this top middle cone okay so really simply and the same Rule still apply I'm still going to get slow I'm still going to get low and I'm going to get going but I'm just going to get going backwards this time so it's really good way of encouraging deceleration now which is an important part of change of Direction obviously cuz I I have to slow my feet but now I'm also really having to stop still to push back and work backwards so it should look something like this I'm just coming through the middle right that middle cone so I'm accelerating I'm getting slow I'm low and I'm going yeah now we can start to add in different things where we go after that as well so I'm going to go outside middle cone again and I'm going to change direction to go around the outside like I did before so I'm in here I'm accelerating I'm getting slow I'm low I'm getting going and I'm going again and I'm going really fast to join the back of the queue so now we're adding different directions in and what we can do remember if we're working with groups of athletes just be careful with the kind of pattern you give them so they can both work at the same time if you're working one to one it's great you can get really really creative and I want to show you one really good one for like a end of phase return to play sort of thing when you're getting a player back onto the pitch really close to trading really close to matches but I want to be really confident they're fully ready to go back in and handle those demands those change of Direction demands of normal matches and normal training so how do I do well I want to tr really try and increase the intensity and angle of those change of directions but also I want to increase kind of how frequent those change of Direction happen as well so you want to start grouping those change of Direction together so it becomes much harder for them and it's a much harder task than some of the earlier drills I showed you now how it's going to look I'm going to go across to the furthest right hand cone basically across this top line to the middle here across and to the outside of that furth this right hand con so we're basically getting three 135° turns in in really short succession okay so quite hard quite a high demand on the body it should look something like [Music] this and through okay so hopefully you got to see that slow logo in action if you can hear from my voice that was quite hard that was quite high intensity drill now can we add it you know add 180° turns things like that which aren't that frequent but when they do happen they're really high demand yes of course we can I'll show you how that looks again I'll do it from the top blue so this time I'm going to really try and increase that demand I'm going to go to the furthest cone away from me down the middle so the one closest to you in the middle going a 180° turn back to this Top Line a 90° turn and then I can start to add the 135s in as well so you can really start to play around with it mix it up and make it as high intensity as you would like so something like this [Music] and through the middle not easy hopefully you can hear from my voice I am a bit knackered after doing that so you don't need many reps you can really start to kind of challenge your athletes with this and you can really start to if you film it like I am here you can start to slow it down and hopefully really get to look into that slow low go face certainly on that 180° am I you know I coming low my loading that outside leg ready to push me away and obviously on the 135s as well so I think we'll do a few more of these I'll give you some more drills you can use your athletes but I'll need a rest first thanks for watching see you soon

Channel: The Physical Performance Coach

Views: 3,750

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Id: 3GTczG3CCrw

Length: 9min 15sec (555 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 20 2024