Q & A - How do you increase lateral movement

Q: My son is a pretty good athlete. He's a lacrosse mid-fielder. He has descent speed, can run forever, but he seems to lack side to side speed. As a midfielder he has to play defense which requires these shuffling side to side movements. What is the best way to get him better at running side to side

A: Good question. I actually see this quite often. As A lacrosse midfielder myself, I know what you son is going through. I think what you are getting at is whats called lateral speed & agility. The problem in most sports today is that coaches have their athletes go through drills without really teaching them how to correctly perform what the coach wants them to do.

In this case we are talking about shuffling side to side and moving laterally. What happens during practice is the coach shows the athletes how to do a drill (i.e. - run to this cone, then that one, etc...) but never instruct the athletes on how to do it. The coach just yells at the athletes and tells them to do it faster.

This drives me crazy.

In order to do something well you need to learn how to do it efficiently first. Then you can add speed of movement to it.

To answer the question about lateral speed there are a lot of details that are involved.

Instead of trying to explain in writing - check out this video clip. It should shine some light on what needs to be done in order to get you son faster side to side.