3 Things to Be A Better Athlete (and more athletic)

I’ve been doing what I do for more than a decade and the large majority of that has been independent. With that, I’ve seen my fair share of athletes, either those that walk in looking for help or those from my high school team putting in the work to get the edge on the pitch. In my experience, there are three things that can make you a better athlete going from 0 (doing nothing or minimal) to 1 and get on the path to improving as a competitor.
 
1 Explosiveness (sprints, plyos, power)- Whatever term you wish to put to this, you need it to be more athletic. Getting from A to B quickly has a ton to do with this. Good athletes can get from A to B quickly, or at least quicker than they used to be able to. Being able to do the A to B thing quickly, means you need to get to your fastest, as quickly as you can. So, you need to have good accelerators. The basics for this start with;
 
Jumps (2 legged)
Medball work
Hops (1 Legged)
Sprints
 
2 Train legs (single legs especially)- The shift away from mirror muscles in youth athlete training has come a long way, BUT there’s still plenty of way to go. Of course, you need a strong upper body to be a good athlete. Any coach out there will still tell you if you had to pick which half makes the bigger difference, it's your legs. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen folks assume someone won't be a good player because they 'appear' nonathletic (looking skinny, maybe has a gut) then they torch everyone out there. Folks didn't bother to take a gander at the tree trunks these people were sporting on the bottom half.

Get your squats and deadlifts in kids and you need, yes NEED, to do single leg variations of these too. Whether that’s a pistol squat or a simple split squat, a BB 1-leg RDL or a 1-leg bridge, it needs to be trained (and progressed) properly. Oh, and train that power stuff I mentioned above on one leg too.
 
The most common single leg variations that are trained with athletes for me are;
Bulgarian (RFE) Split Squats
Landmine 1-Leg RDL or BB 1-Leg RDL.
 
3 Train Lateral (Transverse) Plane-
 
It’s a plane not addressed enough (even with the wealth of knowledge and evidence out there), especially for athletes. Lateral strength will translate to better change of direction and less injuries, show me where the downside is on that one. Being able to brake from top speed and turn quickly? Yeah, never going to need that ever in sports…wait.

Oh yes, power should be trained in the plane too.
 
No need to complicate it either;
Lateral Lunges
Curtsy Lunges
Lateral Sled drags
Lateral Hops
 
Of course, all of the movements I named are baseline (with some exceptions) and should be progressed or/and tweaked as the situation evolves. These three things will make you a better athlete or more athletic if that's all you're looking for as well.

That is what I have for you all today fam. Appreciate the time and thanks for reading. Feel free to reach out with questions or further discussion.