Training Idea's You've Never Heard Of Part 4 - Stiff As a Honeymooners

In honor of the retirement of the great 'Stiffy' Johncock or purely by coincidence, this week's post will focus on stiffness on why you actually WANT it.

Of course I couldn't be possibly talking about stiffness in the truest sense of the word as we know because stiffness in muscles and joints usually leads to extended time on the injury list so no, I am not referring to that.

What I am talking about is stiffness of the lower leg, especially the Achilles tendon.

Like all tendons, the Achilles stores energy, releasing it when you sprint or jump. Think of it as a giant rubber band.

When you pull the rubber band back (the storing energy part) you will back it back until it's as tight as you can get it without snapping and let it go all of a sudden in an attempt to get as much distance (the releasing energy part) as you can.

If you only pull it a little bit back then all the slack won't have been taken out of it and once you let it go it basically flops on the spot and drops right at your feet.

So as you can see stiffness in the lower leg area is a must to excel on the football field.

Combine this with some forefoot dominance described in my last post and you've really set yourself up to become a speed demon with a relatively low intensity and low volume meaning you can slot this into any type of program you;re doing without fear of tipping you into the overtraining box.

There is a video of some exercises you can use for stiffness below which again you'd pop into your warm up after your forefoot exercises for a couple of sets each. For toe jumps do 20 - 30 reps per set. For the line and lateral line jumps do 10 second sets counting the reps you can get in each set. For the split jumps do sets of 5 - 8 per leg.

There are plenty of exercises you can use for this and I might make a video of all of them in the future but any low level jump or hop will do hear with your main focus to keep foot deformity to a minimum like last week and also keep your knees as straight as you can so the lower leg has to do all the work.