Kill The Trainer Game: Single Leg Balance Reactive Drill

Kill The Trainer Game: Single Leg Balance Reactive Drill is a fast-paced balance and coordination drill that tests athletes' ability to maintain balance while quickly responding to visual or auditory cues. It is an excellent drill for improving agility and footwork as well as overall coordination. The drill consists of beginning in a single-leg balance position, with the athlete reacting to either a shouted command from the trainer or quickly-moving object (such as a ball or pad). With each successful command/object

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This is Brent from the Brookbush Institute and in

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this video I'm showing you guys one of my

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favorite reactive training drills. This is single-leg balance with catch, and

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what I think you guys will find is this is one of those progressions that gets

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competitive fairly quickly. At the Brooklyn Institute, this progression goes

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all the way to something called Kill the Trainer. I'm going to have my friend, Melissa,

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come out. She's going to help me demonstrate. At first it starts with such

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a friendly game.

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I'm going to have Melissa stand on one leg. We need

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single-leg balance. This is one of those drills that people don't do enough of.

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We're on one leg way more often than people even consider: most of gait is on

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one leg, when you're walking up and down steps you're on one leg, a lot of sport

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is on one leg, and yet everybody does all these two legged activities in the gym.

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So one of our goals with this particular progression was- okay, we got the

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single-leg thing ging, and now we need this person to be able to react. They

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need to be able to react to external stimulus, which, again, think about the

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things we do on one leg: walking, stair-climbing, there's always external

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stimulus coming at you. If you're doing this on a sidewalk or a public

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stairwell, there are people coming at you. You have to be able to move and

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stabilize. So that's important.

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The second reason we started this progression was I think people think

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single leg balance is boring, which is unfortunate.

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It's really unfortunate for how important it is and it's amazing how if

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you start throwing things at somebody, they start to smile. All of a

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sudden, we play catch and we turn back into a bunch of giddy five-year-olds.

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That's how this whole thing started. We're just going to do single leg

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balance and make somebody catch, which is an external stimulus. Every time this

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ball hits Melissa's hands, muscles have to activate to keep her center, her

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center of mass, over her base of support which just got a lot smaller because

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it's one foot. Now,

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as we're throwing back and forth here, I can make things a little bit more

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complicated by throwing off center. If I throw off to one side, I get a little

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bit of frontal plane and transverse plane stimulus. I can go to the other

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side and see if one side is weaker than the other.

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Wow, Melissa's apart already. This is going to make kill the trainer really

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easy.

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Alright, notice before we get into even further progressions that Melissa

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is not wearing shoes. I prefer not to do this activity in shoes, because I don't

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want any crutch. I want Melissa to have to use her inverters, her tibialis

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posterior and tibialis anterior to maintain her medial longitudinal arch. I don't want

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an arch in her shoe doing that for her.

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I don't need a heal rise like we have in so many of our shoes. If she has a

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dorsiflexion restriction, good, make her tibialis anterior work to maintain her

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balance. Now, as you can see as we were tossing back and forth,

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usually if you start tossing off-center and making it hard on them, somehow they

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start doing it to you.

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Competition starts moving. You can even start throwing it over their head and see

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how good their core strength is, how good their shoulder extensibility is. Can they

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maintain stability while catching up there?

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And then what ends up happening is inevitably, this starts becoming

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competitive, which is where the game Kill the Trainer came in. So, rules of

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Kill the Trainer: Number One: no shoes.

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Number Two: you have to be willing to be hit in the face with a stability ball.

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Now I'm not saying I'm going to try to hit Melissa in the face with the stability

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ball, but be careful who you guys do this with. If somebody is really not cool with

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catching, they don't like things being thrown at them, they look like a person

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who if they got hit in the face with a stability ball they're going to walk

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straight over to your manager and you're going get fired, that is not the person

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to play this game with. You want the rough-and-tumble individual who's played

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sports, who knows that a stability ball isn't going to hurt them, and if they by

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chance miss with their hands as this gets more competitive and hits them in

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the face,

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they're going to brush it off. Alright, rule Number Two, I guess we're on rule

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number three. Alright, we said no shoes, got to be able to hit in the face with

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stability ball the ball has to be throwing within arm's reach.

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Alright, so that's a good pass.

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That's not right, so that's no point, no fault, because here's where the points

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come in. This is rule Number Four.

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Rule Number Four is if you touch the ground with the other foot, then the other

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person gets the point. Now that we know the rules of the game, whoever gets to

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three points first wins.

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You ready?

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It's a good idea, guys, to change up speeds, and make sure you throw all

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over at different angles, throw it up, and try to find their weaknesses. So if Melissa's

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weaker on- the ball thrown over here than she is thrown over here.

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Oh, no, we're definitely weaker on that side, so we're going to keep going to that

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side.

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Ah! Alright, Melissa just got a point.

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Alright, so that's one point. You guys can see how just "the want to try to find

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the thing that is their weakness" is probably going to help your stability

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the most. Also, the unpredictable nature and the competitive nature of this game

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is really great for reactive training. And this is the biggest point, I guarantee if

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you play this game, you will get people standing on their one leg for like

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10 minutes. No more of this "would you just do 60 seconds of single leg

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balance for me." They'll do this all day, especially if it means they can throw a

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stability ball at my head as fast as they possibly can, which is how this

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became Kill the Trainer.

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Alright, so I hope you enjoy this little progression.

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I hope you have a lot of fun. Melissa and I are going to continue this game and find

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out who wins. I don't like the look on her face, so I'm going to go ahead and end

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Kill The Trainer Game: Single Leg Balance Reactive Drill

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Kill The Trainer Game: Single Leg Balance Reactive Drill

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Any Questions, Concerns or Recommendations? Please contact us through the Support Page

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