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Quick question: what do you guys think about sprint deceleration as an actual exercise. I like it very much but every trainer I know swears against it. Not sure why.

I usually like to ACTIVELY decelerate after I finish my sprints. They will say you need to decelerate relaxed blah blah blah on a period of the same length your sprint had (so for 30m you will stop in 30m or maybe even more) and stuff like that.

Well I don't. I like to really load my quads during the deceleration and use it as an exercise in eccentric control and strength. I think it's just great for that. So I don't see why all the trainers are against it.

  For the most part they are probably just parrots, repeating what their coach told them 100 years ago.  There are SOME athletes who are fast enough to hurt themselves badly if they tried to rapidly decelerate after a maximal sprint over >10-15yds, but what youre proposing sounds fine for very short distance sprints.  In game situations, corner backs, wr, etc. have to stop on a dime and immediately change direction, this is a skill that needs to be trained, but not after a sprint long enough to attain max speed.

But do you see an actual use of this? Or just wasted time and effort? I feel it's great to teach you control over eccentric movements and that should be great for one-leg jumping. The more you're accustomed with controling yourself under high tension eccentrics the better you CAN be jumping off one leg.

well if you think its helping you then for sure continue to use it.  I can see how it would help with cutting/stopping/change of direction pretty well and the early part of the plant.  I havent used it enough to give you a solid answer on whether imo its really valuable or not, anytime I recommend something or take a solid stance on it, it will always be something I have used myself and/or with athletes enough to form a solid conclusion on.

   I have seen one of the high jump coaches I used to work with use a drill that we incorporated where a very short approach is followed by a pop up with the aim to jump up and back, which would be just a more aggressive form of what you are suggesting, and it was definitely a useful exercise.

I haven't done this in a while, but yes I would perform this as an actual exercise and people I trained with thought it was bad haha but I said no it's not at all. I'd decelerate after hitting MAXv. I did it mainly actually because it was fun

Nice man, glad you liked it.


I tried the rapid deceleration today and I felt a burn in my quads, even though I think I decelerated more quiclky than i ever have before. I'm definitely gonna keep it up although I may need more recovery time.


On a serious note, I've always been a risky person attempting, or at least thinking about attempting dangerous things. Also I'd like evidence that this shit is actually bad for your knees, and bending them past say 90degrees is also bad. Also if you look more closely at my first drop jump, I shift my momentum forward very quickly so the load isn't on my knees as much as it seems since I push forward with hips.

Also the goal is not to crush the ball in the eccentric pistol squats. It is simply to train the nervous system to handle large loads, and overload the movement eccentrically. The ball is a form of cheating since you use it's momentum but you will still generate more tensino than you would in a box single legged squat since the weights you use are much greater. I don't even do these anymore though. It should be a box squat on one leg on a swiss ball.

It's not the same thing as running backwards but in relation to that article it's probably eccentric/isometric