How often do you change what you’re doing as a coach? 

Is it something you do on a year to year basis, or as new ideas come up? 

I'm constantly trying to get better, which is why I'm always changing the way I coach in order to continue making improvements, how I use data, and more.

With that said there are a lot of things that don’t need to be changed. Check out a breakdown of one of my favorite drills that we've seen a lot of success from. The 7-step projection. 

7-Step Projection
The 7-step projection is a great drill to work on to help improve acceleration. It doesn’t get all the same love as A-series, switches and the more common drills but it is really effective. 

Within the drill, each step has a different goal, so let's break it down into zones. You can think of two zones to make things easier: The first 2 steps and steps 3-7.

Before we get into those, here’s a video example of this drill if you’re not sure what's being referenced: 7-Step Projection

Notice the cones spaced over about a 10.5-11 yard period. 

Steps 0-2
This is the start phase. We’ll usually start from a 2 point stance, making sure the athlete is keeping stable hips that are facing straight ahead. 

Steps 0-2 are grouped together because they are very similar. The focus is on attacking the ground and projecting the body forward. 

Going from the starting line to step 1, the focus is projecting shoulders as far as possible. We like to tell athletes when we're training to think of it as a “two yard race”. 

In order to win a two yard race, you’d win it first with your shoulders, then be the first one back to the ground. Attack forward, first one back to the ground. That’s the focus. 

A good goal is to achieve at least 50% of velocity in the first two steps. 

Steps 3-7
Next is steps 3-7. For each step we’ll start to climb climb climb. 

So the angles will go from very acute to very vertical, the upper body will rise every step up until the end. 

We like to use the analogy of a scale. If you put a scale underneath the grass or turf, it’d read a higher number with every single step because of how hard you’re hitting the ground. 

After 3-4 steps, you’re not going to be able to hit back anymore, instead you’ll be hitting down. 

Goals
Our fastest athletes, guys like John Ross, Michael Pittman Jr, River Cracraft, they’re running about 18 MPH by step 7. The goal should be about 17.5 exiting this phase for an elite athlete. 

If you extend past this phase, and run an additional 5 steps, so steps 7-12, athletes should be hitting about 80-90% of velocity. This should be around the 20 yard line. 

Try out the 7-step projection next time you’re working on acceleration and let me know what us think!