Armas Strength and Conditioning

Keeping agility fun with this reactive multi directional drill.

Building better movers, not just faster athletes.

Today we focused on improving lateral change of direction through a simple progression.

We started with crossover mechanics to help the girls become more efficient moving and accelerating laterally. From there, we went into lateral hurdle jumps into reactive single-leg hops and bounds, challenging their ability to produce, absorb, and redirect force.

Research supports the use of plyometric training for improving change-of-direction performance, including specifically in female soccer players and female team-sport athletes (Ramirez-Campillo et al., 2020; Lin et al., 2025). (PubMed)

But soccer isn’t pre-planned. Players have to see something, make a decision, and react. That’s why we finished by putting those qualities into a fun reactive game. Research also distinguishes reactive agility from pre-planned change of direction because of the added perceptual and decision-making demands (Fiorilli et al., 2017). (PubMed)

11 months later ACL Return 💪🏻💪🏻⏳

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As a footballer, you need to learn how to use the gym to your advantage and not your disadvantage.

In another video, Nico Gonzales talks about how he was doing too much and constantly finding himself injured.

The reality is that the right exercises, at the right volume, based on your schedule and overall training load, matter.

For many players, this can seem confusing. But once you understand what to look for, it becomes much simpler.

That’s exactly why I created my Online Football Performance Community to help you understand what your body needs, how to manage your weekly training load, and how to train smarter so you can perform better and stay healthier throughout the season.

Yes, gaining size helps but only if the athlete can use that size to produce force and move efficiently.

Research consistently shows that improvements in sprinting, jumping, and match actions are more strongly linked to relative strength and rate of force development, not just increases in body mass (Suchomel et al., 2016; Comfort et al., 2014).

At the highest levels, players aren’t just getting bigger they’re getting stronger relative to their body, more explosive, and more efficient.

In elite youth football, physical development (strength, power, speed) is heavily influenced by both maturation and structured strength training, but technical performance remains less dependent on physical size alone (Malina et al., 2015; Lloyd & Oliver, 2012).

That’s why academies don’t just chase weight gain they track growth, adjust training, and develop the athlete based on where they are biologically.

Finding the right balance is everything. Knowing when to increase your training load and want to reduce your training load is everything to maximize performance and development.

If this is something you struggle with, then I know you will truly benefit from my online performance community.

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