Try These Agility Ladder Drills for MMA & Boxing | Phil Daru

[Music] all right what's going on guys so today i'm going to go over the foot ladder drills that i use for my combat sport athletes to help them get in and out of the pocket

and move efficiently inside the ring of the cage let's get after

all right guys now before we go on some people will call it an agility ladder some people call it a foot ladder for the sake of what we're doing i'm gonna call it a foot ladder because we're working on foot work right a lot of times people

have this misconception that the agility ladder is gonna give you overall agility now there's two ways to work agility one is from an isolated perspective the other one is more from a sport specific perspective and that's gonna help you

with your change of direction but it's also gonna help you with a reaction time now what we're going to do here though however is we're going to work on tendon stiffness we're going to work on low level plyometrics to help allow you

to be elusive and be explosive and also change direction what i mean by that is get in and out of the pocket accordingly so basically you want to have the ability to get in and out and move

fast having that quick choppy step for combat sports especially for striking so what i'm going to do is give you the main exercises that i'll go through one for our dynamic warm-up and then as we progress it on going further

for our higher plyometric movements here we go first one we're gonna do is just a single leg hop throughout the entire ladder we're gonna be working on quick twitch ability and the ability to strengthen or

stiffen up those tendons to allow you to be powerful and exposed here we go here quick and again we're maintaining that ball of the foot contact so

this is really good for dynamic warm-ups similar to jumping ropes we're gonna hit the ground and redirect keeping going all the way through so minimal ground contact okay now a lot of times i would have my

guys use this ladder and do these drills barefoot because we want to increase the strength of the intrinsic muscles of the feet if you have vivo barefoot shoes we usually have them do it in those because

it's a minimalistic shoe so again very flat so that you can feel the ground and that's really important to strengthen up the feet to allow them to have more of a base and stability and just an anchor so that they can produce force

out with their strikes so now that we went forward we're going to go lateral and we're going to push off the outside leg with this one using lateral force displacement maintaining a solid position the one thing you want to look out for is not to

rotate when you go to push so i'm keeping that same position on my body and i'm pushing through using the outside leg and making sure

again minimal ground contact time

so outside leg [Music] so again minimal ground contact stay on the balls of your feet and you want to

make sure it's simulating something like a uh just like your jumping rope so again same thing working through lateral force now we're going to switch it up now we're going to go inside leg i did outside leg now i'm going to go inside

leg so we're pushing more medially but we're catching ourselves every time i'm going to push off and as i push off i'm actually pushing off more so on the inside edge of the foot

so as i'm going to push inside edge and foot ball of the foot and big toe pressure here we go

[Music] again this is going to be a little bit harder for most people but it's going to help with stability of the hips it's also obviously going to help with the same

thing with tended stiffness it's going to strengthen up the calves it's going to strengthen up the soleus the gastroc the intrinsic muscles of the feet and then again you're working those low-level plyometrics to help

increase power over time if you look at how my foot is being placed on the floor and as i redirect i'm also strengthening up the smaller lower limb muscles this is really good when you have a post acl injury too like myself had an acl tear

if you guys don't know and i use this once my range of motion was there and once i had the strength there in the surrounding tissue i started working in these low-level plyometrics to allow me to get higher up and progress through those high-level plyometrics

like you know broad jumps and box jumps and things of that nature it's really good post-op but also really good for a dynamic warm-up and then also increasing those components when you're talking about combat sports getting in out of the pocket and moving efficiently inside the ring of the cage if you want to find

out more details on how to progress it though go ahead and check out my mentorship program or if you just want to train the program you can check out heavy hitter it's my 12-week boxing strength conditioning program for boxers so if you want to

check it out go ahead hit the link in the description find out more details all right so now what we're going to do is go into more of a double leg position and what we're going to do is i'm going to push in and out of the box each time this is again going to work that lateral force

and it's going to work the hips in general so lower limbs the same concept we want to have minimal time or minimal ground contact time that's going to elicit that plyometric response and then also we're going to work on coordination right so you want to get in and out of the box

you want to make sure that you're not hitting the ladder itself so that's one thing that i will say do not hit my ladder right a lot of people do that means they're not picking up their feet enough so we want to make sure that we

are getting in and out of that box efficiently effectively but fast all right [Music]

now moving further we're going to do two feet in one foot out i'm going to load the hip on the outside and then redirect force going laterally similar to an icky shuffle but a bigger push off i'm gonna start off here stack your

stance i'm gonna load my hip here on the group mean side i'm gonna push laterally one two big push out and then i want to coil and rotate

so i'm here i'm falling rotating loading my hip then i'm pushing hard load the hip skater style so it's similar to a skater

bound with two feet in one two lower one two load hit every box one two load one two load the hip

one two hold the head one two load the hip hop right a lot of times what i see with my combat sport athletes is they want to load the knee so they

want to load the quad in general and what you'll see is when they go to get out of that position they hit the 1-2 and then they're like this or the leg is

in front and there's a lot of pressure on the knee here they're not actively loading that hip appropriately and they're not hinging back that's the goal so we want to hinge and we want to create internal rotation

of this hip external rotation on the downside leg so you're here now as i go to push off i'm keeping big toe pressure

and i want outside edge pressure so i'm pushing off the outside edge keeping my big toe down loading from the hip

boom i push i load ir on this side er on this side so here it goes

one two low one two loads up now what we're going to do is work a little bit more on hip internal and external rotation this is very important when you're talking about pivoting

and moving but also for your strikes as i go to throw i need to have optimal hip internal rotation i need to have optimal external rotation to get out of the pocket and then move and pivot out so we're gonna do one

drill here for internal rotation and external rotation so this one is uh it's gonna require you to have loose hips but again you still need to be fast with your feet

all right so it's gonna start from the hips and again your feet need to be moving accordingly so what i'm going to do is i'm going to sit here balls of the feet and then from there i'm going to go ahead and bring my foot

back tap so again external rotation right and then i'm gonna come forward i come back i come forward what i see

wrong a lot of times these guys have tight hips and they don't return that hip into that neutral position or the squared up position so they'll go

here but they'll never come back to here it's always this and then they kind of stay here and they never fully rotate back right if you're talking about kicks you

need to have that whip so i need to be able to turn my head back so that i can throw the kick efficiently right so if i can't do that and i limit range of motion well you're going to limit force production

all right so here it goes i'm going to be here i'm back turn it all the way back over oh

yes and i know it looks like i'm dancing all right so we went external rotation now we're going to go internal rotation but we're also going to shift the hips

as we run through the ladder so with this one i'm going to start in that same squared up position and now almost like a karaoke step i'm going to bring this foot over

so i'm internally rotating the hip keeping this stance leg locked in with a slight bent of the knee just like bend over knee make sure i'm good there slight bender

than me i rotate bring this over and then push out so i'll show you again slow motion we keep this hip here

so i'm loading and almost hip shifting here this leg comes through and then push out again on the other side

i'm hip shifting loading rotating and then pushing out alright so you have multiple things going on here but if you look at it from a kicking perspective

not just boxing but kickboxing you need that mobility you need that ability to create that force to create high amounts of velocity with your hips so that your kicks can be on point and

that also you can move effectively inside the ring all right so here we go push push push push push

push push push all right guys so now we're gonna move our way into the sport specific

realm of what i do and this goes from when i'm looking at a ladder drill from a general prep perspective from a dynamic warm-up perspective i am gonna go general too specific so we did general movements

that were going to give you structural integrity is going to give you a neural response it's going to activate muscles now what we're going to do is work the particular movements that you would be doing inside of the cage or the ring

so i'm southpaw so i'm going to start off southpaw and what i'm going to do is i'm going to go ahead and move i'm going to move throughout the ladder but i'm going to get in and out of the pocket so basically i'm going to go one

foot in i'm going to push off step with this front leg first if i'm going forward i'm moving the front leg first and the back leg follows

right as i move back the back leg follows okay and i'm just gonna push and as i go to push through i'm gonna throw a jab maybe a faint or a double jab you can also throw your two at the end if you want

okay so here it goes stand on the balls of your feet we're pushing back out move the next one back out the next one back out next one back out

[Music] and back out okay that last one go ahead and throw maybe a two or three punch combination now same concept going forward so i moved back now i'm gonna go forward

through the ladder you can do this as an orthodox or a southpaw i recommend if you're an mma fighter to do both sides if you're a kickboxer do both sides boxing if you want to stay in your stance by

all means go ahead but for the most part you want to make sure that you're getting both sides evenly done just for the work and making sure that you're getting things appropriately

worked on

throughout the full spectrum okay

[Music] all right guys so that's a wrap ladder

drills for combat sports if you want to train this in a particular program go ahead check out heavy hitter it's a 12-week boxing strength conditioning program available now link is in the description if you like this video let me know by hitting the

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time peace