Perfecting the Start to the Crossover Run

NOTE: It’s been 4 years since I’ve written anything here. Fun but time consuming process – reading over old articles and either laughing or cringing!

In the world of speed training, one of the biggest mistakes we can make as coaches is becoming a “reductionist”. Attempting to boil down a complex movement such as sprinting, shuffling, cutting, etc. into a single trainable part and expecting that to transfer can be a fools’ errand. The thought process tends to go: Observe Primary Movement à Ask what joints are moving à Determine which muscles control those joints à Create an exercise that trains these muscles or individual parts of the movement.

This can work the other way as well. We may read a piece of research, an article or blog, and take a single part of it (possibly out of context) to apply to our training and try to give it a bigger meaning than we probably should.

Having an understanding of how the nervous system works as a whole, integrated with other systems - not parts - will lead to the athlete designing your training plan for them. One great way to do this is to spend time watching competitive athletes go to work. Really, just watch. Try to avoid deciding what you as a performance coach would correct. Just watch. What did they do? Did their strategy work? If yes, why? If not, why not? Did they do everything right and just get outperformed, or did they make a trainable mistake?

I think way too often as performance coaches our automatic is that we can “fix” an athlete because we know best. But are you sure? If you’re making changes to what an athlete does – especially to movements that are specific to the field or court – you want to be sure!

In watching countless videos on social media, there might not be a better example of this than the crossover run.

First, what is the crossover?

The easiest way to explain the movement would be as a mix between a sprint and a shuffle. The lower body is sprinting, and the upper body is “shuffling” by keeping the chest square to the opponent, the ball or whatever object needs to be kept in front.

Why use it in the first place?

The crossover run is utilized mostly in defensive situations in field and court sports. It comes with two distinct advantages: 1) It’s faster than a shuffle, and if you kept shuffling your opponent would get by you, or you wouldn’t get to the ball and 2) It allows you to change directions easier than a sprint because your upper body (shoulders) is oriented in a way to allow for more efficient cuts than if you were running straight ahead.

You see this often in basketball, soccer, baseball & softball (in the outfield), lacrosse and more. It can happen for 1 short step, or over a longer distance depending on the situation.

If you watch in competition, you’ll notice that a great athlete will make this look effortless. The transition from a shuffle to a crossover, or from standing to a hard crossover, is done reactively and reflexively – two key words for the sake of training this movement.

The reason it happens reflexively is a competitive athlete is only focused on the external environment. A basketball players’ mindset might be to do whatever it takes to keep the opponent in front of her.

One mistake we see when we get to training is shifting the focus to something completely internal and taking away the reflexive nature of a crossover – becoming a reductionist and instructing the athlete to focus on a part of the movement that really shouldn’t be focused on at all.

Even worse, we see drills designed around this focus. One of my least favorite exercises (when performed incorrectly) that demonstrates this is a classic “crossover and stick”. The exercise itself can be harmless when used correctly, but when the focus is placed on the wrong part we are, at best, wasting an athletes’ time.

When observing a great crossover run, you should notice that it is initiated by a push with the outside leg. What we often see in videos is teaching a narrow stance, and coaching the athletes to pull with the inside leg. They’re also told to keep that lead toe straight ahead (perpendicular to the direction of travel).

There’s a few problems with this. First, it is extremely inefficient. Looking at this from two perspectives. First, if we pull with the front leg that means the push-off point on the lead leg is actually in front of the center of mass. This is not an effective way to work.

Second, by keeping the toes straight ahead we are taking maybe the most powerful part of our engine out of play by putting the focus on the adductors of that lead leg (very small muscles) and leaving glutes and hamstrings just hanging on for the ride. The rationale for this is often that stopping and changing directions is easier if the toe is already in the right direction for stopping.

That would be like trying to accelerate an 8 cylinder engine as fast as you could, but intentionally only using 4 because it’ll be easier to stop when you need to.

The payoff is bigger than the “risk” in this case.

So what should we see and why?

·        If starting from a static position, the movement will be initiated by the outside leg to overcome inertia. The push off point coming from behind the center of mass is much more effective.

      
     With the lead leg, you will see the foot turn out in the direction of travel. This engages the glutes and hamstrings, and opens up the lead hip to allow for better motion. We’re effectively becoming a “Sprinter” without the shoulders turning. This also allow the back leg to do its job and get the center of mass moving over the front leg, making the front leg more effective by getting the push off point more under the pelvis, like in a sprint.

     Check out this clip from maybe the best era of NBA basketball and watch Michael Jordan use a crossover run on defense twice in just a few seconds while guarding Isaiah Thomas - just start the video at the 1:47 mark

Are you sure enough in what you're teaching to tell the greatest players in the world they need to make significant changes to their footwork?

·       Just like with running, the opposite leg will push off as we better position the lead leg for the next step (swing phase and stanceàpush off).

·      The chest should stay square to the “target” (A common mistake the athlete will only turn their head

·      The motion should be fluid, aggressive and fast. Using reactive and reflexive strategies is almost always the best way to illicit this with athletes in a training setting!

The next chance you get to watch a game that has a lot of defense with reactive movement, try observing for a bit. Following the ball is a tough habit to break, but you’ll start to notice little things that can help guide your training when you follow a single athlete for a while instead!