Workout Tips for Training with Ankle Weights
When it comes to training with ankle weights, we could all use a few workout tips. Let me start by saying that ankle weight training is perhaps one of the most controversial methods for improving athletic speed and power. It’s hated by doctors, loved and revered by extreme athletes. And for those wondering, I fall into the latter category.
You are not going to find any medical reasons to use or avoid ankle weights here, as I don’t really give a crap. I’ve been training with them for 15 years, and I can tell you conclusively that they offer profoundly quick changes in not only your speed, but also your psychological feeling of ease within movements, and therefore your confidence. This is something that all athletes strive for, ease of movement…lightness.
Anytime we train our bodies to perform a certain movement it takes tens of thousands of repetitions before we cease to feel like we’re ‘fighting’ our own bodies to move faster and with greater power. We know we have the potential, it is just exceedingly difficult to make consistent gains is speed and strength. Pushing ourselves mentally past speed plateaus is difficult quite frankly because we don’t know how fast we truly can become.
Ankle weights force you to perform as if you were 5 to 10 pounds heavier, and at the extremities of your body. Adding weight at the ankles puts tremendous stress on your core for stability, as well all the muscles, tendons, and ligaments of the legs and lower back. This is the reason that most doctors dissuade athletes from training with them. And I won’t lie to you, they can be dangerous.
But I’m not an idiot. I have known this since I was 14, when I first started using them. And at that time I analyzed my passion, martial arts, for movements and techniques I could perform without tearing my body to shreds. And the result was faster and stronger kicking than anyone else in my martial arts school at the time. But I believe this worked for two reasons. The first reason is because the motions I chose were not linear or snappy, and the second is because I trained at high intensity for short durations, sporadically at first. So I never trained past the point of light fatigue, so I always had full control.
After years of off-and-on training with ankle weights however, my legs were conditioned to use them regularly, and they become commonplace in my martial arts training. I wore them to improve my sprinting speed, my leaping explosion, my footwork, and the entire range of kicking techniques including ground sweeps and aerials. But a novice cannot simply put on these weights and perform their most complicated sport specific movements. They will get hurt.
And someone that is not strong and healthy, or for that matter at an intermediate to advanced level with the movements they’ll add weight to, then ankle weights can be very destructive. Beginners must start gradually and with light weights until their legs are conditioned. And they must use them in controlled movements that stress the muscles more than the joints. This takes some analysis of ones own sport. But most of us benefit from the basics; running, jumping, and basic sport specific footwork.
I love ankle weight training, and I know I’m not alone. Many doctors out there will claim this is a potentially dangerous way to train. They are right. Many doctors will say that ankle weight training is ineffective in promoting speed and power. THEY ARE WRONG. It has been incredibly beneficial in my own training and has helped me to realize speed and power I never knew I had. So the remainder of posts on this site will aim to educate the novice ankle weight wearer, and to give workout tips on how to train with ankle weights safely.
Tags: ankle weight, ankle weights, workout tips