W-Drill

Tips

• Push through the balls of your feet when you backpedal and avoid rocking onto your heels.
• Round each cone rather than stopping dead to keep momentum flowing.
• Pump your arms in rhythm with your legs to hold speed through the transitions.
• Start at submaximal speed to groove the pattern, then build to full effort.

Variations

• Zigzag Cone Run
• Box Drill
• T-Drill
• Backpedal

Common mistakes

• The change from sprinting to backpedaling is taken by standing up and turning around, which is a different skill entirely; plant, drop the hips and travel backward still facing the same way.
• Backpedaling gets done at a jog while the forward diagonals stay hard, and since half the W is backward travel, half the drill ends up untrained.
• Steps get long on the backward diagonals, and a long reaching step backward is where heels catch and people sit down; keep the strides short and under the hips.
• The chest drifts upright on the forward runs as the legs tire, which takes the lean out of the acceleration the drill is supposed to build.
• Eyes drop to hunt for the next cone, and a lowered head while moving backward is how you trip over the cone itself; find it with a glance and keep the chin level.

Frequently asked

How many passes of the W-drill should you do when you are new to the exercise?

One trip through the W is only about ten seconds of work, so count passes rather than minutes: four to six of them, with the walk back to the start plus another 30 seconds before the next. Run the first pass at half speed to fix the pattern, then take the rest near full effort. Two or three sessions a week fits it as an agility piece, always before heavy lifting or long running. Progress by running the same passes faster, and finish when a transition turns into a shuffle.

I have no cones or a small yard. What can I do instead of the W-drill?

Five markers of any kind will do, and in a tight space a three-yard W, or a three-marker Z, keeps the transitions while losing the sprinting. With nothing to mark at all, run the pattern off a line on a court: four strides out at an angle, four backward, and repeat along the line. Better still, stand facing a partner who points left or right and sprint forward or backpedal on their call, which keeps the transitions and adds the reaction a known pattern cannot.

What is the W-drill good for, and when is it the wrong drill?

It trains the switch between running forward and moving backward while your eyes stay on the play, which is exactly what defending in basketball, soccer, tennis and football asks for. It is the wrong drill for straight-line speed, since no leg of it is long enough, and a poor conditioner, because tired transitions teach sloppy ones. Learn the backpedal on its own over ten yards first if it feels awkward, and stay off it with a sore hamstring or calf, since the reversal loads both within a stride.

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