Why are my players fit but slow to turn?

Because conditioning and changing direction are different things. Wouter Blondeel separates high speed running, which is mostly straight-line, from explosive distance, which is accelerations and decelerations. Two other causes are common: club players rarely sprint at genuine full effort, and squads that always train on the same pitch size never get exposed to the turn. Matthew Eyles recommends varying small-sided game dimensions across the week for exactly this reason.

How do I train change of direction in field hockey?

Matthew Eyles gives it one focused slot a week, without stick and ball, so players can attack the turn properly. Train the stop as well as the turn, having players run to a point and halt dead, or halt on a command. Then progress from pre-planned to reactive, calling left or right as they arrive, and cover forwards, backwards and sideways. Mick Beunen attaches the turn to a decision by calling a number, a colour or a number of fingers.

Is deceleration a strength problem or a technique problem?

Wouter Blondeel puts technique first, then posture, then stability, and only then strength. His practical suggestion is to film players in slow motion coming from maximum speed to a stop and watch the torso and knees. Eccentric strength does matter, and weak eccentric strength limits change of direction as well as raising injury risk, but the first intervention is coaching the movement rather than going to the gym.

My players are fit but slow to turn. How do I train change of direction?

Quick answer. Fit but slow to turn usually means they have never actually trained turning. Conditioning builds the engine, and changing direction is a separate skill with its own technique, most of which lives in the deceleration nobody coaches. Give it one deliberate slot a week, without stick and ball so there is nothing to hide behind, and progress it from planned to reactive so the player is reading rather than rehearsing. Then look at your pitch sizes, because a squad that only plays small-sided games never sprints and a squad that only plays big never has to stop.

That is the short version. Here is how these coaches take it apart.

Turning is not the running half of fitness. Wouter Blondeel separates the two cleanly in Mastering Physical KPIs: “high speed running is the running on a high intensity, mostly in a straight line. The explosive distance has to do with accelerations and decelerations. So more has to do with change of directions.” A player can be excellent at one and poor at the other, and a beep test will not tell you which.

Deceleration is a technique problem before it is a strength problem. Blondeel is explicit about the order: “for me, deceleration has all to do with, first of all, technical base. Second of all, of course, it has to do with posture, and posture has to do with stability.” Which means the first intervention is not the gym.

So film it, and coach it like a skill. His suggestion costs nothing and is the most practical thing on this page: “try to take some slow mo videos, try to work on the technique, try to see, okay, what is this guy doing if he’s going from his maximum speed to a slow speed? And how does he change direction? What is going on with his torso? What is going on with his knees?”

Give it a slot, and take the stick away. Matthew Eyles is the clearest voice on the dose, in Injury Reduction Training Methods: “once a week, what does that look like? Well, just a focused moment in training, whether it’s a warm up or whatever, where we’re really forcing the athletes to change direction hard. And this has to be done progressively, but giving them that moment without stick and ball, take that away, and allow them to really attack a change of direction, expose them to those sorts of forces over time will build up that robustness.”

Train the stop, not just the turn. Eyles thinks this is the commonly missed half, and he ties it to injuries as well as speed: “the deceleration component, I think that is something that we often overlook. If you look at injuries particularly around the knee, if you want to talk about quad injuries and things like that, a lot of them happen around that deceleration moment. So training that, having your athlete run to a point and stop dead, or stop dead on a command, even better, will help.”

Then make it reactive, because a match never tells you in advance. His progression is deliberately unglamorous: “progress it from maybe non-reactive. So, okay, athlete A, you’re going to run from this cone, stop, and when I say go again you’re going to shuffle here and accelerate out. To a bit more reactive where you’re going to run to this cone, and I’m going to tell you left or right, and then you’re going to go left or right and accelerate out. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Keep it simple, but just think about it and progress it.” And it should cover every direction a game asks for: “forwards, backwards, sideways shuffling, sideways running and looking over your shoulder, running backwards to turning and accelerating out.”

Reason one your fit players are slow: they never actually sprint. Blondeel names this directly and it is uncomfortable: “most of all, I’m trying to focus the guys towards 100% sprinting. And that’s something they don’t tend to do often. In clubs, they don’t tend to do it often.” Eyles says the same thing from the other side: “fast running is not sprinting. There has to be intent there. So seeing someone run across the field at 80% is probably not enough.”

Reason two: your pitch sizes never change. This is the structural one, and it is free to fix. Eyles: “we don’t see enough variation in the sizes of the fields for your small sided games. If for whatever tactical reason you do need to only play on small fields, well, then make sure you’re getting your sprinting in somewhere else. If you’re only playing on big fields, make sure you’re getting your change of direction, your agility exposure in somewhere else as well.” Xavi Haro makes the same point as a design lever rather than a warning: “when the pitch is smaller, the amount of accelerations or decelerations will be higher. And when the pitch is longer, the amount of accelerations and decelerations will be lower. But in the amount of sprints, when the pitch is big, we will have a lot of sprints.” Your pitch dimensions are a dial. Most coaches leave it in one position all season.

Attach the turn to a decision. Mick Beunen refuses to run agility as a separate block in Physically game ready: “we mostly integrate our physical skills in the hockey, whether it’s aerobic side and anaerobic side and agility part. It’s all integrated in the hockey session.” The mechanism is simple enough to steal tomorrow: “you do agility work, you call out a number and that number makes that he has to choose one side or another. The same you can do with showing them with your fingers or with your colour.” A turn the player chose is a different skill from a turn they rehearsed.

Make it a theme for the week, not a drill. Andreu Enrich puts it best, in a masterclass on training design: “one day is focused on change of direction. So the coach says, okay, on the first training day of the week, changes of direction is the thing that we want to promote in your hockey drills, in your hockey small sided games, in everything you do. So the coaches can design tasks where there’s a high density of players in a small pitch so there’s a lot of acceleration, deceleration and change of direction.” That reframes the whole problem. You are not adding a ladder to the warm-up, you are choosing what the session is about.

The strength underneath it. Blondeel ties the two ends together: “from the strength point is the deceleration, eccentric. So it means that if a guy doesn’t have good eccentric strength, it will have disadvantages towards injuries, but also towards his change of direction.” He starts at the ankles, on the grounds that “there it starts, you have contact with the ground”. Eyles describes what the cut actually asks for: “when you plant your foot to cut and change direction, there’s a big eccentric and isometric moment there.”

The dose, in one line. Eyles: “one time a week sprinting, one time a week agility. Just make sure you’re nice and warm.”

None of this needs equipment you do not have. What these coaches give you is a way of seeing the turn, so you can tell whether your player is slow because of the engine, the technique, the strength, or because nothing in your week has ever asked them to stop hard and go the other way. Watch the sessions in full, take what fits, and change your pitch sizes.