Parallel Performance

Let’s revisit this. What are the differences between these two bound videos and why it matters with ALL field sports athletes. In case you missed it, the bottom video is more efficient and here’s the changes that have to take place.

1. Neuromuscular Coordination

Bounding improves because of motor learning — the nervous system gets better at organizing a repeated movement. Rhythm, timing, and foot strike improve simply through consistent exposure.

For young athletes, growth spurts constantly disrupt coordination. Bounding helps them recalibrate movement each time their limbs, mass, or center of gravity change.

2. Tissue Development

Coordination improves fast but tendons and connective tissues don’t. Bounding loads the Achilles, calves, hamstrings, and plantar tissues with high-speed stretch–shortening cycles, building tensile strength and elastic efficiency over months and years, not weeks.

For young athletes, this is critical. Tissue quality determines whether they can handle speed safely. Bounding needs to be year-round, not a short training block.

Even though the differences are subtle, the outcome is still noticeably different, mainly in where you feel the exercise and how you transition into the next bound.

In Video 1, the bound shows more knee extension followed by a stronger whipping motion into the ground. At the moment of impact, there’s a more demand on the hamstring, which lets you keep pulling through the ground and roll into the next bound. The quad still does some work creating a breaking mechanism as well.

In Video 2, there’s still some whip, but it’s less dominant. Here, the quads do more of the work to create braking force, and drive the push into the next bound.

To me, these differences create two separate outcomes. Neither is right or wrong but it’s important to see which pattern your athlete naturally uses and ask whether changing it would benefit them.

In my opinion an athlete who spends a lot of time squatting, lunging, or using knee-dominant patterns will likely show the second style, because that musculature is more familiar with that motion. The first style, again, places more emphasis on the hamstring at impact, creating a slightly different bounce and rhythm.