Lateral Cone Hops
Also works: Abductors · Calves · Glutes · Hamstrings · Quadriceps
A row of low cones hopped sideways, two feet together, rebounding off the floor between each one. Unlike a single bound, this is a rhythm drill: the cones force short ground contacts and constant re-loading of the ankle and adductor spring rather than one maximal effort.
Own the movement
Set up first, then execute. Every cue below is something you can check on your next set.
Before the first rep
- Set five or six low cones (15-20 cm) in a straight line, roughly 60-90 cm apart.
- Stand side-on at one end of the row, feet together, shoulders square to the front.
- Get on a surface with grip and give yourself room to run out the far end.
- Stand in a shallow athletic position with soft knees — not a deep squat, which slows the first contact.
- Decide before you start whether this pass is for rhythm or for speed, and time it if it is for speed.
Every rep
Breathing & tempo — Do not try to breathe rep by rep — a pass is over in three or four seconds. Take a breath before you start, breathe out through the pass, and recover fully before the next one. Ground contacts should be as short as you can make them.
Before you load it
- Use collapsible or soft cones. Rigid plastic cones catch a toe and put you on the floor sideways.
- Skip this if you have a current Achilles or ankle complaint — repeated stiff-ankle rebounds load exactly that tissue.
Sets, reps & load
Where to start, and what to change when it stops being hard.
Bodyweight only. Start with a line on the floor or a rolled towel instead of cones and hop over it for 10 contacts. Progress by adding cone height in 5 cm steps to about 20 cm, then by narrowing the spacing to force shorter contacts, and only then by timing the pass. Speed of contact is the goal, never height.
What goes wrong
The errors that show up most often, and the cue that fixes each one.
Move the cones closer together, to about 60 cm, so the next hop arrives before you can settle. Count the rhythm out loud so every contact happens on the beat.
Set your knee angle before the pass and hold it — pick a shallow bend and treat it as fixed hardware, so the give comes from the ankle rather than the knee. If you cannot clear the cones without dipping, the cones are too tall; drop to 10 cm and earn the height back.
Pick a point on the wall in front of you and keep your chest pointed at it for the whole pass. Twisting hands the work to the hip rotators and takes the adductors out of it.
Cap it at four to six passes with real rest between them. Ankle stiffness is a fresh-nervous-system quality; fatigued hops are just repeated impacts.
Why bother
The value is in the ground contact time. Each landing has to be turned into the next take-off in around 0.2 seconds, which is far too fast for the muscles to generate the force on their own — the Achilles and the calf-ankle complex store and return it elastically. That reactive quality is trained by short repeated contacts, not by long, powerful single jumps.
Keep the cones genuinely low, 15-20 cm, and spaced about 60-90 cm apart. Tall cones make people tuck their knees and pause on each landing, which kills the elastic quality the drill exists for. If your feet are audibly slapping down or you are sinking into a deep squat between cones, the cones are too far apart or too high.
Where it fits
Directly after the warm-up, once or twice a week, four to six passes down a row of five or six cones with 45-60 seconds rest between passes. It is a fine primer before sprinting or agility work. It is not a conditioning circuit — as soon as the rhythm goes ragged, you are collecting ankle stress without the reactive adaptation.
If this one isn't it
No kit, too hard, or too easy — here's where to go instead.
Same job, different kit
Start here instead
When this gets easy
Asked and answered
Will this actually make me faster at changing direction?
It makes the ankle stiffer and the first contact quicker, which is a real slice of a change of direction — but only a slice. A cut in sport also needs a hard single-leg deceleration and a decision, and cone hops have neither: the pattern is pre-planned and two-footed. Use them as the reactive component alongside bounds and actual reactive agility work, not as the whole answer.
Two feet or one foot?
Two feet together while you are learning the rhythm. Single-leg lateral hops are a genuine progression, but they load one adductor and one Achilles for every contact, so earn them by getting a clean, quiet, fast two-footed pass first.
Is this the same thing as a lateral bound?
No, and they train different qualities. The bound is one maximal effort with a long ground contact and a hard single-leg deceleration. Cone hops are short, repeated, low-amplitude contacts that train elastic stiffness. Most athletes want both, and doing only the bounds leaves the reactive end untrained.
Can I do these every day?
No. One or two sessions a week is right. The tissue that adapts here is tendon, which responds to quality repeated loading but needs recovery days between exposures. Daily hopping on the same ankle complex is the usual route to Achilles pain.