REAR CROSSES By Karen Holik and Eric Bobkowski, photos by Karen Holik 1 3 2 Footwork for Agility Every sport has some kind of footwork, agility included. Unfortunately, footwork is not given very much attention. Footwork for rear crosses is important. Good rear cross footwork will help prevent injuries and give you the best possible acceleration to the next obstacle. Figure 1 shows a rear cross using lateral motion. This particular rear cross requires you to move laterally to the left when you are cuing the cross (green handler). You should be pushing off the ball of your right foot, which would be your “push-off ” foot as you are moving laterally to the left as shown in Figure 2. This is very important. If you are flat-footed on your push-off foot (your right foot), you will have much slower acceleration. Also, when doing this type of rear cross, if you push off with your right foot, it is much quicker to put your left foot down and accelerate to the next jump. 2 4 1 5 August 12 | Clean Run 21