Lateral Speed and Agility Training

Today we're going to talk about agility training.

'Agility' is one of those words that cover a variety of skills. When people talk about agility, most often they are talking about an athlete'sability to make cuts and quickly change directions.
The way I see it, the primary component to improved agility is through the development of COORDINATION.

Before you start putting team through complicated drills that have them going in ten different directions over the course of a 30-second time period, you must take a step back and address their level of coordination.

In my experience, even the best athletes have coordination problems that are so bad that it even makes me blush just to think about it.

The thing about coordination and agility is this:

The earlier you address it, the better the long-term results. If your football players don't begin developing their coordination until their mid-teens, they will be limited in the amount of progress they can make.

That's why I like to get kids started as early as possible, preferably before they hit puberty.
I'm not saying a 17 year old can't improve her agility and coordination to a significant degree, but then if she started when she was 8, she'd be much better off.

Just something to think about for those of you working at the youth levels.

OK, here is what to do...

STEP 1: Improve your teams coordination

My favorite way to both expose an athlete's lack of coordination and also develop it is through the use of an agility ladder.

You can do an infinite number of drills that focus on single leg movement, double leg, linear, lateral, backward movement, change of direction - The list goes on and on.

All of these movements will help address the types of movement they may see in their competition.

As we get those down, we implement the traditional cone drills that allow for more instruction on movement patterns that are more applicable to game situations.

But like everything else, technique is the most important skill to both teach and learn.

As I've said before, I even use agility work with my field (straight ahead speed training) athletes during the preseason as well.

Why?

When players are uncoordinated, in order to maintain balance and keep the athlete from falling down or getting hurt, the brain has to work harder.

In order to compensate for all the extra math that the brain must do instantaneously and on the fly in order to coordinate the movements of all the active muscles in the body, the body must slow way down.

This is why players often look like they are stuck in the mud during agility drills.

Well, sprinting is a highly technical activity as well. So if your players don't improve coordination and agility, their brains will have to slow the limbsdown during sprinting to compensate.

So, like with flexibility, athletes aren't being held back because of some innate lack of ability, but simply because they are only operating at 50%of their true ability.

By applying these (and all the other skills we've gone over so far) they can operate at a much higher percentage of their true ability.