In watching athletes do various agility drills — and seeing these drills in many videos dealing with improving speed and quickness — I wonder how many coaches think in terms of how much transfer takes place to the field or court. Have they closely examined the actions that are involved in producing speed (running) and quickness (cutting)?
If this were done, a lack of transfer and even a lack of similarity of the drills to the leg actions that occur when exhibiting speed and quickness would become obvious. To make matters worse, as these drills become more complex, they become further removed from reality. Read more… »
Agility, the ability to change direction while in motion, is a very important quality for many athletes, especially those in team and dual sports. To make such changes, you must have the ability to stop movement in one direction and initiate movement in another direction as quickly as possible.
Such changes are known as cutting actions and are the key to quickness. Very often they require very strong lateral or front and lateral movement while running forward for at least one to two steps. At times it is also necessary to reverse directions as for example forwards and backwards or side to side. Read more… »
Posted on May 25, 2008 under Agility drills |
There was a recent death of a football player who according to his teammates, did the following work out:
Mat drills which included:
Multiple agility workstations that lasted five minutes each,
Two runs on a 200 yard obstacle course.
Two timed runs from sideline to sideline,
These drills were conducted in the team’s indoor facility and came after the players lifted weights for an hour.
The problem I see with these drills is that they followed an hour long weight training program. If the weight training program consisted of maximal strength training (which it typically does) the players would be sufficiently fatigued which in turn would interfere with the speed and agility drills. Read more… »
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