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Agility training

The concept of agility is introduced and considered as an important component of fitness forany football player. Some common misconceptions regarding agility training are outlined andclarified. The What, Why and How of agility training are discussed and an appropriate agilitytraining programme for young athletes, including some great agility training drills and exercises,is presented.

What is agility?2.

Why is agility important in football?3.

Common misconceptions about agility4.

Agility training- the What, Why and How?5.

Agility training- Getting technical6.

Agility training programme‘Agility’

describes

the ability to react and perform a series of explosive, powerful movements in rapidsuccession in different directions (e.g. starts-stops, zigzag running and cuttingmovements).

Coordination is the basis of agility

Agility itself is an umbrella term for the many coordinative abilities that are trained when an athleteperforms agility-type movement. Agility can be broken down to coordination based elements including;

•

Balance

•

Spatial orientation (the control of the body in space)

•

Reactions

•

Rhythm

•

A sense of feeling movements (in order to choose appropriate movements).While these coordinative abilities are considered more in the relevant coordination section, anunderstanding of what is really going on when athletes perform agile movements will aid thedevelopment of appropriate agility training programmes.

The components of Agility trainingStarting

- the ability to initiate a movement, requires basic lower body strength.

Footwork

- governs all agility work and performance. Without skilled footwork; athletes cannot controltheir body, react, change direction or start a movement.

Body control and awareness

- the ability to control the body and maintain awareness of what the bodyis doing.

Reactions

- the ability to respond to a stimulus, either seen, heard or felt.

Change of direction

- the ability to move in a new direction while maintaining balance.Clearly, there is a lot more to agility training than is traditionally understood. While it might not benecessary for a coach to fully understand the breakdown of agility training, it is important that the coachhas an appreciation of the coordinative basis of agility training. Coordination underlies agility trainingand without developing good coordination from an early age an athlete will never be able to achieve agood level of agility.

Quickness

Quickness (often considered as ‘sharpness’) describes an ability to react and accelerate. Quickness relieson total body coordination, footwork, reactions, rhythm, power and strength. There is a crossoverbetween the components of quickness and the athletic components of agility.As such, athletes who are quick are likely to be more agile than those who lack quickness. Coaches oftentrain quickness and agility as two separate components of fitness (which they are) but due to thesimilarities between the two, the methods and training exercises for quickness and agility overlap. So,quickness may be considered a component of agility because being quick is a large part of being agile.Typically coaches employ agility training to develop agility and ‘Plyometric training’ to target quickness.Agility drills performed at top speed develop both agility and quickness and similarly plyometricexercises that incorporate multi-directional movement also develop agility and quickness.Specialised quickness specific ‘Plyometric training’ warrants its own section and this approach to trainingis presented and discussed as such in the relevant ‘Plyometric training’ section.

Why is agility important in football?

Football is a highly dynamic activity with a low static component. This simply means that playersperform many different movements during a match and rarely stand still. In fact, professional playershave been known to change activity every 4-6 seconds. This change in activity involves multi-directionalmovements, quick turns, sprints, stops, backpedal running, side shuffling and jumps.Elite players are reported to perform approximately 1350 of these activities during a game, includingaround 220 turns at high speed. It is clear that agility plays a vital part of football match play and as suchthe importance of agility dictates a modern approach to agility training; one based on the science of football and youth development, rather than the traditional methods of training.Such an approach facilitates optimal player development, creating more agile athletes who can competeand succeed at a higher game speed. With the evolution of football the speed of match play is everincreasing and agility is now more than ever a vital part of any player’s armoury. It is very clear that agood level of agility will help football performance but more importantly without developing agility; highlevel performance will be impossible.