Day Eight – Agility
Agility refers to your ability to change direction quickly.
I started coaching sports back in the early ’90s. Tennis and Lacrosse were my two biggest loves, and I not only taught them part-time but competed at a county level for tennis at 17, and I represented England in Lacrosse at 21.
Both those sports require heaps of agility training. While at university, I practised agility 3 x week, just going to fields by myself and sprinting randomly, changing direction and then sidestepping and repeating. It was also a bit like HIIT training, as I was doing 5-15 seconds of work and then having little breaks.
I didn’t have a clue about the science of agility training. I just tried replicating what I would do on a tennis court and a lacrosse pitch. Looking back, my agility was very well developed and separated me from my competitors. While I would train differently if I knew what I know now, the basic principles of what I was doing back then is still scientifically sound.
Replicating the movement, muscular and aerobic/anaerobic energy needs of the sport is a key element in training for a sport. However, this course is written for non-competitive athletes, and the best thing about not competing is that we can don’t have to be so specific with our drills; we can just focus on being a better machine for life and use the best and most fun drills from ALL sports!
There are so many fun drills from different sports I’d love to teach you. For example, the T-Drill was shown to me 20 years ago to help linebackers peel away from their man (I was an assistant coach at an American Football training camp in New York many moons ago!). Well, I used the same drill yesterday with a 61-year lady I’m helping to recover from a knee operation.
Below are some samples of agility training taken from an intensive 30-day fitness challenge I created for my often-neglected youtube channel.
The British training company, SAQ International, has great courses you can attend. Just because you are not a fitness coach/personal trainer doesn’t mean you can’t study the kind of stuff I studied! It’s terrific fun learning more about the body and movement. Failing that, one of my fave books on the subject is Training for Speed, Agility and Quickness Edited by Lee Brown & JC Santana. It’s about 20 years old now, but it’s still the best book I’ve read on this subject and full of illustrated drills. It’s also an excellent resource for outdoor agility games the whole family can play if you have kids.
See you tomorrow for the final pillar.