Speed and Agility Training
Are you an athlete looking to gain the edge on your competitors or opponents in that final inning or quarter? You may be strong, your endurance may be better than your teammates, but if you are not doing speed and agility training, you open the door for them to take that final goal.
In this article, I will give some concrete tips to help you improve your speed and agility when it counts. While this guide is not an alternative to private programming, it will give you a good start towards developing better speed and agility for your sport.
Improve Maximal Strength
One of the most important ways to improve speed and agility is to improve maximal strength. Improving your maximal strength will improve your rate of force development. Rate of force development is one of the most important factors for speed and sprinting strength.
So if you want to become fast, you also need to develop your strength.
While you do not always need to max out, improving your back squat, deadlift and power clean strength with heavy singles, doubles and triples at roughly 70 to 90 percent of your 1 rep max can improve your speed for sport.
Incorporate Plyometric Training
Plyometric training can also help improve rate of force development and increase tendon and ligament stiffness. It can also make you a faster sprinter. Plyometric training should be sequential and focus on drills that overload the hip and thigh muscles.
You can click here to learn how to incorporate plyometric training.
Incorporate Sprint Training
Sprint training itself is necessary to increase speed and agility!
In the early phases of training, focus on good technique and drills to help take off speed.
You can also focus on resisted sprinting which can help you improve sprinting performance and explosiveness for sports.
In later training blocks, you can incorporate more pure sprint training into your training.
Incorporate Complex Training
Complex training is a form of speed and agility training. It involves performing one set of a heavy compound resistance exercise (i.e., back squat), followed immediately by a power exercise like sprinting, squat jumps or depth jumps.
When you perform a heavy loaded exercise, you potentiate the power exercise. You recruit a lot of motor units during the squat, and then are able to recruit more motor units during the power exercise as well.
This makes the power exercise feel easier and enables you to jump higher or sprint faster.
This type of training can help you become even more explosive and reactive.
Squat, Deadlift and Power Clean
It goes without saying that the hips and thighs are important for speed and agility. If you want to become a fast, athletic sprinter and athlete, you need to perform heavy, compound exercises that train the hips and thighs and teach them to work together.
The squat, deadlift and power clean are excellent choices to improve speed and agility!
Perform Olympic Weightlifting Exercises
Olympic lifting helps not only to build powerful, strong legs and hips but also helps you to improve power and speed.
The full snatch, clean and jerk, push jerk, power clean, snatch balance and other weightlifting exercises can help you maximize power for sport.
Even if you do not want to perform full weight lifting exercises, dumbbell variations of these movements can help you to become a more explosive athlete.
Perform Eccentric Strength Training
Changing direction, planting and cutting all have high eccentric strength requirements. That is why it is so important to perform eccentric strength training.
You can use slow and controlled tempos on the eccentric portion of many basic weight training exercises to help improve eccentric strength.
Try tempo squats, tempo RDLs and other similar exercises.
Train Explosively
While using tempo training can be helpful on the lowering portion of many lifts, you should aim to use an explosive tempo on the way up.
Even if the weight is heavy and you cannot move it quickly, you should always intend to move the weight as quickly as possible. Training with an explosive lifting cadence will help you recruit more motor units so you can get stronger and more powerful more quickly.
Incorporate Mobility Workouts
While improving mobility may not be on your priority list, it should be if you want to become fast, powerful and stay injury free. Improving your joint mobility can help you get into more efficient positions while sprinting, punting or changing direction, which can help you move better.
In contrast, poor mobility can decrease the efficiency of your movements and increase your chances of injury.
Direct Visual Focus
One simple tip to improve agility on the athletic field is to direct your visual focus to your opponent’s shoulders, trunk and hips. While your opponent may be trying to fake you out on his/her next move, Shakira was right when she said ‘the hips do not lie.’ If you can view the direction your opponent’s hips or trunk are facing, you can usually determine their next move.
Perform Change of Direction Drills
Change of direction drills are a form of speed training you cannot neglect.
Drills and assessments like the 5-0-5 Test and 5-10-5 Test can help you assess your ability to sprint before quickly changing directions.
It is important, however, not to confuse the ability to change direction with agility.
Agility is the ability to react to unknown and changing stimuli instead of preplanned changes in direction.
To really improve agility, you also need to incorporate perceptual and cognitive drills into your training.
Incorporate Perceptual Cognitive Training for Speed and Agility
Agility is the ability to think on your feet and change direction, game strategy or focus in response to real-time stimuli.
To improve agility, you will need drills that challenge you to change gears on the spot.
Drills like the Y shaped agility drill and the depth jump to agility dash are two example speed and agility training exercises.
In the first drill, you set out three pieces of tape in a Y shaped formation. The first line is 10 yards away, and then the divergent lines are each 5 yards away.
You sprint to the first line, and then a partner points a direction (right or left) for you to travel.
In the depth jump to run drill, you perform a depth jump off a box. Upon landing, a partner instructs you to either run left or right.
These drills, along with small sided games and playing your sport can help to improve your agility and ability to quickly react to external stimuli.
Perform Deceleration Drills
One key skill involved in speed and agility is deceleration. When you can decelerate better, you can instantly improve sports performance and reduce injury risk.
Here is a simple running drill to improve deceleration.
- Run at 1/2 speed, break and decelerate within 3 steps
- Run at 3/4 speed, break and decelerate within 5 steps
- Run at full speed, break and decelerate within 7 steps
Training to Improve Speed and Agility
Improving speed and agility takes a multi-faceted approach with strength training, plyometric training, sprinting, change of direction drills and agility drills.
Putting all these pieces together successfully can help you achieve speed and agility that you never thought possible.
What do you think? Do you incorporate some of these training methods to improve speed and agility? Let me know in the comments below!
