I would love to start this thread to collect various expertal and non-expertal opinions about agility and first step quickness development in sports (like soccer, basketball, lacrosse, football…)
What this thread should deal with is the following:
What is agility, how it is expressed and how it is measured
What is first step quickenss (FSQ), how it is expressed and how it is measured
Structure of change of direction
Factors (motor abilities) affecting agility and FSQ
Open skill vs. closed skill
General/general spefic/specific drills to improve agility and FSQ
“Teach movements, not time movements” — Michael Boyle
“First do it right, then speed it up!” - Charlie Francis
Plyometrics and agility and FSQ
Prerequsites of agility
Quality vs. quantity approach
Techniques of agility and lateral movement (shuffle vs. side run)
Drills/poligons vs. quality learning
Yearly and long-term (career) plan for agility and FSQ development
Here are mine current opinions regarding agility development, mostly based on excellent DVD from Martin Rooney and Parisi Speed School (Agility method) — btw a must watch — Definitions: Agility is a ability of good, fluid and quick change of direction on reaction on external stimuli FSQ is a ability to initiate good, fluid and quick movement on the reaction to external stimuly, without too much adjustment, time delay and tactical information
Fundamental abilities which determine agility
Relative strength
Speed
Motor Coordination (timing)
Balance (stability)
Good motor programs (technique)
Eksplosive and elastic strength
Single leg strength
Every change of direction includes:
Acceleration (concentric strength)
Decceleration (eccentric strength)
Stopping (isometrical strength)
Re-acceleration (elastic strength)
Pre-requisites for development of agility:
Surface of support
Location of Center of Mass
Force Vectors — result of optimal relations btw surface of support and center of mass position
Couple of thoughts:
Agility development is NOT a bunch of “closed” poligons and drills
Agility development is qualitative development of movement skills (techniques) of change of direction, and development of fundamental abilities (relative strength, single leg strengh, elastic strength…) ---- the BASE for agility development/expression!!!
Agility is best developed in specific situation (playing games, sport practices) which are “open” and demands stimuli indentification, selection and programming. Chaos runs, tag games etc can serve a purpose of aglity development, while a bunch of cone drills cannot (they may develop elastic strength as fundamental ability but not agility per se)
Agility work generate great joint stress, and if athlete plays or practices a lot, then agility poligons/drill can possess great injury potention due too much of specific stress. It is better to adress fundamental skills and abilities with minimizing joint stress
OK Then Duxx … a few quick thoughts … points and questions
Agility is overrated IMO - the more I have learned the more I realsie that agility is a false concept.
General conditioning, good body control, mental alertness and good linear speed are all components of ‘Agility’ … but is agility a concept we need to isolate and train?
The ability to move the body from A to B to C in the fastest time.
‘Agility’ has nothing to do with reaction.
IMO Strength is the single biggest factor here in FSQ in true movement, but also the neural programming to utilise a concetric movement and eliminate a false first step.
In game situations though FSQ is obsolete.
What is the order of movement and what degree are we going to here?
Why?
Play the game at speed … IMO agility is often broken down far too much.
Train linear speed and then integrate linear speed into agility in game sitauations as the CNS capcity/pool is finitte … ok wrong use of terms but the trained pool is limited
One concept I do think that you haven’t looked at here and is probably the only component I am truly interested in and has been touched on in the GHR thread is decceleration and the mechanics and its neruophysiology.
I have to disagree here … agility is about movement - reaction is a different area completely
In other words you can have good agility and yet have poor reaction - no?
And again the same with FSQ … I think that many coaches fail here as they train ‘agility’ but they fail to train reaction … they continuously create situations where the players do drills that simply train movement - but not to react to situations they will meet in game time.
Agreed - but notice in this list you’ve left out reaction etc. - and rightly so!
Which is/are the most important element(s) here?
I think agility can is best trained playing games … maybe not the ‘money’ game but playing games of some sort.
Ok we know or can agree on speed, agility and the cns … but Question - what is sports ‘Quickness’ …
personally and im no expert - agility is a term coined by the industry to allow them to sell all manner of drills/cones/ladders/hurdles etc
We had endless drills where we dodged in and out and thru poles over and over and i found they helped nothing in terms of game performance. What has helped me no end is increasing my linear speed then integrating this into game performance by some basic training drills and actually playing the game itself.
There is only so much time you can spend through out the week on training each element. The skills of the game and developing linear speed have precedence for me. When i train for these i attempt to integrate as much agility work as is possible. So plyometrics especially i feel help my agility and also shuttle runs
I dont really think adding in more drills etc will necessarily help. Ill be interested to see what the more qualified minds think but for me :- play the game and get fast (getting strong is a by-product of getting fast) and you’ll improve your agility
In fact a more interesting thread might be the dangers of the overuse of SAQ and SPARQ training. For example we have generation of kids who now focus on their foot placement, who then need to retrain their hand eye coordination becuase they spend so much time with their head down watching their feet, who overtrain with excessive high intensity drills and who shorten their stride with ladder drills etc.
Also depending on the sport, often whole body coordination and control is lost.
The sad thing is actually most kids just want to play the game too and they lose interest in the training then because so much time is spent doing these drills.
No23,
I see no dissagreement btw our two… Someone can be “agile” in closed environment (agility drills etc) but can suck in real game, because is unable to read the opponents, game situation etc, thus his “agility” is of no use! Less “agile” players with great timing and experience reading opponent and game situation (selection of stimuli, appropriate reacton to stimuli) are far more better then those who are fast and agile but lack this specific ability!
My current approach to agility development is the following:
Develop fundamental abilties, like single leg strenght, eccentric strenght, balance, relative strenght, flexibility, core stability, elastic strength, SPEED…
Teach skill of change of direction with simple drills and body posture (you may disagree here), like side-falling start, broad jump-pause-sprint, shuffle-stop, side-run stop (teach balance and proper positioning) (a.k.a Parisi method)
Use the mentioned developed base with game practices to “transform” them to something usefull
Use the damn agility ladder and small hurdles only for warm-up purposes (and do not over-do it)
How do one train for lateral speed, like shuffle and side run speed?
Kazmarski mentoned Lee Taft methods… not familiar… any comments on this?
I have seen injured soccer players start speed training for a while, get back to the game in great shape with both increased speed and quickness, but because their coach thought that if not speed then at least quickness would be taken care of by the game itself, their speed and quickness (and in fact their overall fitness) detoriated as the season went on and in the following seasons they could not regain it (unless they got injured again…)
Maybe this was the result of linear aproach of planning… what about Vertical Integration (concurent): developing speed with general means in the off-season for 2-3x/w, and as season starts use more specific means to maintain it??? Are plyos done all year round?
Is there any use of aglity ladder and small hurdle drills with the kids as a mean to develop rhyth and coordination?
I am currently on opinion that this stuff can be used as a part of warm-up, instead of “agility development tool” and without too much emphasis!
From a recent Tudor Bompa’s lecture in Rome,Italy:
[i] 1.Factors which Agility and Quickness depend upon:
A.Technique of the first step
Arm leg coupling
arm action
leg reaction
Legs’ quickness depends on the quickness of the opposite arm
B.Force applied against the ground
Stronger push-off (propulsion phase)
Concentric force
Equals more powerful ground reaction
The higher the eccentric loading, the more explosive the propulsion (push-off)
2.Do you want to increase agility/quick feet?
a.Improve deceleration!
b.Improve power!
c.Low level of power = poor agility/quick feet
d.Exaggeration / repetitions of agility drills:
Adaptation = improvement
Plateau = no improvement
3.Agility Training:
Changes of Direction:
Shuttle run
Changes of direction
Misconception: - agility is developed via agility drills
- evolves from speed
Changes of direction:
Prime movers: - gastrocnemius / soleus
- tibialis anterior
- quadriceps
Deceleration: - essential for a setup stop
- mostly quadriceps
- muscles are loaded eccentrically
- store elastic energy
Acceleration: - essential m. gastrocnemius / soleus coupling
- strong push-off (propulsion) against the ground
- ground reaction
Agree. And athletes may have different strengths with respect to the different types of reactions. Some may have very fast simple reactions but not be very good at choice reactions.
For discussion…
Types of reaction (from Zbigniew Czajkowski):
Simple reaction - known response to known stimulus (sprint start)
Choice reaction - unknown signal, appropriate response (he goes left, so I go right)
Differential reaction - differentiating between very similar stimuli (is it an out pattern or an out and up?)
Reactions to a moving object - percieving and anticipating the trajectory and speed of a moving object (pursuit angles, interception point, etc.)
Switch over reaction - change of original intention while executing a foreseen action in reply to opponents unexpected movement (hot route in response to blitz)
Reaction to pre-signal - reaction to a preliminary movement that cues intentions (QB stares at reciever…CB gets a jump on the ball)
Intuitive reaction - a response based on “statistical intuition” (athlete “knows” what opponent will do based on hundreds of similar situations in practice and competition)
I would love to add a correct choice of stimuli: for example, in bball, player can watch in the opponents ball, head, chest or hip? What is better — according to my head coach hip or center of mass, because you can be fooled by ball, but not with the hip movement. Thought?
Selection of stimuli is based on EXPERIENCE, anticipation (based on good stimuli choice) is also based on EXPERIENCE ---- thus “reaction” is way too complex than reaction to simple stimuly.
Being at the right place on a right time, looking where you have to look (ambiental vs. focal vision), pickin approapriate stimuly, anticipating, not giving tactical informations (via postural adjustments and odd moves) comes with playing games on doing “chaotical” drills (open-skill drills). Then the speed, agility and other comes into equation. Thus, agility (or the ability to change direction of movement at the right time), depends on experience (upper mentioned factors) as well as on technique of change, relative trenght, elastic and eccentric strength, speed, and other factors… Opinions?
I agree with what most are saying here. The majority of training should still be spent on developing acceleration and eccentric strength(deceleration) and for the most part closed skill agility will take care of itself.
I do not however think this is always the case, as some younger, inexperienced athletes also lack basic movement coordination in the lower body. This can be addressed fairly briefly in training and can be used as part of the warm up. For intermediate/advanced athletes, this is not of concern and most of the agility will take care of itself in any skill practices and games that the athlete participates in. These will likely be more relevant anyways as the majority of sports involve mostly reading and then reacting(open skill).
One question is, how much do you think sporting activities involving open skill activities overlap? Is there a worthwhile transferance from as an example, playing basketball and defending passing routes in american football? I have heard many different opinions and think it would be an interesting thing to discuss as part of training for agility.
You are right on this. Generally one would want to watch the hips/waist as this is a better indicator of where the athlete is trying to go. Good players can make their legs/the ball appear to be going one way in order to get the other player in a bad position(too far extended in the wrong direction to react)
heh. sorry. I think we were typing our posts at about the same time. Good questions though. And you know what they say about great minds thinking alike.
