Agility drills as substitute for tempo

I know I have heard Charlie mention long sprint drills as a substitute for tempo. Following with this logic, would low-intensity agility drills such as bag drills and cone drills done in circuit fashion be a good substitute for tempo as they are alactic and dont tear the muscle fibers? Can this be used for athletes (not track athletes)?

What’s the goal for the “agility tempo”? In CFTS, tempo is used to facilitate recovery. One problem with using agility for this purpose is that it tends to be harder on the joints and thus may not accomplish this goal. A second problem is that athletes may be learning improper motor patterns by performing these drills at necessarily lower speeds than game speed. This could interfere with performance when they need to do it under game conditions.

On the other hand, it could be argued that tempo runs for sprinters could cause the same type of problems with respect to motor learning. However, Charlie’s sprinters didn’t seem to have any problems in this regard. Charlie?

go mon: speed acc: 30’s/thur: speed top: 60’s
go tue/fri: agility/plyos

Just a thought…

How about getting rid of linear sprints after 4 weeks of hill work and wieghts and then adding in agility work as speed work but leaving the tempo/cardio for recovery? I think Agility work needs to be done at a high speed NOT tempo speed. Doing too many agility runs back to back might make you execute them sloppy (which defeats the purpose of doing agility drills in the first place and might get you hurt)

I think COD (change of direction) work would be much more beneficial than “agility drills.” Agility drills are highly dependent on learning to do them and having good anticipation. The carry over to the field is no more than any other drill, in fact, it may be less since the speed is slower than you can actually train.

Are shuttle runs considered COD?