Once my knee gets better, I’d really like to do three things:
-Get faster
-Get more agile
-Get stronger
I play football on the semi-pro level (LOUISIANA EAGLES!) and I’m [hopefully] making the transition back to running back this year. I had a dreadful season playing corner last season; although I could run with 97% of the WRs I covered, I just have no coverage ability/instincts/etc whatsoever!
So here’s my thing: would it be bad to do speed work on one day then agility stuff on the next?
Such as
Monday: Warm-up, 5xflying 50s, plyos, cool-down.
Tuesday: Warm up, pass catching drills, cone drills [many different kinds, but boiling down to running to a cone and then quickly cutting another direction], cutting drills, etc, cool down
And so on through the week
I know the CF thing is speed, tempo, speed, tempo.
The agility work doesn’t seem to be tempo at all. I’d like to seperate the two because I really want to improve speed AND agility. But if going back-to-back with speed/agility is countereffective, I guess I could just go
Monday: Speed
Tuesday: Tempo
Wednsday: Agility
Thursday: Tempo
Friday: Speed
Any thoughts? I’d really appreciate any help.
And how would weights factor in? I was thinking about going
Monday: Clean/snatch
Tuesday: Bench/squat
Weds: Rest
Thursday: Clean/Snatch
Friday: Bench/squat
I would advise you to pick up James Smith’s “Hi/Low Sequences of Programming and Organizaing Training” if you want to get into specifics of combining CFTS, Weights, agility/speed, etc… It is geared towards Football and gives quite a few templates to get started. Good read that employs CFTS and Westside methods for football guys.
I like this plan. I’m assuming this is the off season and you don’t have to worry about fitting this in with football practices.
To a large degree, agility work is acceleration (and deceleration) work. Your speed work for football will probably also focus on acceleration. I wouldn’t worry about SE too much, but depending on your particular strengths and weaknesses, you may want to do some ‘pure’ speed work (i.e. flying 20’s) on M / F
And how would weights factor in? I was thinking about going
Monday: Clean/snatch
Tuesday: Bench/squat
Weds: Rest
Thursday: Clean/Snatch
Friday: Bench/squat
I would put the weights on the same days at the speed or agility and do a whole body workout each time. That way you get three whole body workouts per week. Your exercise selection is good.
One question you might want to ask yourself is, what is agility? Is it necessary to have a complete day devoted to this training or is it going to be adequately trained with general speed training itself?
WRcortese: Thanks, I’ll look that up, sounds interesting.
xlr8: true, SE probably isn’t important for me now. The only reason it might be is I’m thinking about running in some indoor meets unattached, but that’s not really crucial or anything.
Maybe I’ll alternate between running speed twice a week and agility twice a week.
Blinky: That’s a good point. Like xl said, agility is acceleration and dxlr8tion. But the change of direction that’s going on in a football-style cone workout is different than the straight acceleration work in a track workout.
“agility” is needed…if you can do this with team practice, better, but if during the off season you cannot anything football related, good old 3 cones, shuttles etc are a must…I can feel myself much better when doing them in off season, compared to a “track only” off season…
There have been threads about this in the past, but one consensus is that agility is no more than speed work + lateral plyos. Time can be better spent working on speed, while keeping some lateral plyos in as supplementary work.
I have always been a big fan of agility drills. I think they can make you a better football player more than working on top speed or speed endurance.
However, as I have gotten more education on how to train for speed I think there is a place for both speed and agility work. As someone said earlier, I would use some flying 20s, some accel work, some plyos then either play the sport (best thing to do) or do some of the agility drills.
If you are a RB and you can find a defensive training partner, play some one on one “tag”. I have been doing this with my HSers and it is a blast - closer to “sport specific” too. We vary up the “field” and the starting positions.
Actually, I think the important part of agility work is the DEcelleration portion. Stopping quickly is not something that you train for in normal sprint workouts and it is very important for football because if you want to have sharp cuts, you have to stop going in one direction before you can start going in a different direction.