Sorry about the long subject. What are the views of the group concerning the volume of speed and agility work during spring football? What changes should be made knowing that agility work is very demanding both physically and neurologically (due to acceleration and deceleration and re-acceleration etc.)
paul
right now im doing agility/quickness twice a week (takes 30-40 minutes each session). once the season starts (early may for us up here) i will use my agility/quickness drill as a warm up before games.
we play 3 games a week (sunday around noon elite(A) divsion flag, monday evenings rec league flag and thursday evening elite(A) division touch) and i dont like just running a few laps like the other guys do for a warm up, i think thats useless personally. so ill do these for about 15-20 minutes and some short tempo work then do an shorten version of the micro stretching program.
as a side note, the monday night game (which is the least important of the 3 during the week, we use it more as a practice) is played next to a good 400m track and im planning on doing alittle over speed training after games. my plan is to use the game as a warm up, then jump over to the track, throw on the spikes and do some low volume, high intensity overspeed training. i got this idea from charlie in another thread when he mentioned that doing speed work, on a track with spikes, is basically overspeed training because its faster than we would ever go on grass wearing cleats.
Paul,
I only play one game a week (nightmare, I’m not sure how you do three!) and during the season I will put in a bit of agility work at every high intensity training session. For me, this usually means Tuesday, Thursday and before games (as part of my warm up) on Sunday. So to answer your question, I generally keep the volume at any given session pretty low but try to do it often. Agility has a high skill component so there is no sense training it if you are tired. I will always go for quality over quantity. If you feel your form slipping, stop! You will at best teach bad motor patters and at worst get injured.
Before a game, I do the same thing nightmare does…instead of jogging around the field a couple of times, I will start out with some really easy “form” cuts and low speed “walkthrough” of the plays we will be running based on the scouting report. From there I progress to full speed accellerations, then decellerations, then full speed cuts and sprints. After that, I am usually ready to run back the opening kickoff 
I do very little static stretching prior to training/games but get in a bunch of dynamic stretching over the ranges of motion that I will use during the workout/game.
I hope this helps. Good luck!
xlr8
X
is there a site/pdf file that has the dynamic stretches you do before a game?
as for playing three games a week, although there is contact in our sunday flag league (3 line men that block, 3 receivers and qb and there is a 5 yrd chuck zone off the line) there is a big diff between flag/touch and full contact. i hate to sound like randy moss here, but you learn to coast some plays and normally (esp in important games) i dont play on D so i get a good chance to rest between offensive series’. afterall, im a nightmare4d not a nightmare.on.d :o
Alright nightmare-not-on-D
Sorry, I don’t have a reference for my dynamic warmup. My dynamic stretches are mostly a conglomeration of movements that I have found effective for getting me prepared to play. Things like side-slides, carioca, various arm swings, leg swings, lunges (front and side), push ups, tumbles, and runs with various movement patterns.
The overall routine varies in duration and intensity depending on how I feel so overall it is a very intuitive thing.
Let me know if you would like more details.
xlr8