Agility training

The concept of agility is introduced and considered as an important component of fitness for
any football player. Some common misconceptions regarding agility training are outlined and
clarified. The What, Why and How of agility training are discussed and an appropriate agility
training programme for young athletes, including some great agility training drills and exercises,
is presented.

1. What is agility?
2. Why is agility important in football?
3. Common misconceptions about agility
4. Agility training- the What, Why and How?
5. Agility training- Getting technical
6. Agility training programme

‘Agility’ describes the ability to react and perform a series of explosive, powerful movements in rapid
succession in different directions (e.g. starts-stops, zigzag running and cutting
movements).

Coordination is the basis of agility

Agility itself is an umbrella term for the many coordinative abilities that are trained when an athlete
performs agility-type movement. Agility can be broken down to coordination based elements including;

• Balance
• Spatial orientation (the control of the body in space)
• Reactions
• Rhythm
• A sense of feeling movements (in order to choose appropriate movements).

While these coordinative abilities are considered more in the relevant coordination section, an
understanding of what is really going on when athletes perform agile movements will aid the
development of appropriate agility training programmes.
The components of Agility training

Starting- the ability to initiate a movement, requires basic lower body strength.

Footwork- governs all agility work and performance. Without skilled footwork; athletes cannot control
their body, react, change direction or start a movement.

Body control and awareness- the ability to control the body and maintain awareness of what the body
is doing.

Reactions- the ability to respond to a stimulus, either seen, heard or felt.

Change of direction- the ability to move in a new direction while maintaining balance.

Clearly, there is a lot more to agility training than is traditionally understood. While it might not be
necessary for a coach to fully understand the breakdown of agility training, it is important that the coach
has an appreciation of the coordinative basis of agility training. Coordination underlies agility training
and without developing good coordination from an early age an athlete will never be able to achieve a
good level of agility.

Quickness

Quickness (often considered as ‘sharpness’) describes an ability to react and accelerate. Quickness relies
on total body coordination, footwork, reactions, rhythm, power and strength. There is a crossover
between the components of quickness and the athletic components of agility.

As such, athletes who are quick are likely to be more agile than those who lack quickness. Coaches often
train quickness and agility as two separate components of fitness (which they are) but due to the
similarities between the two, the methods and training exercises for quickness and agility overlap. So,
quickness may be considered a component of agility because being quick is a large part of being agile.

Typically coaches employ agility training to develop agility and ‘Plyometric training’ to target quickness.
Agility drills performed at top speed develop both agility and quickness and similarly plyometric
exercises that incorporate multi-directional movement also develop agility and quickness.

Specialised quickness specific ‘Plyometric training’ warrants its own section and this approach to training
is presented and discussed as such in the relevant ‘Plyometric training’ section.
Why is agility important in football?

Football is a highly dynamic activity with a low static component. This simply means that players
perform many different movements during a match and rarely stand still. In fact, professional players
have been known to change activity every 4-6 seconds. This change in activity involves multi-directional
movements, quick turns, sprints, stops, backpedal running, side shuffling and jumps.

Elite players are reported to perform approximately 1350 of these activities during a game, including
around 220 turns at high speed. It is clear that agility plays a vital part of football match play and as such
the importance of agility dictates a modern approach to agility training; one based on the science of
football and youth development, rather than the traditional methods of training.

Such an approach facilitates optimal player development, creating more agile athletes who can compete
and succeed at a higher game speed. With the evolution of football the speed of match play is ever
increasing and agility is now more than ever a vital part of any player’s armoury. It is very clear that a
good level of agility will help football performance but more importantly without developing agility; high
level performance will be impossible.
Common misconceptions about agility training

Fast athletes are agile athletes.

Straight line speed does not equate to multi-directional speed. While both straight sprinting and agility
require good lower body strength and power, the demands of agility; rapid starting, stopping, turning
and changing direction are much more dynamic. Agility is a distinct and very separate skill to straight
line sprinting and must be trained as such.

Athletes must feel fatigued for agility training to be effective.

This is perhaps the most common and dangerous of misconceptions held by coaches. The traditional “no
pain, no gain” philosophy insists that athletes must be worked until they show signs of extreme fatigue
and discomfort. Coaches have been known to push their athletes until they are sweating heavily or even
in drastic cases until athletes become sick.

This ‘old school’ approach is not only counterproductive to the training and athletic development of
young athletes, but also recklessly dangerous to their health. Agility is based on many coordinative
abilities and must be learnt and mastered as a movement skill long before any element of fatigue is
introduced.

Agility is inherited and can’t really be trained.

To an extent an athlete’s potential is genetically ceiled (where an athlete’s full potential is determined
by their genetic make-up). Athletes with a higher make up of fast twitch muscle will be at an advantage
over those with mainly slow twitch muscle when it comes to agility. However, agility is a coordinative
movement skill and can be learnt and developed as a skill. The deciding factor in athletic success is not
merely genetics but how close an athlete can develop their own full potential.

Athletes can develop agility through sports participation alone.

This is similar to the idea of athletes playing themselves into fitness through competition without
training. There is a school of thought that athletes can develop agility through participating in
competitive environments that demand agility.
However, agility must be trained as a skill, just as any technical skill is coached and developed. Certainly
athletes might develop a level of agility by playing a football match, reacting to opponents and
performing multi-directional movements, but without systematic, developmental training from a young
age; athletes will never develop their full potential to exhibit agility.
Agility training- The What, Why and How?

What is agility training?

Agility training is essentially strength and power training. It is not conditioning work and coaches must
understand this. Without good lower body strength athletes will fail to perform the quick starts, stops
and changes of direction characteristic of agility. Therefore it is crucial that a training programme
targeting an athlete’s agility capability involves lower body strengthening exercises.

Agile movements must be trained and mastered as skills before fatigue is introduced. Fatigue
compromises the movement skill learning and is counterproductive to agility development; instead
movements must be learned and mastered in the absence of fatigue.

It is of course quite obvious that agile movements must be performed in a fatigued state during match
play, but this is not where training agility starts. Agility training must begin with body awareness
exercises, add reactions, balance control, game situations, ball manipulation exercises and eventually
add an element of fatigue only when movements are mastered.

Developing agility is not a quick fix, but instead it is a long term training goal. Coaches should begin with
body awareness and strength training exercises. Simple body awareness exercises involve tumbles and
spins; the T-Drill spin is a prime example of a fundamental agility training exercise that targets body
awareness. Appropriate body awareness and strengthening exercises are outlined later in this section
and further strengthening exercises are presented in the relevant ‘Resistance training’ section.
Why?

Agility is a critical element of so many field sports, particularly highly dynamic sports like football. Agility
itself is a complex component of fitness made up of many intricate coordinative abilities and as a
complex component of fitness with such importance over such a wide range of activities, agility training
demands priority training from an early age in any young athletes training schedule.

Having athletes run agility drills for drills sake is a common error in many training programmes, resulting
in athletes merely improving their ability to perform drills and not develop their ability to perform agile
movements during match play. The goal of agility training must be development of smooth, efficient
movement skills that will transfer to match play giving athletes the opportunity to achieve their full
sporting potential.

How?

It is important that agility training meets the agility demands of actual match play. With this concept in
mind how an agility exercise is initiated becomes important. Often coaches will line athletes up and each
athlete will run the drill in turn, however this is hardly replicating match specific agility demands.
Athletes should be challenged to react to a stimulus and perform the agility exercise logically mimicking
match play demands as closely as possible. This stimulus to initiate or change a movement could be a
bouncing ball, the movement of a closely marked opponent or an audio cue given by the coach.
Agility- Getting technical

The importance of developing technique for agility

The many dynamic and coordinative components that make up agility present a unique challenge to the
coach. Athletes must develop and master the technical elements of agility training, just as they must
develop the technical skill required to pass, tackle or shoot.

Firstly coaches should understand and appreciate sprinting mechanics, as presented in the relevant
speed training section. Secondly, some simple, but important guidelines that the coach can deliver to
their athletes are presented below.

Visual focus is key to agility

In general athletes should keep their head up, looking straight ahead, regardless if they are moving
forwards, diagonally or laterally to the side (Exceptions arise when athletes must focus on opponents,
teammates or the ball in flight).

Movement transitions

Cutting (or quickly changing direction) should be initiated with a change in visual focus. In other words,
an athlete shuffling left who needs to quickly turn right should move their head first, focusing their eyes
straight ahead in the new direction before turning hips or torso. A coach might instruct an athlete to get
their head around to focus in the new direction of movement, letting their shoulders and hips follow.

The position of the feet while landing from a jump is also important. Athletes should turn their feet
while in mid-air so their toes point in the direction they will need to move in as they land. If athletes do
this they can move immediately as they land, without having to turn or pivot.

The arms play a vital role in agility

Quick, piston-like, arm action is the key to fast directional changes and smooth, powerful, agile
movements. Athletes should be encouraged to use their arms to push the air away behind them as they
accelerate forward. The idea that athletes are swimming through the air as they sprint is a helpful visual
image coaches may use.
Athletes performing agile movements follow the same principles as swimmers propelling themselves
forward by pushing water. The obvious difference is that water is much denser than air so swimmers
have a more demanding task, but in principle the role of the arms is just the same and just as important.
Agility training programme

The agility training drills and exercises presented in this section should be included as part of the young
athlete’s overall training schedule. The exercises provided here have been specifically designed for
young football players but the use (and usefulness) of these exercises is not restricted to football.

As with all training methods it is important that young and novice athletes form a solid foundational
level of agility, using the fundamental exercises provided, before attempting the more complex
exercises. Coaches are responsible for the safe and efficient development of the athletes they train.
Progression of agility training must only be considered once athletes have learned and mastered the
foundational agility skills. It really is a case of walking before running and coaches must understand the
fundamental importance of creating a solid athletic foundation before moving onto more complex,
dynamic activity.

The athletic skills that young athletes learn provide the platform for their sporting performance in later
life. This must be the mantra of all coaches of young athletes.

The guidelines and exercise instruction provided for the accompanying Agility training exercises must
be followed at all times.
Summary and guidelines

Agility describes the ability to react and perform a series of explosive, powerful movements in rapid
succession in different directions

Agility is basically a product of many intricate coordinative abilities working together.

Agility based movement must be trained and developed as a technical skill.

Athletes must not be fatigued with agility training.

Agility training is a long term process and must not be considered a quick fix.

The goal of agility training must be development of smooth, efficient movement skills that will transfer
to match play.

The demands of actual match play must dictate agility training.

The volume and rest periods during training should be similar to those during match play.

A good level of agility will help football performance but more importantly without developing agility
football performance and successful long term athletic development will be impossible.