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- Developing Agility and Quickness
Developing Agility and Quickness
by Jay Dawes and NSCA -National Strength & Conditioning Association
Series: NSCA Sport Performance
288 Pages
The ball handler who fakes and then drives past a defender for an easy score. A pass rusher who leaves a would-be blocker in his wake on the way to sacking the quarterback. A setter who manages to maneuver both body and ball in the blink of an eye to make the perfect pass for the kill and match-winning point. These are all reasons agility and quickness are such prized physical attributes in modern sport.
Efforts to become markedly quicker or more agile, however, aren’t always successful. Genetic limitations, technical deficiencies, and inferior training activities are among the major obstacles.
Developing Agility and Quickness helps athletes blow past those barriers thanks to the top sport conditioning authority in the world, the National Strength and Conditioning Association. NSCA hand-picked its top experts to present the best training advice, drills, and programs for optimizing athletes’ linear and lateral movements. Make Developing Agility and Quickness a key part of your conditioning program, and get a step ahead of the competition.
Earn continuing education credits/units! A continuing education course and exam that uses this book is also available. It may be purchased separately or as part of a package that includes all the course materials and exam.
Chapter 1: Factors Determining Agility
Chapter 2: Factors Determining Quickness
Chapter 3: Testing Agility and Quickness
Chapter 4: Agility Drills
Chapter 5: Quickness Drills
Chapter 6: Agility and Quickness Program Design
Chapter 7: Sport-Specific Programming
ABOUT THE NSCA
The National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) is the world’s leading organization in the field of sport conditioning. Drawing on the resources and expertise of the most recognized professionals in strength training and conditioning, sport science, performance research, education, and sports medicine, the NSCA is the world’s trusted source of knowledge and training guidelines for coaches and athletes. The NSCA provides the crucial link between the lab and the field.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Jay Dawes, PhD, CSCS,*D, NSCA-CPT,*D, FNSCA, is an associate professor of strength and conditioning and the program coordinator for the masters of science in strength and conditioning program at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. He has worked as an athletic performance coordinator, strength and performance coach, personal trainer, educator, and postrehabilitation specialist for over 20 years. Dawes also frequently coaches and provides sport science support to numerous elite and professional teams and law enforcement, fire, and military groups. His primary research interests are improving and measuring performance for tactical athletes and first responders and enhancing athletic performance.
Dawes is certified by the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) as a strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS) and as a personal trainer (NSCA-CPT); by the American College of Sports Medicine as a health fitness specialist (ACSM-HFS); and by the Australian Strength and Conditioning Association as a level 2 strength and conditioning coach. He was also recognized as a fellow of the NSCA in 2009.
Dawes is the author of Complete Guide to TRX® Suspension Training (Human Kinetics, 2017) and coauthor of Maximum Interval Training (Human Kinetics, 2015), and he has written numerous book chapters and articles on improving sports and tactical performance.
He lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
“Developing Agility and Quickness bridges the gap between science and practical training for agility and quickness. It’s an invaluable resource for improved sport performance.”
Lee Brown, EdD, CSCS*D, FNSCA, FACSM -- Director of the Center for Sport Performance at California State University, Fullerton; Author of Training for Speed, Agility, and Quickness
“Developing Agility and Quickness does a great job of combining research and in-the-trenches knowledge. To help athletes be the best they can, today's coaches need to have the latest advice on training agility and quickness, which this book provides.”
Eleanor Frankel -- Editor in Chief, Training & Conditioning magazine
Warm-up methods and techniques for agility training
It is an essential and standard practice for athletes to warm up before they practice or compete. The purpose of a well-designed warm-up is to enhance performance and decrease the likelihood of injuries.
It is an essential and standard practice for athletes to warm up before they practice or compete. The purpose of a well-designed warm-up is to enhance performance and decrease the likelihood of injuries. The warm-up also provides an ideal time to learn and rehearse movement skills such as jumping, landing, accelerating, decelerating, and the other various modes of locomotion. The opportunity for mental preparation that this segment of the training session provides is equally important because it sets the tone for the work to follow. An appropriate warm-up reaps several physiological benefits that can positively affect an athlete's performance. The warm-up should increase blood flow to active muscles, raise core body temperature, enhance metabolic reactions, and disrupt temporary connective tissue bonds. These effects can aid the athlete by yielding improvements in rate-of-force development, improvements in reaction time, improved oxygen delivery to the lungs and working muscles, and improvements in acute measures of muscle strength and power. In addition, the increased production of synovial fluid located between the joints will acutely enhance the dynamic flexibility, or mobility, of the joints. Another benefit is that the warm-up helps facilitate the breakdown of glycogen, which is the source of energy most often used for exercise; this translates to more energy available for the athlete.
The mental aspect of the warm-up often does not receive the attention it deserves. The warm-up provides the perfect opportunity for athletes to shut off concerns from the outside world and concentrate on the activities that are about to commence. Effective warm-up sessions direct focus and active participation by both coaches and athletes; even responsible athletes can benefit from performing movements under the diligent eyes of the coach. This means that the coach must actively engage in cueing and teaching these movements to help athletes create the appropriate intent with each movement. For example, a coach instructing athletes on proper plyometric mechanics during a practice session might cue the athletes during a warm-up to pretend they are landing on hot coals; this image could help prepare them for quick landings and explosive takeoffs. Reinforcing proper cues during the warm-up offers a less stressful platform for learning.
Proper posture and body positioning are critical in all physical activities for optimizing performance and reducing injury risk and for maintaining body balance and the proper arrangement of supporting structures. Research supports the contention that correct posture is a prerequisite of a healthy lifestyle but today's athletes live in a world that does not necessarily promote good posture. Excessive use of phones and computers, carrying heavy school or work bags, and poor posture while studying or watching television are just a few examples of habits that prohibit the maintenance of correct posture. The warm-up offers a good opportunity to educate and then reinforce proper posture and body positioning. Here are some simple ways to address this issue.
- Keep the head up at all times and always look straight ahead.
- When landing and decelerating, hinge at the hips and do not round the back to dampen the force with the hips and knees.
- Maintain proper foot alignment and spacing when jumping and landing; for example, takeoffs from a two-footed jumping position should have the feet at hip width or slightly wider; conversely, when landing, land with both feet closer to shoulder-width distance apart.
- Distribute weight appropriately for different movements; for example, when starting mechanics from a stationary staggered stance, most of the weight should be placed on the lead leg to optimize horizontal force into the ground.
- Maintain proper shin angles, especially during the initial driving strides while accelerating. The intent should be to drive the leg back behind the body and fully extend at the hip, knee, and ankle. A significant part of this technique is to begin with a positive shin angle that is a forward tilting of the lower leg bones. A negative shin angle during initial acceleration indicates that the foot is too far in front of the body, which would create excessive braking forces during footstrike.
Because there are many important components to a typical practice or competition, it can be very challenging to coach such technical aspects after the warm-up is over, so the warm-up itself offers an excellent opportunity to refine body positioning and posture as it relates to athletic performance.
There are certain challenges and considerations that coaches must address with respect to the warm-up. For example, while it would be ideal to allow 10 to 20 minutes for the warm-up period, time constraints may reduce that period significantly in real life. Coaches often only have only 5 or 10 minutes of quality work to prepare the athletes for the ensuing practice, so they must consider several factors when determining the length of the warm-up. For example, if the agility session for the day is going to be of higher intensity, the coach may want to allow a slightly longer warm-up period to make sure that the athletes are adequately prepared for the session. It has been well established that a subnormal body temperature has an adverse effect on neuromuscular performance. In colder weather, it would therefore be prudent to minimize the time between warm-up and the agility session so that athletes will not cool down before the session begins. Conversely, research also reveals that heat stress reduces a person's ability to achieve maximal metabolic rates during exercise and that, during exercise-induced heat stress, competing metabolic and thermoregulatory demands for blood flow make it difficult to maintain an adequate cardiac output. Therefore, in warmer, more humid weather, the duration and intensity of the warm-up should be shortened to minimize the risk of fatigue and heat-related illness. Another potential obstacle during warm-ups may be space limitations. If this is an issue, it is advisable to have back-up exercises and movements that can be performed easily and safely in a small area.
Proper warm-ups should be taught in a systematic fashion. The following guidelines should be adhered to during all warm-ups.
- Begin with simple movements such as marching. Once the athletes demonstrate a level of proficiency with the marches, progress to skipping; as these simple movements become less difficult, progress the athlete to more complex movements and variations.
- Make sure that the movements are performed slowly enough to achieve an acceptable level of performance before attempting to go to full speed.
- Rehearse bilateral work before incorporating unilateral skills, especially with takeoffs and landings. Training ladders may be useful to help improve rhythm, timing, and coordination. The literature supports closed skill movements in various directions over prearranged distances to build correct movement patterns in novice athletes. After a high level of technical proficiency is attained, these tools may no longer be as beneficial from a skill development standpoint. However, they can certainly be included as part of a dynamic warm-up because they will prepare the body physiologically (e.g., increased heart rate, breathing rate, perspiration rate, etc.).
- Perform unloaded or bodyweight movements with proper movement patterns before considering adding some form of external resistance (e.g., resistance tubing). Training sessions should be performed no later than 15 minutes after termination of the warm-up. It has been demonstrated that the positive effects of warm-up begin to dissipate after 15 minutes; ideally, therefore, the athletes should be ready to practice as soon as the warm-up ends.
- Be sure to keep the warm-up appropriate to the fitness levels of the participants. The warm-up should prepare the individuals for training and/or competition without being so stressful as to cause fatigue.
Practical application of age and sex considerations
Most importantly, coaches need to ensure that content is age appropriate. For example, a group of middle school football players should not be performing the same speed and agility training tactics as professional athletes from the National Football League.
Most importantly, coaches need to ensure that content is age appropriate. For example, a group of middle school football players should not be performing the same speed and agility training tactics as professional athletes from the National Football League. Effective age-appropriate program design and implementation will contribute to athlete success in both speed and agility development. During the first window of opportunity, special attention should be paid to body awareness and body control with proper movement mechanics. Once motor skills are successfully performed, speed will develop. Therefore, a strong focus on form is crucial during the prepubescent years. Since speed has been shown to decrease during and following PHV, it is recommended that coaches incorporate speed and agility training during earlier prepubescent stages (girls: 6-8 years; boys: 7-9 years). The addition of these skills earlier in youth development may reduce speed disparities associated with the onset of PHV.
Following PHV, the second window of opportunity is characterized by increases in strength due to surges in androgens, specifically testosterone, growth hormone, and insulin-like growth factor. Strength is closely associated with speed, change of direction, and plyometric ability; therefore, the second period is critical for further improvements in speed and agility and drills that address the aforementioned should be included into the training program design.
It is important for coaches to be aware of adolescent awkwardness. Routinely monitoring stature and body weight of athletes in order to identify growth spurts may help practitioners to recognize this phase. During adolescent awkwardness, limb lengths increase but muscles have yet to reach full size or strength, which contributes to reductions in motor skill performance. Therefore, coaches may choose to spend more effort reviewing optimal movement patterns for athletes at this time. Spending more time on form and technical skill will allow the athlete to retrain the control needed to attain subsequent high levels of speed and agility. Practitioners will likely need to modify existing motor patterns with reduced loads.
Additionally, risk of injury may be heightened during PHV. For example, before PHV there is a decrease in bone mineral density, leading to increased risk of bone fractures. Further, changes in limb length and mass resulting from growth place disproportionately increased stress on muscle-tendon junctions, bone-tendon junctions, ligaments, and growth cartilage. Such imbalances, coupled with the loading demands of sport, may make the affected youth prone to musculoskeletal and overuse injuries. Increases in body mass and height of center of mass without corresponding adaptations in strength and power can lead to excessive loading on the musculoskeletal system during dynamic and reactive actions. Females, specifically, have an increased risk of knee injury due to their increasing body size without the appropriate increases in hip and knee strength to support their skeleton. Females experience a widening of the hips, thus increasing the Q angle of the knee. Larger Q angles are associated with increased pressure on the lower extremities; therefore, coaches should be sure to select biologically age-appropriate drills and encourage proper recovery.
With youth training, it is recommended that emphasis be placed upon exercise programs that promote physical development, reduce injury, and enhance fitness behaviors across the age spectrum. Long-term athlete development (LTAD) refers to the habitual development of athleticism over time to improve health and fitness, enhance physical performance, and reduce the relative risk of injury. A list of the pillars of successful LTAD is provided in table 4.2. This model emphasizes age-appropriate exercises since children's anatomy and physiology differ from those of adolescents in muscle structure, size, activation patterns, and function. Structured training that focuses on age-appropriate drills and movement patterns will provide superior results and reduce the risk of overtraining. Coaches should also educate youth about how their drills will translate into improved performance in their sport. This understanding will help motivate children and build a lifelong future of healthy and enjoyable engagement in sport and physical activity.
Sport-specific agility and quickness training for soccer
Soccer is one of the most challenging sports for which to design an agility and quickness program because it consists of almost constant movement over two 45-minute periods.
Soccer is one of the most challenging sports for which to design an agility and quickness program because it consists of almost constant movement over two 45-minute periods. Given the amount of movement, agility becomes a central element in a soccer player's effectiveness. Training that improves this capacity has the ability to enhance soccer performance significantly, contributing to improvement in all elements of play.
A key factor in developing agility is that it is very context-specific. Although fundamental movement patterns do exist, the ultimate aim of training is to enable athletes to deploy these movements effectively in a game. To this end, it is useful to think of agility as game speed (not to be confused with linear speed). Game speed can be defined as a context-specific skill, in which athletes maximize their performance by applying sport-specific movements of optimal velocity, precision, efficiency, and control in anticipation of and in response to the key perceptual stimuli and skill requirements of the game.
This definition has a number of vital messages. The first is that movement requirements are specific to a given sport, often even to a given position. For example, a goalkeeper's movement requirements are different from those of a central midfielder. Secondly, effective game speed consists of an optimal velocity that should be judged not only by maximal velocity but also by its precision, control, and efficiency. These terms are essential in the context of soccer, where movements need to be maintained for a 90-minute period. Here, the ultimate aim of the game is to express soccer skills, rather than simply to move at maximal speed. Although maximal speed is an important variable, the ability to harness speed and agility is more important for maximizing soccer performance.
Since game speed and agility are context-specific, coaches must be able to break down the movement requirements of soccer to develop an effective program. Soccer movement is intermittent, with each game featuring between 1,200 and 1,400 changes of direction. These movements vary in speed and direction, with players changing directions about every 2 to 4 seconds. Typical sprinting activities span approximately 5 to 15 meters (5.5-16.4 yd) and occur once every 30 seconds on average. The majority of playing time is spent in transitional phases, where speeds vary from walking to high-speed running. These transitional movements occur in many directions, including forward, sideways, and backward. Sprinting activities can be performed straight ahead; however, they often include some COD at the outset of the sprint or at some point during the sprint.
Program Design
Given the vast range of movement requirements across 90 minutes of play, and the different requirements of playing positions, designing soccer-specific agility sessions may be daunting. However, by analyzing the target movement specifications of the sport, coaches can classify soccer movements and put them into a basic structure for building an effective agility program.
To break down soccer movements, it is helpful to determine what athletes are trying to achieve. Coaches can effectively carry this out using target classifications. At any given time, athletes are likely attempting either to start movement or to change the direction of movement (initiation movements), trying to move at maximal velocity (actualization movements), or waiting in transition to react to a soccer-specific stimulus (transition movements). Although agility training often focuses on initiation and actualization movements, far less emphasis is placed on transition movements. Often, when these movements are trained, they are taught incorrectly, with the emphasis on movement speed rather than on control. Athletes' ability to start and move at maximal velocity often depends on being in the correct position to enable effective subsequent movement.
Effective agility training balances the requirements of the exercise and the ability of the athlete. Thus, a session designed for an elite athlete should look different from a session for a beginner. For this reason, a soccer-specific agility program should include a progression in movement challenge and complexity as athletes move through their stages of development. In the initial stages, athletes can benefit from closed drills that allow the speed of the drills to be controlled and often consist of single movement patterns (e.g., shuffling). In this stage, coaches should develop athletes' ability in all of the identified movement patterns for soccer to ensure that there are no weak links in movement ability. The following list provides the system for game-speed development, which shows stages of movement ability and application. As athletes maintain proper movement patterns at one stage, they can progress to the next level.
- Develop general and stable fundamental movement patterns.
- Develop key movement combinations, moving from closed to open drills.
- Develop sport-specific movements in game context.
- Perform sport-specific movements in game context.
As athletes develop, coaches should start to combine movement patterns in ways typical to soccer. For example, backpedal drills can conclude with sprints to the rear, to the side, or forward. These combinations are commonly seen in soccer. As athletes develop, coaches can also deploy drills that are increasingly open. Here, athletes should respond to a range of stimuli, which can become increasingly soccer-specific. For example, athletes can initiate incorporating backpedaling into a sprint drill. Next, athletes can perform a drill where they change direction in response to a coach's signal, and then in response to another athlete's movement. In this way, the movement patterns become increasingly more challenging in a way that progressively reflects the specific movement patterns found in soccer. These types of drills can include great variety in terms of distances, speeds, directions, and stimuli.
Warm-up methods and techniques for agility training
It is an essential and standard practice for athletes to warm up before they practice or compete. The purpose of a well-designed warm-up is to enhance performance and decrease the likelihood of injuries.
It is an essential and standard practice for athletes to warm up before they practice or compete. The purpose of a well-designed warm-up is to enhance performance and decrease the likelihood of injuries. The warm-up also provides an ideal time to learn and rehearse movement skills such as jumping, landing, accelerating, decelerating, and the other various modes of locomotion. The opportunity for mental preparation that this segment of the training session provides is equally important because it sets the tone for the work to follow. An appropriate warm-up reaps several physiological benefits that can positively affect an athlete's performance. The warm-up should increase blood flow to active muscles, raise core body temperature, enhance metabolic reactions, and disrupt temporary connective tissue bonds. These effects can aid the athlete by yielding improvements in rate-of-force development, improvements in reaction time, improved oxygen delivery to the lungs and working muscles, and improvements in acute measures of muscle strength and power. In addition, the increased production of synovial fluid located between the joints will acutely enhance the dynamic flexibility, or mobility, of the joints. Another benefit is that the warm-up helps facilitate the breakdown of glycogen, which is the source of energy most often used for exercise; this translates to more energy available for the athlete.
The mental aspect of the warm-up often does not receive the attention it deserves. The warm-up provides the perfect opportunity for athletes to shut off concerns from the outside world and concentrate on the activities that are about to commence. Effective warm-up sessions direct focus and active participation by both coaches and athletes; even responsible athletes can benefit from performing movements under the diligent eyes of the coach. This means that the coach must actively engage in cueing and teaching these movements to help athletes create the appropriate intent with each movement. For example, a coach instructing athletes on proper plyometric mechanics during a practice session might cue the athletes during a warm-up to pretend they are landing on hot coals; this image could help prepare them for quick landings and explosive takeoffs. Reinforcing proper cues during the warm-up offers a less stressful platform for learning.
Proper posture and body positioning are critical in all physical activities for optimizing performance and reducing injury risk and for maintaining body balance and the proper arrangement of supporting structures. Research supports the contention that correct posture is a prerequisite of a healthy lifestyle but today's athletes live in a world that does not necessarily promote good posture. Excessive use of phones and computers, carrying heavy school or work bags, and poor posture while studying or watching television are just a few examples of habits that prohibit the maintenance of correct posture. The warm-up offers a good opportunity to educate and then reinforce proper posture and body positioning. Here are some simple ways to address this issue.
- Keep the head up at all times and always look straight ahead.
- When landing and decelerating, hinge at the hips and do not round the back to dampen the force with the hips and knees.
- Maintain proper foot alignment and spacing when jumping and landing; for example, takeoffs from a two-footed jumping position should have the feet at hip width or slightly wider; conversely, when landing, land with both feet closer to shoulder-width distance apart.
- Distribute weight appropriately for different movements; for example, when starting mechanics from a stationary staggered stance, most of the weight should be placed on the lead leg to optimize horizontal force into the ground.
- Maintain proper shin angles, especially during the initial driving strides while accelerating. The intent should be to drive the leg back behind the body and fully extend at the hip, knee, and ankle. A significant part of this technique is to begin with a positive shin angle that is a forward tilting of the lower leg bones. A negative shin angle during initial acceleration indicates that the foot is too far in front of the body, which would create excessive braking forces during footstrike.
Because there are many important components to a typical practice or competition, it can be very challenging to coach such technical aspects after the warm-up is over, so the warm-up itself offers an excellent opportunity to refine body positioning and posture as it relates to athletic performance.
There are certain challenges and considerations that coaches must address with respect to the warm-up. For example, while it would be ideal to allow 10 to 20 minutes for the warm-up period, time constraints may reduce that period significantly in real life. Coaches often only have only 5 or 10 minutes of quality work to prepare the athletes for the ensuing practice, so they must consider several factors when determining the length of the warm-up. For example, if the agility session for the day is going to be of higher intensity, the coach may want to allow a slightly longer warm-up period to make sure that the athletes are adequately prepared for the session. It has been well established that a subnormal body temperature has an adverse effect on neuromuscular performance. In colder weather, it would therefore be prudent to minimize the time between warm-up and the agility session so that athletes will not cool down before the session begins. Conversely, research also reveals that heat stress reduces a person's ability to achieve maximal metabolic rates during exercise and that, during exercise-induced heat stress, competing metabolic and thermoregulatory demands for blood flow make it difficult to maintain an adequate cardiac output. Therefore, in warmer, more humid weather, the duration and intensity of the warm-up should be shortened to minimize the risk of fatigue and heat-related illness. Another potential obstacle during warm-ups may be space limitations. If this is an issue, it is advisable to have back-up exercises and movements that can be performed easily and safely in a small area.
Proper warm-ups should be taught in a systematic fashion. The following guidelines should be adhered to during all warm-ups.
- Begin with simple movements such as marching. Once the athletes demonstrate a level of proficiency with the marches, progress to skipping; as these simple movements become less difficult, progress the athlete to more complex movements and variations.
- Make sure that the movements are performed slowly enough to achieve an acceptable level of performance before attempting to go to full speed.
- Rehearse bilateral work before incorporating unilateral skills, especially with takeoffs and landings. Training ladders may be useful to help improve rhythm, timing, and coordination. The literature supports closed skill movements in various directions over prearranged distances to build correct movement patterns in novice athletes. After a high level of technical proficiency is attained, these tools may no longer be as beneficial from a skill development standpoint. However, they can certainly be included as part of a dynamic warm-up because they will prepare the body physiologically (e.g., increased heart rate, breathing rate, perspiration rate, etc.).
- Perform unloaded or bodyweight movements with proper movement patterns before considering adding some form of external resistance (e.g., resistance tubing). Training sessions should be performed no later than 15 minutes after termination of the warm-up. It has been demonstrated that the positive effects of warm-up begin to dissipate after 15 minutes; ideally, therefore, the athletes should be ready to practice as soon as the warm-up ends.
- Be sure to keep the warm-up appropriate to the fitness levels of the participants. The warm-up should prepare the individuals for training and/or competition without being so stressful as to cause fatigue.
Practical application of age and sex considerations
Most importantly, coaches need to ensure that content is age appropriate. For example, a group of middle school football players should not be performing the same speed and agility training tactics as professional athletes from the National Football League.
Most importantly, coaches need to ensure that content is age appropriate. For example, a group of middle school football players should not be performing the same speed and agility training tactics as professional athletes from the National Football League. Effective age-appropriate program design and implementation will contribute to athlete success in both speed and agility development. During the first window of opportunity, special attention should be paid to body awareness and body control with proper movement mechanics. Once motor skills are successfully performed, speed will develop. Therefore, a strong focus on form is crucial during the prepubescent years. Since speed has been shown to decrease during and following PHV, it is recommended that coaches incorporate speed and agility training during earlier prepubescent stages (girls: 6-8 years; boys: 7-9 years). The addition of these skills earlier in youth development may reduce speed disparities associated with the onset of PHV.
Following PHV, the second window of opportunity is characterized by increases in strength due to surges in androgens, specifically testosterone, growth hormone, and insulin-like growth factor. Strength is closely associated with speed, change of direction, and plyometric ability; therefore, the second period is critical for further improvements in speed and agility and drills that address the aforementioned should be included into the training program design.
It is important for coaches to be aware of adolescent awkwardness. Routinely monitoring stature and body weight of athletes in order to identify growth spurts may help practitioners to recognize this phase. During adolescent awkwardness, limb lengths increase but muscles have yet to reach full size or strength, which contributes to reductions in motor skill performance. Therefore, coaches may choose to spend more effort reviewing optimal movement patterns for athletes at this time. Spending more time on form and technical skill will allow the athlete to retrain the control needed to attain subsequent high levels of speed and agility. Practitioners will likely need to modify existing motor patterns with reduced loads.
Additionally, risk of injury may be heightened during PHV. For example, before PHV there is a decrease in bone mineral density, leading to increased risk of bone fractures. Further, changes in limb length and mass resulting from growth place disproportionately increased stress on muscle-tendon junctions, bone-tendon junctions, ligaments, and growth cartilage. Such imbalances, coupled with the loading demands of sport, may make the affected youth prone to musculoskeletal and overuse injuries. Increases in body mass and height of center of mass without corresponding adaptations in strength and power can lead to excessive loading on the musculoskeletal system during dynamic and reactive actions. Females, specifically, have an increased risk of knee injury due to their increasing body size without the appropriate increases in hip and knee strength to support their skeleton. Females experience a widening of the hips, thus increasing the Q angle of the knee. Larger Q angles are associated with increased pressure on the lower extremities; therefore, coaches should be sure to select biologically age-appropriate drills and encourage proper recovery.
With youth training, it is recommended that emphasis be placed upon exercise programs that promote physical development, reduce injury, and enhance fitness behaviors across the age spectrum. Long-term athlete development (LTAD) refers to the habitual development of athleticism over time to improve health and fitness, enhance physical performance, and reduce the relative risk of injury. A list of the pillars of successful LTAD is provided in table 4.2. This model emphasizes age-appropriate exercises since children's anatomy and physiology differ from those of adolescents in muscle structure, size, activation patterns, and function. Structured training that focuses on age-appropriate drills and movement patterns will provide superior results and reduce the risk of overtraining. Coaches should also educate youth about how their drills will translate into improved performance in their sport. This understanding will help motivate children and build a lifelong future of healthy and enjoyable engagement in sport and physical activity.
Sport-specific agility and quickness training for soccer
Soccer is one of the most challenging sports for which to design an agility and quickness program because it consists of almost constant movement over two 45-minute periods.
Soccer is one of the most challenging sports for which to design an agility and quickness program because it consists of almost constant movement over two 45-minute periods. Given the amount of movement, agility becomes a central element in a soccer player's effectiveness. Training that improves this capacity has the ability to enhance soccer performance significantly, contributing to improvement in all elements of play.
A key factor in developing agility is that it is very context-specific. Although fundamental movement patterns do exist, the ultimate aim of training is to enable athletes to deploy these movements effectively in a game. To this end, it is useful to think of agility as game speed (not to be confused with linear speed). Game speed can be defined as a context-specific skill, in which athletes maximize their performance by applying sport-specific movements of optimal velocity, precision, efficiency, and control in anticipation of and in response to the key perceptual stimuli and skill requirements of the game.
This definition has a number of vital messages. The first is that movement requirements are specific to a given sport, often even to a given position. For example, a goalkeeper's movement requirements are different from those of a central midfielder. Secondly, effective game speed consists of an optimal velocity that should be judged not only by maximal velocity but also by its precision, control, and efficiency. These terms are essential in the context of soccer, where movements need to be maintained for a 90-minute period. Here, the ultimate aim of the game is to express soccer skills, rather than simply to move at maximal speed. Although maximal speed is an important variable, the ability to harness speed and agility is more important for maximizing soccer performance.
Since game speed and agility are context-specific, coaches must be able to break down the movement requirements of soccer to develop an effective program. Soccer movement is intermittent, with each game featuring between 1,200 and 1,400 changes of direction. These movements vary in speed and direction, with players changing directions about every 2 to 4 seconds. Typical sprinting activities span approximately 5 to 15 meters (5.5-16.4 yd) and occur once every 30 seconds on average. The majority of playing time is spent in transitional phases, where speeds vary from walking to high-speed running. These transitional movements occur in many directions, including forward, sideways, and backward. Sprinting activities can be performed straight ahead; however, they often include some COD at the outset of the sprint or at some point during the sprint.
Program Design
Given the vast range of movement requirements across 90 minutes of play, and the different requirements of playing positions, designing soccer-specific agility sessions may be daunting. However, by analyzing the target movement specifications of the sport, coaches can classify soccer movements and put them into a basic structure for building an effective agility program.
To break down soccer movements, it is helpful to determine what athletes are trying to achieve. Coaches can effectively carry this out using target classifications. At any given time, athletes are likely attempting either to start movement or to change the direction of movement (initiation movements), trying to move at maximal velocity (actualization movements), or waiting in transition to react to a soccer-specific stimulus (transition movements). Although agility training often focuses on initiation and actualization movements, far less emphasis is placed on transition movements. Often, when these movements are trained, they are taught incorrectly, with the emphasis on movement speed rather than on control. Athletes' ability to start and move at maximal velocity often depends on being in the correct position to enable effective subsequent movement.
Effective agility training balances the requirements of the exercise and the ability of the athlete. Thus, a session designed for an elite athlete should look different from a session for a beginner. For this reason, a soccer-specific agility program should include a progression in movement challenge and complexity as athletes move through their stages of development. In the initial stages, athletes can benefit from closed drills that allow the speed of the drills to be controlled and often consist of single movement patterns (e.g., shuffling). In this stage, coaches should develop athletes' ability in all of the identified movement patterns for soccer to ensure that there are no weak links in movement ability. The following list provides the system for game-speed development, which shows stages of movement ability and application. As athletes maintain proper movement patterns at one stage, they can progress to the next level.
- Develop general and stable fundamental movement patterns.
- Develop key movement combinations, moving from closed to open drills.
- Develop sport-specific movements in game context.
- Perform sport-specific movements in game context.
As athletes develop, coaches should start to combine movement patterns in ways typical to soccer. For example, backpedal drills can conclude with sprints to the rear, to the side, or forward. These combinations are commonly seen in soccer. As athletes develop, coaches can also deploy drills that are increasingly open. Here, athletes should respond to a range of stimuli, which can become increasingly soccer-specific. For example, athletes can initiate incorporating backpedaling into a sprint drill. Next, athletes can perform a drill where they change direction in response to a coach's signal, and then in response to another athlete's movement. In this way, the movement patterns become increasingly more challenging in a way that progressively reflects the specific movement patterns found in soccer. These types of drills can include great variety in terms of distances, speeds, directions, and stimuli.
Warm-up methods and techniques for agility training
It is an essential and standard practice for athletes to warm up before they practice or compete. The purpose of a well-designed warm-up is to enhance performance and decrease the likelihood of injuries.
It is an essential and standard practice for athletes to warm up before they practice or compete. The purpose of a well-designed warm-up is to enhance performance and decrease the likelihood of injuries. The warm-up also provides an ideal time to learn and rehearse movement skills such as jumping, landing, accelerating, decelerating, and the other various modes of locomotion. The opportunity for mental preparation that this segment of the training session provides is equally important because it sets the tone for the work to follow. An appropriate warm-up reaps several physiological benefits that can positively affect an athlete's performance. The warm-up should increase blood flow to active muscles, raise core body temperature, enhance metabolic reactions, and disrupt temporary connective tissue bonds. These effects can aid the athlete by yielding improvements in rate-of-force development, improvements in reaction time, improved oxygen delivery to the lungs and working muscles, and improvements in acute measures of muscle strength and power. In addition, the increased production of synovial fluid located between the joints will acutely enhance the dynamic flexibility, or mobility, of the joints. Another benefit is that the warm-up helps facilitate the breakdown of glycogen, which is the source of energy most often used for exercise; this translates to more energy available for the athlete.
The mental aspect of the warm-up often does not receive the attention it deserves. The warm-up provides the perfect opportunity for athletes to shut off concerns from the outside world and concentrate on the activities that are about to commence. Effective warm-up sessions direct focus and active participation by both coaches and athletes; even responsible athletes can benefit from performing movements under the diligent eyes of the coach. This means that the coach must actively engage in cueing and teaching these movements to help athletes create the appropriate intent with each movement. For example, a coach instructing athletes on proper plyometric mechanics during a practice session might cue the athletes during a warm-up to pretend they are landing on hot coals; this image could help prepare them for quick landings and explosive takeoffs. Reinforcing proper cues during the warm-up offers a less stressful platform for learning.
Proper posture and body positioning are critical in all physical activities for optimizing performance and reducing injury risk and for maintaining body balance and the proper arrangement of supporting structures. Research supports the contention that correct posture is a prerequisite of a healthy lifestyle but today's athletes live in a world that does not necessarily promote good posture. Excessive use of phones and computers, carrying heavy school or work bags, and poor posture while studying or watching television are just a few examples of habits that prohibit the maintenance of correct posture. The warm-up offers a good opportunity to educate and then reinforce proper posture and body positioning. Here are some simple ways to address this issue.
- Keep the head up at all times and always look straight ahead.
- When landing and decelerating, hinge at the hips and do not round the back to dampen the force with the hips and knees.
- Maintain proper foot alignment and spacing when jumping and landing; for example, takeoffs from a two-footed jumping position should have the feet at hip width or slightly wider; conversely, when landing, land with both feet closer to shoulder-width distance apart.
- Distribute weight appropriately for different movements; for example, when starting mechanics from a stationary staggered stance, most of the weight should be placed on the lead leg to optimize horizontal force into the ground.
- Maintain proper shin angles, especially during the initial driving strides while accelerating. The intent should be to drive the leg back behind the body and fully extend at the hip, knee, and ankle. A significant part of this technique is to begin with a positive shin angle that is a forward tilting of the lower leg bones. A negative shin angle during initial acceleration indicates that the foot is too far in front of the body, which would create excessive braking forces during footstrike.
Because there are many important components to a typical practice or competition, it can be very challenging to coach such technical aspects after the warm-up is over, so the warm-up itself offers an excellent opportunity to refine body positioning and posture as it relates to athletic performance.
There are certain challenges and considerations that coaches must address with respect to the warm-up. For example, while it would be ideal to allow 10 to 20 minutes for the warm-up period, time constraints may reduce that period significantly in real life. Coaches often only have only 5 or 10 minutes of quality work to prepare the athletes for the ensuing practice, so they must consider several factors when determining the length of the warm-up. For example, if the agility session for the day is going to be of higher intensity, the coach may want to allow a slightly longer warm-up period to make sure that the athletes are adequately prepared for the session. It has been well established that a subnormal body temperature has an adverse effect on neuromuscular performance. In colder weather, it would therefore be prudent to minimize the time between warm-up and the agility session so that athletes will not cool down before the session begins. Conversely, research also reveals that heat stress reduces a person's ability to achieve maximal metabolic rates during exercise and that, during exercise-induced heat stress, competing metabolic and thermoregulatory demands for blood flow make it difficult to maintain an adequate cardiac output. Therefore, in warmer, more humid weather, the duration and intensity of the warm-up should be shortened to minimize the risk of fatigue and heat-related illness. Another potential obstacle during warm-ups may be space limitations. If this is an issue, it is advisable to have back-up exercises and movements that can be performed easily and safely in a small area.
Proper warm-ups should be taught in a systematic fashion. The following guidelines should be adhered to during all warm-ups.
- Begin with simple movements such as marching. Once the athletes demonstrate a level of proficiency with the marches, progress to skipping; as these simple movements become less difficult, progress the athlete to more complex movements and variations.
- Make sure that the movements are performed slowly enough to achieve an acceptable level of performance before attempting to go to full speed.
- Rehearse bilateral work before incorporating unilateral skills, especially with takeoffs and landings. Training ladders may be useful to help improve rhythm, timing, and coordination. The literature supports closed skill movements in various directions over prearranged distances to build correct movement patterns in novice athletes. After a high level of technical proficiency is attained, these tools may no longer be as beneficial from a skill development standpoint. However, they can certainly be included as part of a dynamic warm-up because they will prepare the body physiologically (e.g., increased heart rate, breathing rate, perspiration rate, etc.).
- Perform unloaded or bodyweight movements with proper movement patterns before considering adding some form of external resistance (e.g., resistance tubing). Training sessions should be performed no later than 15 minutes after termination of the warm-up. It has been demonstrated that the positive effects of warm-up begin to dissipate after 15 minutes; ideally, therefore, the athletes should be ready to practice as soon as the warm-up ends.
- Be sure to keep the warm-up appropriate to the fitness levels of the participants. The warm-up should prepare the individuals for training and/or competition without being so stressful as to cause fatigue.
Practical application of age and sex considerations
Most importantly, coaches need to ensure that content is age appropriate. For example, a group of middle school football players should not be performing the same speed and agility training tactics as professional athletes from the National Football League.
Most importantly, coaches need to ensure that content is age appropriate. For example, a group of middle school football players should not be performing the same speed and agility training tactics as professional athletes from the National Football League. Effective age-appropriate program design and implementation will contribute to athlete success in both speed and agility development. During the first window of opportunity, special attention should be paid to body awareness and body control with proper movement mechanics. Once motor skills are successfully performed, speed will develop. Therefore, a strong focus on form is crucial during the prepubescent years. Since speed has been shown to decrease during and following PHV, it is recommended that coaches incorporate speed and agility training during earlier prepubescent stages (girls: 6-8 years; boys: 7-9 years). The addition of these skills earlier in youth development may reduce speed disparities associated with the onset of PHV.
Following PHV, the second window of opportunity is characterized by increases in strength due to surges in androgens, specifically testosterone, growth hormone, and insulin-like growth factor. Strength is closely associated with speed, change of direction, and plyometric ability; therefore, the second period is critical for further improvements in speed and agility and drills that address the aforementioned should be included into the training program design.
It is important for coaches to be aware of adolescent awkwardness. Routinely monitoring stature and body weight of athletes in order to identify growth spurts may help practitioners to recognize this phase. During adolescent awkwardness, limb lengths increase but muscles have yet to reach full size or strength, which contributes to reductions in motor skill performance. Therefore, coaches may choose to spend more effort reviewing optimal movement patterns for athletes at this time. Spending more time on form and technical skill will allow the athlete to retrain the control needed to attain subsequent high levels of speed and agility. Practitioners will likely need to modify existing motor patterns with reduced loads.
Additionally, risk of injury may be heightened during PHV. For example, before PHV there is a decrease in bone mineral density, leading to increased risk of bone fractures. Further, changes in limb length and mass resulting from growth place disproportionately increased stress on muscle-tendon junctions, bone-tendon junctions, ligaments, and growth cartilage. Such imbalances, coupled with the loading demands of sport, may make the affected youth prone to musculoskeletal and overuse injuries. Increases in body mass and height of center of mass without corresponding adaptations in strength and power can lead to excessive loading on the musculoskeletal system during dynamic and reactive actions. Females, specifically, have an increased risk of knee injury due to their increasing body size without the appropriate increases in hip and knee strength to support their skeleton. Females experience a widening of the hips, thus increasing the Q angle of the knee. Larger Q angles are associated with increased pressure on the lower extremities; therefore, coaches should be sure to select biologically age-appropriate drills and encourage proper recovery.
With youth training, it is recommended that emphasis be placed upon exercise programs that promote physical development, reduce injury, and enhance fitness behaviors across the age spectrum. Long-term athlete development (LTAD) refers to the habitual development of athleticism over time to improve health and fitness, enhance physical performance, and reduce the relative risk of injury. A list of the pillars of successful LTAD is provided in table 4.2. This model emphasizes age-appropriate exercises since children's anatomy and physiology differ from those of adolescents in muscle structure, size, activation patterns, and function. Structured training that focuses on age-appropriate drills and movement patterns will provide superior results and reduce the risk of overtraining. Coaches should also educate youth about how their drills will translate into improved performance in their sport. This understanding will help motivate children and build a lifelong future of healthy and enjoyable engagement in sport and physical activity.
Sport-specific agility and quickness training for soccer
Soccer is one of the most challenging sports for which to design an agility and quickness program because it consists of almost constant movement over two 45-minute periods.
Soccer is one of the most challenging sports for which to design an agility and quickness program because it consists of almost constant movement over two 45-minute periods. Given the amount of movement, agility becomes a central element in a soccer player's effectiveness. Training that improves this capacity has the ability to enhance soccer performance significantly, contributing to improvement in all elements of play.
A key factor in developing agility is that it is very context-specific. Although fundamental movement patterns do exist, the ultimate aim of training is to enable athletes to deploy these movements effectively in a game. To this end, it is useful to think of agility as game speed (not to be confused with linear speed). Game speed can be defined as a context-specific skill, in which athletes maximize their performance by applying sport-specific movements of optimal velocity, precision, efficiency, and control in anticipation of and in response to the key perceptual stimuli and skill requirements of the game.
This definition has a number of vital messages. The first is that movement requirements are specific to a given sport, often even to a given position. For example, a goalkeeper's movement requirements are different from those of a central midfielder. Secondly, effective game speed consists of an optimal velocity that should be judged not only by maximal velocity but also by its precision, control, and efficiency. These terms are essential in the context of soccer, where movements need to be maintained for a 90-minute period. Here, the ultimate aim of the game is to express soccer skills, rather than simply to move at maximal speed. Although maximal speed is an important variable, the ability to harness speed and agility is more important for maximizing soccer performance.
Since game speed and agility are context-specific, coaches must be able to break down the movement requirements of soccer to develop an effective program. Soccer movement is intermittent, with each game featuring between 1,200 and 1,400 changes of direction. These movements vary in speed and direction, with players changing directions about every 2 to 4 seconds. Typical sprinting activities span approximately 5 to 15 meters (5.5-16.4 yd) and occur once every 30 seconds on average. The majority of playing time is spent in transitional phases, where speeds vary from walking to high-speed running. These transitional movements occur in many directions, including forward, sideways, and backward. Sprinting activities can be performed straight ahead; however, they often include some COD at the outset of the sprint or at some point during the sprint.
Program Design
Given the vast range of movement requirements across 90 minutes of play, and the different requirements of playing positions, designing soccer-specific agility sessions may be daunting. However, by analyzing the target movement specifications of the sport, coaches can classify soccer movements and put them into a basic structure for building an effective agility program.
To break down soccer movements, it is helpful to determine what athletes are trying to achieve. Coaches can effectively carry this out using target classifications. At any given time, athletes are likely attempting either to start movement or to change the direction of movement (initiation movements), trying to move at maximal velocity (actualization movements), or waiting in transition to react to a soccer-specific stimulus (transition movements). Although agility training often focuses on initiation and actualization movements, far less emphasis is placed on transition movements. Often, when these movements are trained, they are taught incorrectly, with the emphasis on movement speed rather than on control. Athletes' ability to start and move at maximal velocity often depends on being in the correct position to enable effective subsequent movement.
Effective agility training balances the requirements of the exercise and the ability of the athlete. Thus, a session designed for an elite athlete should look different from a session for a beginner. For this reason, a soccer-specific agility program should include a progression in movement challenge and complexity as athletes move through their stages of development. In the initial stages, athletes can benefit from closed drills that allow the speed of the drills to be controlled and often consist of single movement patterns (e.g., shuffling). In this stage, coaches should develop athletes' ability in all of the identified movement patterns for soccer to ensure that there are no weak links in movement ability. The following list provides the system for game-speed development, which shows stages of movement ability and application. As athletes maintain proper movement patterns at one stage, they can progress to the next level.
- Develop general and stable fundamental movement patterns.
- Develop key movement combinations, moving from closed to open drills.
- Develop sport-specific movements in game context.
- Perform sport-specific movements in game context.
As athletes develop, coaches should start to combine movement patterns in ways typical to soccer. For example, backpedal drills can conclude with sprints to the rear, to the side, or forward. These combinations are commonly seen in soccer. As athletes develop, coaches can also deploy drills that are increasingly open. Here, athletes should respond to a range of stimuli, which can become increasingly soccer-specific. For example, athletes can initiate incorporating backpedaling into a sprint drill. Next, athletes can perform a drill where they change direction in response to a coach's signal, and then in response to another athlete's movement. In this way, the movement patterns become increasingly more challenging in a way that progressively reflects the specific movement patterns found in soccer. These types of drills can include great variety in terms of distances, speeds, directions, and stimuli.
Warm-up methods and techniques for agility training
It is an essential and standard practice for athletes to warm up before they practice or compete. The purpose of a well-designed warm-up is to enhance performance and decrease the likelihood of injuries.
It is an essential and standard practice for athletes to warm up before they practice or compete. The purpose of a well-designed warm-up is to enhance performance and decrease the likelihood of injuries. The warm-up also provides an ideal time to learn and rehearse movement skills such as jumping, landing, accelerating, decelerating, and the other various modes of locomotion. The opportunity for mental preparation that this segment of the training session provides is equally important because it sets the tone for the work to follow. An appropriate warm-up reaps several physiological benefits that can positively affect an athlete's performance. The warm-up should increase blood flow to active muscles, raise core body temperature, enhance metabolic reactions, and disrupt temporary connective tissue bonds. These effects can aid the athlete by yielding improvements in rate-of-force development, improvements in reaction time, improved oxygen delivery to the lungs and working muscles, and improvements in acute measures of muscle strength and power. In addition, the increased production of synovial fluid located between the joints will acutely enhance the dynamic flexibility, or mobility, of the joints. Another benefit is that the warm-up helps facilitate the breakdown of glycogen, which is the source of energy most often used for exercise; this translates to more energy available for the athlete.
The mental aspect of the warm-up often does not receive the attention it deserves. The warm-up provides the perfect opportunity for athletes to shut off concerns from the outside world and concentrate on the activities that are about to commence. Effective warm-up sessions direct focus and active participation by both coaches and athletes; even responsible athletes can benefit from performing movements under the diligent eyes of the coach. This means that the coach must actively engage in cueing and teaching these movements to help athletes create the appropriate intent with each movement. For example, a coach instructing athletes on proper plyometric mechanics during a practice session might cue the athletes during a warm-up to pretend they are landing on hot coals; this image could help prepare them for quick landings and explosive takeoffs. Reinforcing proper cues during the warm-up offers a less stressful platform for learning.
Proper posture and body positioning are critical in all physical activities for optimizing performance and reducing injury risk and for maintaining body balance and the proper arrangement of supporting structures. Research supports the contention that correct posture is a prerequisite of a healthy lifestyle but today's athletes live in a world that does not necessarily promote good posture. Excessive use of phones and computers, carrying heavy school or work bags, and poor posture while studying or watching television are just a few examples of habits that prohibit the maintenance of correct posture. The warm-up offers a good opportunity to educate and then reinforce proper posture and body positioning. Here are some simple ways to address this issue.
- Keep the head up at all times and always look straight ahead.
- When landing and decelerating, hinge at the hips and do not round the back to dampen the force with the hips and knees.
- Maintain proper foot alignment and spacing when jumping and landing; for example, takeoffs from a two-footed jumping position should have the feet at hip width or slightly wider; conversely, when landing, land with both feet closer to shoulder-width distance apart.
- Distribute weight appropriately for different movements; for example, when starting mechanics from a stationary staggered stance, most of the weight should be placed on the lead leg to optimize horizontal force into the ground.
- Maintain proper shin angles, especially during the initial driving strides while accelerating. The intent should be to drive the leg back behind the body and fully extend at the hip, knee, and ankle. A significant part of this technique is to begin with a positive shin angle that is a forward tilting of the lower leg bones. A negative shin angle during initial acceleration indicates that the foot is too far in front of the body, which would create excessive braking forces during footstrike.
Because there are many important components to a typical practice or competition, it can be very challenging to coach such technical aspects after the warm-up is over, so the warm-up itself offers an excellent opportunity to refine body positioning and posture as it relates to athletic performance.
There are certain challenges and considerations that coaches must address with respect to the warm-up. For example, while it would be ideal to allow 10 to 20 minutes for the warm-up period, time constraints may reduce that period significantly in real life. Coaches often only have only 5 or 10 minutes of quality work to prepare the athletes for the ensuing practice, so they must consider several factors when determining the length of the warm-up. For example, if the agility session for the day is going to be of higher intensity, the coach may want to allow a slightly longer warm-up period to make sure that the athletes are adequately prepared for the session. It has been well established that a subnormal body temperature has an adverse effect on neuromuscular performance. In colder weather, it would therefore be prudent to minimize the time between warm-up and the agility session so that athletes will not cool down before the session begins. Conversely, research also reveals that heat stress reduces a person's ability to achieve maximal metabolic rates during exercise and that, during exercise-induced heat stress, competing metabolic and thermoregulatory demands for blood flow make it difficult to maintain an adequate cardiac output. Therefore, in warmer, more humid weather, the duration and intensity of the warm-up should be shortened to minimize the risk of fatigue and heat-related illness. Another potential obstacle during warm-ups may be space limitations. If this is an issue, it is advisable to have back-up exercises and movements that can be performed easily and safely in a small area.
Proper warm-ups should be taught in a systematic fashion. The following guidelines should be adhered to during all warm-ups.
- Begin with simple movements such as marching. Once the athletes demonstrate a level of proficiency with the marches, progress to skipping; as these simple movements become less difficult, progress the athlete to more complex movements and variations.
- Make sure that the movements are performed slowly enough to achieve an acceptable level of performance before attempting to go to full speed.
- Rehearse bilateral work before incorporating unilateral skills, especially with takeoffs and landings. Training ladders may be useful to help improve rhythm, timing, and coordination. The literature supports closed skill movements in various directions over prearranged distances to build correct movement patterns in novice athletes. After a high level of technical proficiency is attained, these tools may no longer be as beneficial from a skill development standpoint. However, they can certainly be included as part of a dynamic warm-up because they will prepare the body physiologically (e.g., increased heart rate, breathing rate, perspiration rate, etc.).
- Perform unloaded or bodyweight movements with proper movement patterns before considering adding some form of external resistance (e.g., resistance tubing). Training sessions should be performed no later than 15 minutes after termination of the warm-up. It has been demonstrated that the positive effects of warm-up begin to dissipate after 15 minutes; ideally, therefore, the athletes should be ready to practice as soon as the warm-up ends.
- Be sure to keep the warm-up appropriate to the fitness levels of the participants. The warm-up should prepare the individuals for training and/or competition without being so stressful as to cause fatigue.
Practical application of age and sex considerations
Most importantly, coaches need to ensure that content is age appropriate. For example, a group of middle school football players should not be performing the same speed and agility training tactics as professional athletes from the National Football League.
Most importantly, coaches need to ensure that content is age appropriate. For example, a group of middle school football players should not be performing the same speed and agility training tactics as professional athletes from the National Football League. Effective age-appropriate program design and implementation will contribute to athlete success in both speed and agility development. During the first window of opportunity, special attention should be paid to body awareness and body control with proper movement mechanics. Once motor skills are successfully performed, speed will develop. Therefore, a strong focus on form is crucial during the prepubescent years. Since speed has been shown to decrease during and following PHV, it is recommended that coaches incorporate speed and agility training during earlier prepubescent stages (girls: 6-8 years; boys: 7-9 years). The addition of these skills earlier in youth development may reduce speed disparities associated with the onset of PHV.
Following PHV, the second window of opportunity is characterized by increases in strength due to surges in androgens, specifically testosterone, growth hormone, and insulin-like growth factor. Strength is closely associated with speed, change of direction, and plyometric ability; therefore, the second period is critical for further improvements in speed and agility and drills that address the aforementioned should be included into the training program design.
It is important for coaches to be aware of adolescent awkwardness. Routinely monitoring stature and body weight of athletes in order to identify growth spurts may help practitioners to recognize this phase. During adolescent awkwardness, limb lengths increase but muscles have yet to reach full size or strength, which contributes to reductions in motor skill performance. Therefore, coaches may choose to spend more effort reviewing optimal movement patterns for athletes at this time. Spending more time on form and technical skill will allow the athlete to retrain the control needed to attain subsequent high levels of speed and agility. Practitioners will likely need to modify existing motor patterns with reduced loads.
Additionally, risk of injury may be heightened during PHV. For example, before PHV there is a decrease in bone mineral density, leading to increased risk of bone fractures. Further, changes in limb length and mass resulting from growth place disproportionately increased stress on muscle-tendon junctions, bone-tendon junctions, ligaments, and growth cartilage. Such imbalances, coupled with the loading demands of sport, may make the affected youth prone to musculoskeletal and overuse injuries. Increases in body mass and height of center of mass without corresponding adaptations in strength and power can lead to excessive loading on the musculoskeletal system during dynamic and reactive actions. Females, specifically, have an increased risk of knee injury due to their increasing body size without the appropriate increases in hip and knee strength to support their skeleton. Females experience a widening of the hips, thus increasing the Q angle of the knee. Larger Q angles are associated with increased pressure on the lower extremities; therefore, coaches should be sure to select biologically age-appropriate drills and encourage proper recovery.
With youth training, it is recommended that emphasis be placed upon exercise programs that promote physical development, reduce injury, and enhance fitness behaviors across the age spectrum. Long-term athlete development (LTAD) refers to the habitual development of athleticism over time to improve health and fitness, enhance physical performance, and reduce the relative risk of injury. A list of the pillars of successful LTAD is provided in table 4.2. This model emphasizes age-appropriate exercises since children's anatomy and physiology differ from those of adolescents in muscle structure, size, activation patterns, and function. Structured training that focuses on age-appropriate drills and movement patterns will provide superior results and reduce the risk of overtraining. Coaches should also educate youth about how their drills will translate into improved performance in their sport. This understanding will help motivate children and build a lifelong future of healthy and enjoyable engagement in sport and physical activity.
Sport-specific agility and quickness training for soccer
Soccer is one of the most challenging sports for which to design an agility and quickness program because it consists of almost constant movement over two 45-minute periods.
Soccer is one of the most challenging sports for which to design an agility and quickness program because it consists of almost constant movement over two 45-minute periods. Given the amount of movement, agility becomes a central element in a soccer player's effectiveness. Training that improves this capacity has the ability to enhance soccer performance significantly, contributing to improvement in all elements of play.
A key factor in developing agility is that it is very context-specific. Although fundamental movement patterns do exist, the ultimate aim of training is to enable athletes to deploy these movements effectively in a game. To this end, it is useful to think of agility as game speed (not to be confused with linear speed). Game speed can be defined as a context-specific skill, in which athletes maximize their performance by applying sport-specific movements of optimal velocity, precision, efficiency, and control in anticipation of and in response to the key perceptual stimuli and skill requirements of the game.
This definition has a number of vital messages. The first is that movement requirements are specific to a given sport, often even to a given position. For example, a goalkeeper's movement requirements are different from those of a central midfielder. Secondly, effective game speed consists of an optimal velocity that should be judged not only by maximal velocity but also by its precision, control, and efficiency. These terms are essential in the context of soccer, where movements need to be maintained for a 90-minute period. Here, the ultimate aim of the game is to express soccer skills, rather than simply to move at maximal speed. Although maximal speed is an important variable, the ability to harness speed and agility is more important for maximizing soccer performance.
Since game speed and agility are context-specific, coaches must be able to break down the movement requirements of soccer to develop an effective program. Soccer movement is intermittent, with each game featuring between 1,200 and 1,400 changes of direction. These movements vary in speed and direction, with players changing directions about every 2 to 4 seconds. Typical sprinting activities span approximately 5 to 15 meters (5.5-16.4 yd) and occur once every 30 seconds on average. The majority of playing time is spent in transitional phases, where speeds vary from walking to high-speed running. These transitional movements occur in many directions, including forward, sideways, and backward. Sprinting activities can be performed straight ahead; however, they often include some COD at the outset of the sprint or at some point during the sprint.
Program Design
Given the vast range of movement requirements across 90 minutes of play, and the different requirements of playing positions, designing soccer-specific agility sessions may be daunting. However, by analyzing the target movement specifications of the sport, coaches can classify soccer movements and put them into a basic structure for building an effective agility program.
To break down soccer movements, it is helpful to determine what athletes are trying to achieve. Coaches can effectively carry this out using target classifications. At any given time, athletes are likely attempting either to start movement or to change the direction of movement (initiation movements), trying to move at maximal velocity (actualization movements), or waiting in transition to react to a soccer-specific stimulus (transition movements). Although agility training often focuses on initiation and actualization movements, far less emphasis is placed on transition movements. Often, when these movements are trained, they are taught incorrectly, with the emphasis on movement speed rather than on control. Athletes' ability to start and move at maximal velocity often depends on being in the correct position to enable effective subsequent movement.
Effective agility training balances the requirements of the exercise and the ability of the athlete. Thus, a session designed for an elite athlete should look different from a session for a beginner. For this reason, a soccer-specific agility program should include a progression in movement challenge and complexity as athletes move through their stages of development. In the initial stages, athletes can benefit from closed drills that allow the speed of the drills to be controlled and often consist of single movement patterns (e.g., shuffling). In this stage, coaches should develop athletes' ability in all of the identified movement patterns for soccer to ensure that there are no weak links in movement ability. The following list provides the system for game-speed development, which shows stages of movement ability and application. As athletes maintain proper movement patterns at one stage, they can progress to the next level.
- Develop general and stable fundamental movement patterns.
- Develop key movement combinations, moving from closed to open drills.
- Develop sport-specific movements in game context.
- Perform sport-specific movements in game context.
As athletes develop, coaches should start to combine movement patterns in ways typical to soccer. For example, backpedal drills can conclude with sprints to the rear, to the side, or forward. These combinations are commonly seen in soccer. As athletes develop, coaches can also deploy drills that are increasingly open. Here, athletes should respond to a range of stimuli, which can become increasingly soccer-specific. For example, athletes can initiate incorporating backpedaling into a sprint drill. Next, athletes can perform a drill where they change direction in response to a coach's signal, and then in response to another athlete's movement. In this way, the movement patterns become increasingly more challenging in a way that progressively reflects the specific movement patterns found in soccer. These types of drills can include great variety in terms of distances, speeds, directions, and stimuli.
Warm-up methods and techniques for agility training
It is an essential and standard practice for athletes to warm up before they practice or compete. The purpose of a well-designed warm-up is to enhance performance and decrease the likelihood of injuries.
It is an essential and standard practice for athletes to warm up before they practice or compete. The purpose of a well-designed warm-up is to enhance performance and decrease the likelihood of injuries. The warm-up also provides an ideal time to learn and rehearse movement skills such as jumping, landing, accelerating, decelerating, and the other various modes of locomotion. The opportunity for mental preparation that this segment of the training session provides is equally important because it sets the tone for the work to follow. An appropriate warm-up reaps several physiological benefits that can positively affect an athlete's performance. The warm-up should increase blood flow to active muscles, raise core body temperature, enhance metabolic reactions, and disrupt temporary connective tissue bonds. These effects can aid the athlete by yielding improvements in rate-of-force development, improvements in reaction time, improved oxygen delivery to the lungs and working muscles, and improvements in acute measures of muscle strength and power. In addition, the increased production of synovial fluid located between the joints will acutely enhance the dynamic flexibility, or mobility, of the joints. Another benefit is that the warm-up helps facilitate the breakdown of glycogen, which is the source of energy most often used for exercise; this translates to more energy available for the athlete.
The mental aspect of the warm-up often does not receive the attention it deserves. The warm-up provides the perfect opportunity for athletes to shut off concerns from the outside world and concentrate on the activities that are about to commence. Effective warm-up sessions direct focus and active participation by both coaches and athletes; even responsible athletes can benefit from performing movements under the diligent eyes of the coach. This means that the coach must actively engage in cueing and teaching these movements to help athletes create the appropriate intent with each movement. For example, a coach instructing athletes on proper plyometric mechanics during a practice session might cue the athletes during a warm-up to pretend they are landing on hot coals; this image could help prepare them for quick landings and explosive takeoffs. Reinforcing proper cues during the warm-up offers a less stressful platform for learning.
Proper posture and body positioning are critical in all physical activities for optimizing performance and reducing injury risk and for maintaining body balance and the proper arrangement of supporting structures. Research supports the contention that correct posture is a prerequisite of a healthy lifestyle but today's athletes live in a world that does not necessarily promote good posture. Excessive use of phones and computers, carrying heavy school or work bags, and poor posture while studying or watching television are just a few examples of habits that prohibit the maintenance of correct posture. The warm-up offers a good opportunity to educate and then reinforce proper posture and body positioning. Here are some simple ways to address this issue.
- Keep the head up at all times and always look straight ahead.
- When landing and decelerating, hinge at the hips and do not round the back to dampen the force with the hips and knees.
- Maintain proper foot alignment and spacing when jumping and landing; for example, takeoffs from a two-footed jumping position should have the feet at hip width or slightly wider; conversely, when landing, land with both feet closer to shoulder-width distance apart.
- Distribute weight appropriately for different movements; for example, when starting mechanics from a stationary staggered stance, most of the weight should be placed on the lead leg to optimize horizontal force into the ground.
- Maintain proper shin angles, especially during the initial driving strides while accelerating. The intent should be to drive the leg back behind the body and fully extend at the hip, knee, and ankle. A significant part of this technique is to begin with a positive shin angle that is a forward tilting of the lower leg bones. A negative shin angle during initial acceleration indicates that the foot is too far in front of the body, which would create excessive braking forces during footstrike.
Because there are many important components to a typical practice or competition, it can be very challenging to coach such technical aspects after the warm-up is over, so the warm-up itself offers an excellent opportunity to refine body positioning and posture as it relates to athletic performance.
There are certain challenges and considerations that coaches must address with respect to the warm-up. For example, while it would be ideal to allow 10 to 20 minutes for the warm-up period, time constraints may reduce that period significantly in real life. Coaches often only have only 5 or 10 minutes of quality work to prepare the athletes for the ensuing practice, so they must consider several factors when determining the length of the warm-up. For example, if the agility session for the day is going to be of higher intensity, the coach may want to allow a slightly longer warm-up period to make sure that the athletes are adequately prepared for the session. It has been well established that a subnormal body temperature has an adverse effect on neuromuscular performance. In colder weather, it would therefore be prudent to minimize the time between warm-up and the agility session so that athletes will not cool down before the session begins. Conversely, research also reveals that heat stress reduces a person's ability to achieve maximal metabolic rates during exercise and that, during exercise-induced heat stress, competing metabolic and thermoregulatory demands for blood flow make it difficult to maintain an adequate cardiac output. Therefore, in warmer, more humid weather, the duration and intensity of the warm-up should be shortened to minimize the risk of fatigue and heat-related illness. Another potential obstacle during warm-ups may be space limitations. If this is an issue, it is advisable to have back-up exercises and movements that can be performed easily and safely in a small area.
Proper warm-ups should be taught in a systematic fashion. The following guidelines should be adhered to during all warm-ups.
- Begin with simple movements such as marching. Once the athletes demonstrate a level of proficiency with the marches, progress to skipping; as these simple movements become less difficult, progress the athlete to more complex movements and variations.
- Make sure that the movements are performed slowly enough to achieve an acceptable level of performance before attempting to go to full speed.
- Rehearse bilateral work before incorporating unilateral skills, especially with takeoffs and landings. Training ladders may be useful to help improve rhythm, timing, and coordination. The literature supports closed skill movements in various directions over prearranged distances to build correct movement patterns in novice athletes. After a high level of technical proficiency is attained, these tools may no longer be as beneficial from a skill development standpoint. However, they can certainly be included as part of a dynamic warm-up because they will prepare the body physiologically (e.g., increased heart rate, breathing rate, perspiration rate, etc.).
- Perform unloaded or bodyweight movements with proper movement patterns before considering adding some form of external resistance (e.g., resistance tubing). Training sessions should be performed no later than 15 minutes after termination of the warm-up. It has been demonstrated that the positive effects of warm-up begin to dissipate after 15 minutes; ideally, therefore, the athletes should be ready to practice as soon as the warm-up ends.
- Be sure to keep the warm-up appropriate to the fitness levels of the participants. The warm-up should prepare the individuals for training and/or competition without being so stressful as to cause fatigue.
Practical application of age and sex considerations
Most importantly, coaches need to ensure that content is age appropriate. For example, a group of middle school football players should not be performing the same speed and agility training tactics as professional athletes from the National Football League.
Most importantly, coaches need to ensure that content is age appropriate. For example, a group of middle school football players should not be performing the same speed and agility training tactics as professional athletes from the National Football League. Effective age-appropriate program design and implementation will contribute to athlete success in both speed and agility development. During the first window of opportunity, special attention should be paid to body awareness and body control with proper movement mechanics. Once motor skills are successfully performed, speed will develop. Therefore, a strong focus on form is crucial during the prepubescent years. Since speed has been shown to decrease during and following PHV, it is recommended that coaches incorporate speed and agility training during earlier prepubescent stages (girls: 6-8 years; boys: 7-9 years). The addition of these skills earlier in youth development may reduce speed disparities associated with the onset of PHV.
Following PHV, the second window of opportunity is characterized by increases in strength due to surges in androgens, specifically testosterone, growth hormone, and insulin-like growth factor. Strength is closely associated with speed, change of direction, and plyometric ability; therefore, the second period is critical for further improvements in speed and agility and drills that address the aforementioned should be included into the training program design.
It is important for coaches to be aware of adolescent awkwardness. Routinely monitoring stature and body weight of athletes in order to identify growth spurts may help practitioners to recognize this phase. During adolescent awkwardness, limb lengths increase but muscles have yet to reach full size or strength, which contributes to reductions in motor skill performance. Therefore, coaches may choose to spend more effort reviewing optimal movement patterns for athletes at this time. Spending more time on form and technical skill will allow the athlete to retrain the control needed to attain subsequent high levels of speed and agility. Practitioners will likely need to modify existing motor patterns with reduced loads.
Additionally, risk of injury may be heightened during PHV. For example, before PHV there is a decrease in bone mineral density, leading to increased risk of bone fractures. Further, changes in limb length and mass resulting from growth place disproportionately increased stress on muscle-tendon junctions, bone-tendon junctions, ligaments, and growth cartilage. Such imbalances, coupled with the loading demands of sport, may make the affected youth prone to musculoskeletal and overuse injuries. Increases in body mass and height of center of mass without corresponding adaptations in strength and power can lead to excessive loading on the musculoskeletal system during dynamic and reactive actions. Females, specifically, have an increased risk of knee injury due to their increasing body size without the appropriate increases in hip and knee strength to support their skeleton. Females experience a widening of the hips, thus increasing the Q angle of the knee. Larger Q angles are associated with increased pressure on the lower extremities; therefore, coaches should be sure to select biologically age-appropriate drills and encourage proper recovery.
With youth training, it is recommended that emphasis be placed upon exercise programs that promote physical development, reduce injury, and enhance fitness behaviors across the age spectrum. Long-term athlete development (LTAD) refers to the habitual development of athleticism over time to improve health and fitness, enhance physical performance, and reduce the relative risk of injury. A list of the pillars of successful LTAD is provided in table 4.2. This model emphasizes age-appropriate exercises since children's anatomy and physiology differ from those of adolescents in muscle structure, size, activation patterns, and function. Structured training that focuses on age-appropriate drills and movement patterns will provide superior results and reduce the risk of overtraining. Coaches should also educate youth about how their drills will translate into improved performance in their sport. This understanding will help motivate children and build a lifelong future of healthy and enjoyable engagement in sport and physical activity.
Sport-specific agility and quickness training for soccer
Soccer is one of the most challenging sports for which to design an agility and quickness program because it consists of almost constant movement over two 45-minute periods.
Soccer is one of the most challenging sports for which to design an agility and quickness program because it consists of almost constant movement over two 45-minute periods. Given the amount of movement, agility becomes a central element in a soccer player's effectiveness. Training that improves this capacity has the ability to enhance soccer performance significantly, contributing to improvement in all elements of play.
A key factor in developing agility is that it is very context-specific. Although fundamental movement patterns do exist, the ultimate aim of training is to enable athletes to deploy these movements effectively in a game. To this end, it is useful to think of agility as game speed (not to be confused with linear speed). Game speed can be defined as a context-specific skill, in which athletes maximize their performance by applying sport-specific movements of optimal velocity, precision, efficiency, and control in anticipation of and in response to the key perceptual stimuli and skill requirements of the game.
This definition has a number of vital messages. The first is that movement requirements are specific to a given sport, often even to a given position. For example, a goalkeeper's movement requirements are different from those of a central midfielder. Secondly, effective game speed consists of an optimal velocity that should be judged not only by maximal velocity but also by its precision, control, and efficiency. These terms are essential in the context of soccer, where movements need to be maintained for a 90-minute period. Here, the ultimate aim of the game is to express soccer skills, rather than simply to move at maximal speed. Although maximal speed is an important variable, the ability to harness speed and agility is more important for maximizing soccer performance.
Since game speed and agility are context-specific, coaches must be able to break down the movement requirements of soccer to develop an effective program. Soccer movement is intermittent, with each game featuring between 1,200 and 1,400 changes of direction. These movements vary in speed and direction, with players changing directions about every 2 to 4 seconds. Typical sprinting activities span approximately 5 to 15 meters (5.5-16.4 yd) and occur once every 30 seconds on average. The majority of playing time is spent in transitional phases, where speeds vary from walking to high-speed running. These transitional movements occur in many directions, including forward, sideways, and backward. Sprinting activities can be performed straight ahead; however, they often include some COD at the outset of the sprint or at some point during the sprint.
Program Design
Given the vast range of movement requirements across 90 minutes of play, and the different requirements of playing positions, designing soccer-specific agility sessions may be daunting. However, by analyzing the target movement specifications of the sport, coaches can classify soccer movements and put them into a basic structure for building an effective agility program.
To break down soccer movements, it is helpful to determine what athletes are trying to achieve. Coaches can effectively carry this out using target classifications. At any given time, athletes are likely attempting either to start movement or to change the direction of movement (initiation movements), trying to move at maximal velocity (actualization movements), or waiting in transition to react to a soccer-specific stimulus (transition movements). Although agility training often focuses on initiation and actualization movements, far less emphasis is placed on transition movements. Often, when these movements are trained, they are taught incorrectly, with the emphasis on movement speed rather than on control. Athletes' ability to start and move at maximal velocity often depends on being in the correct position to enable effective subsequent movement.
Effective agility training balances the requirements of the exercise and the ability of the athlete. Thus, a session designed for an elite athlete should look different from a session for a beginner. For this reason, a soccer-specific agility program should include a progression in movement challenge and complexity as athletes move through their stages of development. In the initial stages, athletes can benefit from closed drills that allow the speed of the drills to be controlled and often consist of single movement patterns (e.g., shuffling). In this stage, coaches should develop athletes' ability in all of the identified movement patterns for soccer to ensure that there are no weak links in movement ability. The following list provides the system for game-speed development, which shows stages of movement ability and application. As athletes maintain proper movement patterns at one stage, they can progress to the next level.
- Develop general and stable fundamental movement patterns.
- Develop key movement combinations, moving from closed to open drills.
- Develop sport-specific movements in game context.
- Perform sport-specific movements in game context.
As athletes develop, coaches should start to combine movement patterns in ways typical to soccer. For example, backpedal drills can conclude with sprints to the rear, to the side, or forward. These combinations are commonly seen in soccer. As athletes develop, coaches can also deploy drills that are increasingly open. Here, athletes should respond to a range of stimuli, which can become increasingly soccer-specific. For example, athletes can initiate incorporating backpedaling into a sprint drill. Next, athletes can perform a drill where they change direction in response to a coach's signal, and then in response to another athlete's movement. In this way, the movement patterns become increasingly more challenging in a way that progressively reflects the specific movement patterns found in soccer. These types of drills can include great variety in terms of distances, speeds, directions, and stimuli.
Warm-up methods and techniques for agility training
It is an essential and standard practice for athletes to warm up before they practice or compete. The purpose of a well-designed warm-up is to enhance performance and decrease the likelihood of injuries.
It is an essential and standard practice for athletes to warm up before they practice or compete. The purpose of a well-designed warm-up is to enhance performance and decrease the likelihood of injuries. The warm-up also provides an ideal time to learn and rehearse movement skills such as jumping, landing, accelerating, decelerating, and the other various modes of locomotion. The opportunity for mental preparation that this segment of the training session provides is equally important because it sets the tone for the work to follow. An appropriate warm-up reaps several physiological benefits that can positively affect an athlete's performance. The warm-up should increase blood flow to active muscles, raise core body temperature, enhance metabolic reactions, and disrupt temporary connective tissue bonds. These effects can aid the athlete by yielding improvements in rate-of-force development, improvements in reaction time, improved oxygen delivery to the lungs and working muscles, and improvements in acute measures of muscle strength and power. In addition, the increased production of synovial fluid located between the joints will acutely enhance the dynamic flexibility, or mobility, of the joints. Another benefit is that the warm-up helps facilitate the breakdown of glycogen, which is the source of energy most often used for exercise; this translates to more energy available for the athlete.
The mental aspect of the warm-up often does not receive the attention it deserves. The warm-up provides the perfect opportunity for athletes to shut off concerns from the outside world and concentrate on the activities that are about to commence. Effective warm-up sessions direct focus and active participation by both coaches and athletes; even responsible athletes can benefit from performing movements under the diligent eyes of the coach. This means that the coach must actively engage in cueing and teaching these movements to help athletes create the appropriate intent with each movement. For example, a coach instructing athletes on proper plyometric mechanics during a practice session might cue the athletes during a warm-up to pretend they are landing on hot coals; this image could help prepare them for quick landings and explosive takeoffs. Reinforcing proper cues during the warm-up offers a less stressful platform for learning.
Proper posture and body positioning are critical in all physical activities for optimizing performance and reducing injury risk and for maintaining body balance and the proper arrangement of supporting structures. Research supports the contention that correct posture is a prerequisite of a healthy lifestyle but today's athletes live in a world that does not necessarily promote good posture. Excessive use of phones and computers, carrying heavy school or work bags, and poor posture while studying or watching television are just a few examples of habits that prohibit the maintenance of correct posture. The warm-up offers a good opportunity to educate and then reinforce proper posture and body positioning. Here are some simple ways to address this issue.
- Keep the head up at all times and always look straight ahead.
- When landing and decelerating, hinge at the hips and do not round the back to dampen the force with the hips and knees.
- Maintain proper foot alignment and spacing when jumping and landing; for example, takeoffs from a two-footed jumping position should have the feet at hip width or slightly wider; conversely, when landing, land with both feet closer to shoulder-width distance apart.
- Distribute weight appropriately for different movements; for example, when starting mechanics from a stationary staggered stance, most of the weight should be placed on the lead leg to optimize horizontal force into the ground.
- Maintain proper shin angles, especially during the initial driving strides while accelerating. The intent should be to drive the leg back behind the body and fully extend at the hip, knee, and ankle. A significant part of this technique is to begin with a positive shin angle that is a forward tilting of the lower leg bones. A negative shin angle during initial acceleration indicates that the foot is too far in front of the body, which would create excessive braking forces during footstrike.
Because there are many important components to a typical practice or competition, it can be very challenging to coach such technical aspects after the warm-up is over, so the warm-up itself offers an excellent opportunity to refine body positioning and posture as it relates to athletic performance.
There are certain challenges and considerations that coaches must address with respect to the warm-up. For example, while it would be ideal to allow 10 to 20 minutes for the warm-up period, time constraints may reduce that period significantly in real life. Coaches often only have only 5 or 10 minutes of quality work to prepare the athletes for the ensuing practice, so they must consider several factors when determining the length of the warm-up. For example, if the agility session for the day is going to be of higher intensity, the coach may want to allow a slightly longer warm-up period to make sure that the athletes are adequately prepared for the session. It has been well established that a subnormal body temperature has an adverse effect on neuromuscular performance. In colder weather, it would therefore be prudent to minimize the time between warm-up and the agility session so that athletes will not cool down before the session begins. Conversely, research also reveals that heat stress reduces a person's ability to achieve maximal metabolic rates during exercise and that, during exercise-induced heat stress, competing metabolic and thermoregulatory demands for blood flow make it difficult to maintain an adequate cardiac output. Therefore, in warmer, more humid weather, the duration and intensity of the warm-up should be shortened to minimize the risk of fatigue and heat-related illness. Another potential obstacle during warm-ups may be space limitations. If this is an issue, it is advisable to have back-up exercises and movements that can be performed easily and safely in a small area.
Proper warm-ups should be taught in a systematic fashion. The following guidelines should be adhered to during all warm-ups.
- Begin with simple movements such as marching. Once the athletes demonstrate a level of proficiency with the marches, progress to skipping; as these simple movements become less difficult, progress the athlete to more complex movements and variations.
- Make sure that the movements are performed slowly enough to achieve an acceptable level of performance before attempting to go to full speed.
- Rehearse bilateral work before incorporating unilateral skills, especially with takeoffs and landings. Training ladders may be useful to help improve rhythm, timing, and coordination. The literature supports closed skill movements in various directions over prearranged distances to build correct movement patterns in novice athletes. After a high level of technical proficiency is attained, these tools may no longer be as beneficial from a skill development standpoint. However, they can certainly be included as part of a dynamic warm-up because they will prepare the body physiologically (e.g., increased heart rate, breathing rate, perspiration rate, etc.).
- Perform unloaded or bodyweight movements with proper movement patterns before considering adding some form of external resistance (e.g., resistance tubing). Training sessions should be performed no later than 15 minutes after termination of the warm-up. It has been demonstrated that the positive effects of warm-up begin to dissipate after 15 minutes; ideally, therefore, the athletes should be ready to practice as soon as the warm-up ends.
- Be sure to keep the warm-up appropriate to the fitness levels of the participants. The warm-up should prepare the individuals for training and/or competition without being so stressful as to cause fatigue.
Practical application of age and sex considerations
Most importantly, coaches need to ensure that content is age appropriate. For example, a group of middle school football players should not be performing the same speed and agility training tactics as professional athletes from the National Football League.
Most importantly, coaches need to ensure that content is age appropriate. For example, a group of middle school football players should not be performing the same speed and agility training tactics as professional athletes from the National Football League. Effective age-appropriate program design and implementation will contribute to athlete success in both speed and agility development. During the first window of opportunity, special attention should be paid to body awareness and body control with proper movement mechanics. Once motor skills are successfully performed, speed will develop. Therefore, a strong focus on form is crucial during the prepubescent years. Since speed has been shown to decrease during and following PHV, it is recommended that coaches incorporate speed and agility training during earlier prepubescent stages (girls: 6-8 years; boys: 7-9 years). The addition of these skills earlier in youth development may reduce speed disparities associated with the onset of PHV.
Following PHV, the second window of opportunity is characterized by increases in strength due to surges in androgens, specifically testosterone, growth hormone, and insulin-like growth factor. Strength is closely associated with speed, change of direction, and plyometric ability; therefore, the second period is critical for further improvements in speed and agility and drills that address the aforementioned should be included into the training program design.
It is important for coaches to be aware of adolescent awkwardness. Routinely monitoring stature and body weight of athletes in order to identify growth spurts may help practitioners to recognize this phase. During adolescent awkwardness, limb lengths increase but muscles have yet to reach full size or strength, which contributes to reductions in motor skill performance. Therefore, coaches may choose to spend more effort reviewing optimal movement patterns for athletes at this time. Spending more time on form and technical skill will allow the athlete to retrain the control needed to attain subsequent high levels of speed and agility. Practitioners will likely need to modify existing motor patterns with reduced loads.
Additionally, risk of injury may be heightened during PHV. For example, before PHV there is a decrease in bone mineral density, leading to increased risk of bone fractures. Further, changes in limb length and mass resulting from growth place disproportionately increased stress on muscle-tendon junctions, bone-tendon junctions, ligaments, and growth cartilage. Such imbalances, coupled with the loading demands of sport, may make the affected youth prone to musculoskeletal and overuse injuries. Increases in body mass and height of center of mass without corresponding adaptations in strength and power can lead to excessive loading on the musculoskeletal system during dynamic and reactive actions. Females, specifically, have an increased risk of knee injury due to their increasing body size without the appropriate increases in hip and knee strength to support their skeleton. Females experience a widening of the hips, thus increasing the Q angle of the knee. Larger Q angles are associated with increased pressure on the lower extremities; therefore, coaches should be sure to select biologically age-appropriate drills and encourage proper recovery.
With youth training, it is recommended that emphasis be placed upon exercise programs that promote physical development, reduce injury, and enhance fitness behaviors across the age spectrum. Long-term athlete development (LTAD) refers to the habitual development of athleticism over time to improve health and fitness, enhance physical performance, and reduce the relative risk of injury. A list of the pillars of successful LTAD is provided in table 4.2. This model emphasizes age-appropriate exercises since children's anatomy and physiology differ from those of adolescents in muscle structure, size, activation patterns, and function. Structured training that focuses on age-appropriate drills and movement patterns will provide superior results and reduce the risk of overtraining. Coaches should also educate youth about how their drills will translate into improved performance in their sport. This understanding will help motivate children and build a lifelong future of healthy and enjoyable engagement in sport and physical activity.
Sport-specific agility and quickness training for soccer
Soccer is one of the most challenging sports for which to design an agility and quickness program because it consists of almost constant movement over two 45-minute periods.
Soccer is one of the most challenging sports for which to design an agility and quickness program because it consists of almost constant movement over two 45-minute periods. Given the amount of movement, agility becomes a central element in a soccer player's effectiveness. Training that improves this capacity has the ability to enhance soccer performance significantly, contributing to improvement in all elements of play.
A key factor in developing agility is that it is very context-specific. Although fundamental movement patterns do exist, the ultimate aim of training is to enable athletes to deploy these movements effectively in a game. To this end, it is useful to think of agility as game speed (not to be confused with linear speed). Game speed can be defined as a context-specific skill, in which athletes maximize their performance by applying sport-specific movements of optimal velocity, precision, efficiency, and control in anticipation of and in response to the key perceptual stimuli and skill requirements of the game.
This definition has a number of vital messages. The first is that movement requirements are specific to a given sport, often even to a given position. For example, a goalkeeper's movement requirements are different from those of a central midfielder. Secondly, effective game speed consists of an optimal velocity that should be judged not only by maximal velocity but also by its precision, control, and efficiency. These terms are essential in the context of soccer, where movements need to be maintained for a 90-minute period. Here, the ultimate aim of the game is to express soccer skills, rather than simply to move at maximal speed. Although maximal speed is an important variable, the ability to harness speed and agility is more important for maximizing soccer performance.
Since game speed and agility are context-specific, coaches must be able to break down the movement requirements of soccer to develop an effective program. Soccer movement is intermittent, with each game featuring between 1,200 and 1,400 changes of direction. These movements vary in speed and direction, with players changing directions about every 2 to 4 seconds. Typical sprinting activities span approximately 5 to 15 meters (5.5-16.4 yd) and occur once every 30 seconds on average. The majority of playing time is spent in transitional phases, where speeds vary from walking to high-speed running. These transitional movements occur in many directions, including forward, sideways, and backward. Sprinting activities can be performed straight ahead; however, they often include some COD at the outset of the sprint or at some point during the sprint.
Program Design
Given the vast range of movement requirements across 90 minutes of play, and the different requirements of playing positions, designing soccer-specific agility sessions may be daunting. However, by analyzing the target movement specifications of the sport, coaches can classify soccer movements and put them into a basic structure for building an effective agility program.
To break down soccer movements, it is helpful to determine what athletes are trying to achieve. Coaches can effectively carry this out using target classifications. At any given time, athletes are likely attempting either to start movement or to change the direction of movement (initiation movements), trying to move at maximal velocity (actualization movements), or waiting in transition to react to a soccer-specific stimulus (transition movements). Although agility training often focuses on initiation and actualization movements, far less emphasis is placed on transition movements. Often, when these movements are trained, they are taught incorrectly, with the emphasis on movement speed rather than on control. Athletes' ability to start and move at maximal velocity often depends on being in the correct position to enable effective subsequent movement.
Effective agility training balances the requirements of the exercise and the ability of the athlete. Thus, a session designed for an elite athlete should look different from a session for a beginner. For this reason, a soccer-specific agility program should include a progression in movement challenge and complexity as athletes move through their stages of development. In the initial stages, athletes can benefit from closed drills that allow the speed of the drills to be controlled and often consist of single movement patterns (e.g., shuffling). In this stage, coaches should develop athletes' ability in all of the identified movement patterns for soccer to ensure that there are no weak links in movement ability. The following list provides the system for game-speed development, which shows stages of movement ability and application. As athletes maintain proper movement patterns at one stage, they can progress to the next level.
- Develop general and stable fundamental movement patterns.
- Develop key movement combinations, moving from closed to open drills.
- Develop sport-specific movements in game context.
- Perform sport-specific movements in game context.
As athletes develop, coaches should start to combine movement patterns in ways typical to soccer. For example, backpedal drills can conclude with sprints to the rear, to the side, or forward. These combinations are commonly seen in soccer. As athletes develop, coaches can also deploy drills that are increasingly open. Here, athletes should respond to a range of stimuli, which can become increasingly soccer-specific. For example, athletes can initiate incorporating backpedaling into a sprint drill. Next, athletes can perform a drill where they change direction in response to a coach's signal, and then in response to another athlete's movement. In this way, the movement patterns become increasingly more challenging in a way that progressively reflects the specific movement patterns found in soccer. These types of drills can include great variety in terms of distances, speeds, directions, and stimuli.
Warm-up methods and techniques for agility training
It is an essential and standard practice for athletes to warm up before they practice or compete. The purpose of a well-designed warm-up is to enhance performance and decrease the likelihood of injuries.
It is an essential and standard practice for athletes to warm up before they practice or compete. The purpose of a well-designed warm-up is to enhance performance and decrease the likelihood of injuries. The warm-up also provides an ideal time to learn and rehearse movement skills such as jumping, landing, accelerating, decelerating, and the other various modes of locomotion. The opportunity for mental preparation that this segment of the training session provides is equally important because it sets the tone for the work to follow. An appropriate warm-up reaps several physiological benefits that can positively affect an athlete's performance. The warm-up should increase blood flow to active muscles, raise core body temperature, enhance metabolic reactions, and disrupt temporary connective tissue bonds. These effects can aid the athlete by yielding improvements in rate-of-force development, improvements in reaction time, improved oxygen delivery to the lungs and working muscles, and improvements in acute measures of muscle strength and power. In addition, the increased production of synovial fluid located between the joints will acutely enhance the dynamic flexibility, or mobility, of the joints. Another benefit is that the warm-up helps facilitate the breakdown of glycogen, which is the source of energy most often used for exercise; this translates to more energy available for the athlete.
The mental aspect of the warm-up often does not receive the attention it deserves. The warm-up provides the perfect opportunity for athletes to shut off concerns from the outside world and concentrate on the activities that are about to commence. Effective warm-up sessions direct focus and active participation by both coaches and athletes; even responsible athletes can benefit from performing movements under the diligent eyes of the coach. This means that the coach must actively engage in cueing and teaching these movements to help athletes create the appropriate intent with each movement. For example, a coach instructing athletes on proper plyometric mechanics during a practice session might cue the athletes during a warm-up to pretend they are landing on hot coals; this image could help prepare them for quick landings and explosive takeoffs. Reinforcing proper cues during the warm-up offers a less stressful platform for learning.
Proper posture and body positioning are critical in all physical activities for optimizing performance and reducing injury risk and for maintaining body balance and the proper arrangement of supporting structures. Research supports the contention that correct posture is a prerequisite of a healthy lifestyle but today's athletes live in a world that does not necessarily promote good posture. Excessive use of phones and computers, carrying heavy school or work bags, and poor posture while studying or watching television are just a few examples of habits that prohibit the maintenance of correct posture. The warm-up offers a good opportunity to educate and then reinforce proper posture and body positioning. Here are some simple ways to address this issue.
- Keep the head up at all times and always look straight ahead.
- When landing and decelerating, hinge at the hips and do not round the back to dampen the force with the hips and knees.
- Maintain proper foot alignment and spacing when jumping and landing; for example, takeoffs from a two-footed jumping position should have the feet at hip width or slightly wider; conversely, when landing, land with both feet closer to shoulder-width distance apart.
- Distribute weight appropriately for different movements; for example, when starting mechanics from a stationary staggered stance, most of the weight should be placed on the lead leg to optimize horizontal force into the ground.
- Maintain proper shin angles, especially during the initial driving strides while accelerating. The intent should be to drive the leg back behind the body and fully extend at the hip, knee, and ankle. A significant part of this technique is to begin with a positive shin angle that is a forward tilting of the lower leg bones. A negative shin angle during initial acceleration indicates that the foot is too far in front of the body, which would create excessive braking forces during footstrike.
Because there are many important components to a typical practice or competition, it can be very challenging to coach such technical aspects after the warm-up is over, so the warm-up itself offers an excellent opportunity to refine body positioning and posture as it relates to athletic performance.
There are certain challenges and considerations that coaches must address with respect to the warm-up. For example, while it would be ideal to allow 10 to 20 minutes for the warm-up period, time constraints may reduce that period significantly in real life. Coaches often only have only 5 or 10 minutes of quality work to prepare the athletes for the ensuing practice, so they must consider several factors when determining the length of the warm-up. For example, if the agility session for the day is going to be of higher intensity, the coach may want to allow a slightly longer warm-up period to make sure that the athletes are adequately prepared for the session. It has been well established that a subnormal body temperature has an adverse effect on neuromuscular performance. In colder weather, it would therefore be prudent to minimize the time between warm-up and the agility session so that athletes will not cool down before the session begins. Conversely, research also reveals that heat stress reduces a person's ability to achieve maximal metabolic rates during exercise and that, during exercise-induced heat stress, competing metabolic and thermoregulatory demands for blood flow make it difficult to maintain an adequate cardiac output. Therefore, in warmer, more humid weather, the duration and intensity of the warm-up should be shortened to minimize the risk of fatigue and heat-related illness. Another potential obstacle during warm-ups may be space limitations. If this is an issue, it is advisable to have back-up exercises and movements that can be performed easily and safely in a small area.
Proper warm-ups should be taught in a systematic fashion. The following guidelines should be adhered to during all warm-ups.
- Begin with simple movements such as marching. Once the athletes demonstrate a level of proficiency with the marches, progress to skipping; as these simple movements become less difficult, progress the athlete to more complex movements and variations.
- Make sure that the movements are performed slowly enough to achieve an acceptable level of performance before attempting to go to full speed.
- Rehearse bilateral work before incorporating unilateral skills, especially with takeoffs and landings. Training ladders may be useful to help improve rhythm, timing, and coordination. The literature supports closed skill movements in various directions over prearranged distances to build correct movement patterns in novice athletes. After a high level of technical proficiency is attained, these tools may no longer be as beneficial from a skill development standpoint. However, they can certainly be included as part of a dynamic warm-up because they will prepare the body physiologically (e.g., increased heart rate, breathing rate, perspiration rate, etc.).
- Perform unloaded or bodyweight movements with proper movement patterns before considering adding some form of external resistance (e.g., resistance tubing). Training sessions should be performed no later than 15 minutes after termination of the warm-up. It has been demonstrated that the positive effects of warm-up begin to dissipate after 15 minutes; ideally, therefore, the athletes should be ready to practice as soon as the warm-up ends.
- Be sure to keep the warm-up appropriate to the fitness levels of the participants. The warm-up should prepare the individuals for training and/or competition without being so stressful as to cause fatigue.
Practical application of age and sex considerations
Most importantly, coaches need to ensure that content is age appropriate. For example, a group of middle school football players should not be performing the same speed and agility training tactics as professional athletes from the National Football League.
Most importantly, coaches need to ensure that content is age appropriate. For example, a group of middle school football players should not be performing the same speed and agility training tactics as professional athletes from the National Football League. Effective age-appropriate program design and implementation will contribute to athlete success in both speed and agility development. During the first window of opportunity, special attention should be paid to body awareness and body control with proper movement mechanics. Once motor skills are successfully performed, speed will develop. Therefore, a strong focus on form is crucial during the prepubescent years. Since speed has been shown to decrease during and following PHV, it is recommended that coaches incorporate speed and agility training during earlier prepubescent stages (girls: 6-8 years; boys: 7-9 years). The addition of these skills earlier in youth development may reduce speed disparities associated with the onset of PHV.
Following PHV, the second window of opportunity is characterized by increases in strength due to surges in androgens, specifically testosterone, growth hormone, and insulin-like growth factor. Strength is closely associated with speed, change of direction, and plyometric ability; therefore, the second period is critical for further improvements in speed and agility and drills that address the aforementioned should be included into the training program design.
It is important for coaches to be aware of adolescent awkwardness. Routinely monitoring stature and body weight of athletes in order to identify growth spurts may help practitioners to recognize this phase. During adolescent awkwardness, limb lengths increase but muscles have yet to reach full size or strength, which contributes to reductions in motor skill performance. Therefore, coaches may choose to spend more effort reviewing optimal movement patterns for athletes at this time. Spending more time on form and technical skill will allow the athlete to retrain the control needed to attain subsequent high levels of speed and agility. Practitioners will likely need to modify existing motor patterns with reduced loads.
Additionally, risk of injury may be heightened during PHV. For example, before PHV there is a decrease in bone mineral density, leading to increased risk of bone fractures. Further, changes in limb length and mass resulting from growth place disproportionately increased stress on muscle-tendon junctions, bone-tendon junctions, ligaments, and growth cartilage. Such imbalances, coupled with the loading demands of sport, may make the affected youth prone to musculoskeletal and overuse injuries. Increases in body mass and height of center of mass without corresponding adaptations in strength and power can lead to excessive loading on the musculoskeletal system during dynamic and reactive actions. Females, specifically, have an increased risk of knee injury due to their increasing body size without the appropriate increases in hip and knee strength to support their skeleton. Females experience a widening of the hips, thus increasing the Q angle of the knee. Larger Q angles are associated with increased pressure on the lower extremities; therefore, coaches should be sure to select biologically age-appropriate drills and encourage proper recovery.
With youth training, it is recommended that emphasis be placed upon exercise programs that promote physical development, reduce injury, and enhance fitness behaviors across the age spectrum. Long-term athlete development (LTAD) refers to the habitual development of athleticism over time to improve health and fitness, enhance physical performance, and reduce the relative risk of injury. A list of the pillars of successful LTAD is provided in table 4.2. This model emphasizes age-appropriate exercises since children's anatomy and physiology differ from those of adolescents in muscle structure, size, activation patterns, and function. Structured training that focuses on age-appropriate drills and movement patterns will provide superior results and reduce the risk of overtraining. Coaches should also educate youth about how their drills will translate into improved performance in their sport. This understanding will help motivate children and build a lifelong future of healthy and enjoyable engagement in sport and physical activity.
Sport-specific agility and quickness training for soccer
Soccer is one of the most challenging sports for which to design an agility and quickness program because it consists of almost constant movement over two 45-minute periods.
Soccer is one of the most challenging sports for which to design an agility and quickness program because it consists of almost constant movement over two 45-minute periods. Given the amount of movement, agility becomes a central element in a soccer player's effectiveness. Training that improves this capacity has the ability to enhance soccer performance significantly, contributing to improvement in all elements of play.
A key factor in developing agility is that it is very context-specific. Although fundamental movement patterns do exist, the ultimate aim of training is to enable athletes to deploy these movements effectively in a game. To this end, it is useful to think of agility as game speed (not to be confused with linear speed). Game speed can be defined as a context-specific skill, in which athletes maximize their performance by applying sport-specific movements of optimal velocity, precision, efficiency, and control in anticipation of and in response to the key perceptual stimuli and skill requirements of the game.
This definition has a number of vital messages. The first is that movement requirements are specific to a given sport, often even to a given position. For example, a goalkeeper's movement requirements are different from those of a central midfielder. Secondly, effective game speed consists of an optimal velocity that should be judged not only by maximal velocity but also by its precision, control, and efficiency. These terms are essential in the context of soccer, where movements need to be maintained for a 90-minute period. Here, the ultimate aim of the game is to express soccer skills, rather than simply to move at maximal speed. Although maximal speed is an important variable, the ability to harness speed and agility is more important for maximizing soccer performance.
Since game speed and agility are context-specific, coaches must be able to break down the movement requirements of soccer to develop an effective program. Soccer movement is intermittent, with each game featuring between 1,200 and 1,400 changes of direction. These movements vary in speed and direction, with players changing directions about every 2 to 4 seconds. Typical sprinting activities span approximately 5 to 15 meters (5.5-16.4 yd) and occur once every 30 seconds on average. The majority of playing time is spent in transitional phases, where speeds vary from walking to high-speed running. These transitional movements occur in many directions, including forward, sideways, and backward. Sprinting activities can be performed straight ahead; however, they often include some COD at the outset of the sprint or at some point during the sprint.
Program Design
Given the vast range of movement requirements across 90 minutes of play, and the different requirements of playing positions, designing soccer-specific agility sessions may be daunting. However, by analyzing the target movement specifications of the sport, coaches can classify soccer movements and put them into a basic structure for building an effective agility program.
To break down soccer movements, it is helpful to determine what athletes are trying to achieve. Coaches can effectively carry this out using target classifications. At any given time, athletes are likely attempting either to start movement or to change the direction of movement (initiation movements), trying to move at maximal velocity (actualization movements), or waiting in transition to react to a soccer-specific stimulus (transition movements). Although agility training often focuses on initiation and actualization movements, far less emphasis is placed on transition movements. Often, when these movements are trained, they are taught incorrectly, with the emphasis on movement speed rather than on control. Athletes' ability to start and move at maximal velocity often depends on being in the correct position to enable effective subsequent movement.
Effective agility training balances the requirements of the exercise and the ability of the athlete. Thus, a session designed for an elite athlete should look different from a session for a beginner. For this reason, a soccer-specific agility program should include a progression in movement challenge and complexity as athletes move through their stages of development. In the initial stages, athletes can benefit from closed drills that allow the speed of the drills to be controlled and often consist of single movement patterns (e.g., shuffling). In this stage, coaches should develop athletes' ability in all of the identified movement patterns for soccer to ensure that there are no weak links in movement ability. The following list provides the system for game-speed development, which shows stages of movement ability and application. As athletes maintain proper movement patterns at one stage, they can progress to the next level.
- Develop general and stable fundamental movement patterns.
- Develop key movement combinations, moving from closed to open drills.
- Develop sport-specific movements in game context.
- Perform sport-specific movements in game context.
As athletes develop, coaches should start to combine movement patterns in ways typical to soccer. For example, backpedal drills can conclude with sprints to the rear, to the side, or forward. These combinations are commonly seen in soccer. As athletes develop, coaches can also deploy drills that are increasingly open. Here, athletes should respond to a range of stimuli, which can become increasingly soccer-specific. For example, athletes can initiate incorporating backpedaling into a sprint drill. Next, athletes can perform a drill where they change direction in response to a coach's signal, and then in response to another athlete's movement. In this way, the movement patterns become increasingly more challenging in a way that progressively reflects the specific movement patterns found in soccer. These types of drills can include great variety in terms of distances, speeds, directions, and stimuli.
Warm-up methods and techniques for agility training
It is an essential and standard practice for athletes to warm up before they practice or compete. The purpose of a well-designed warm-up is to enhance performance and decrease the likelihood of injuries.
It is an essential and standard practice for athletes to warm up before they practice or compete. The purpose of a well-designed warm-up is to enhance performance and decrease the likelihood of injuries. The warm-up also provides an ideal time to learn and rehearse movement skills such as jumping, landing, accelerating, decelerating, and the other various modes of locomotion. The opportunity for mental preparation that this segment of the training session provides is equally important because it sets the tone for the work to follow. An appropriate warm-up reaps several physiological benefits that can positively affect an athlete's performance. The warm-up should increase blood flow to active muscles, raise core body temperature, enhance metabolic reactions, and disrupt temporary connective tissue bonds. These effects can aid the athlete by yielding improvements in rate-of-force development, improvements in reaction time, improved oxygen delivery to the lungs and working muscles, and improvements in acute measures of muscle strength and power. In addition, the increased production of synovial fluid located between the joints will acutely enhance the dynamic flexibility, or mobility, of the joints. Another benefit is that the warm-up helps facilitate the breakdown of glycogen, which is the source of energy most often used for exercise; this translates to more energy available for the athlete.
The mental aspect of the warm-up often does not receive the attention it deserves. The warm-up provides the perfect opportunity for athletes to shut off concerns from the outside world and concentrate on the activities that are about to commence. Effective warm-up sessions direct focus and active participation by both coaches and athletes; even responsible athletes can benefit from performing movements under the diligent eyes of the coach. This means that the coach must actively engage in cueing and teaching these movements to help athletes create the appropriate intent with each movement. For example, a coach instructing athletes on proper plyometric mechanics during a practice session might cue the athletes during a warm-up to pretend they are landing on hot coals; this image could help prepare them for quick landings and explosive takeoffs. Reinforcing proper cues during the warm-up offers a less stressful platform for learning.
Proper posture and body positioning are critical in all physical activities for optimizing performance and reducing injury risk and for maintaining body balance and the proper arrangement of supporting structures. Research supports the contention that correct posture is a prerequisite of a healthy lifestyle but today's athletes live in a world that does not necessarily promote good posture. Excessive use of phones and computers, carrying heavy school or work bags, and poor posture while studying or watching television are just a few examples of habits that prohibit the maintenance of correct posture. The warm-up offers a good opportunity to educate and then reinforce proper posture and body positioning. Here are some simple ways to address this issue.
- Keep the head up at all times and always look straight ahead.
- When landing and decelerating, hinge at the hips and do not round the back to dampen the force with the hips and knees.
- Maintain proper foot alignment and spacing when jumping and landing; for example, takeoffs from a two-footed jumping position should have the feet at hip width or slightly wider; conversely, when landing, land with both feet closer to shoulder-width distance apart.
- Distribute weight appropriately for different movements; for example, when starting mechanics from a stationary staggered stance, most of the weight should be placed on the lead leg to optimize horizontal force into the ground.
- Maintain proper shin angles, especially during the initial driving strides while accelerating. The intent should be to drive the leg back behind the body and fully extend at the hip, knee, and ankle. A significant part of this technique is to begin with a positive shin angle that is a forward tilting of the lower leg bones. A negative shin angle during initial acceleration indicates that the foot is too far in front of the body, which would create excessive braking forces during footstrike.
Because there are many important components to a typical practice or competition, it can be very challenging to coach such technical aspects after the warm-up is over, so the warm-up itself offers an excellent opportunity to refine body positioning and posture as it relates to athletic performance.
There are certain challenges and considerations that coaches must address with respect to the warm-up. For example, while it would be ideal to allow 10 to 20 minutes for the warm-up period, time constraints may reduce that period significantly in real life. Coaches often only have only 5 or 10 minutes of quality work to prepare the athletes for the ensuing practice, so they must consider several factors when determining the length of the warm-up. For example, if the agility session for the day is going to be of higher intensity, the coach may want to allow a slightly longer warm-up period to make sure that the athletes are adequately prepared for the session. It has been well established that a subnormal body temperature has an adverse effect on neuromuscular performance. In colder weather, it would therefore be prudent to minimize the time between warm-up and the agility session so that athletes will not cool down before the session begins. Conversely, research also reveals that heat stress reduces a person's ability to achieve maximal metabolic rates during exercise and that, during exercise-induced heat stress, competing metabolic and thermoregulatory demands for blood flow make it difficult to maintain an adequate cardiac output. Therefore, in warmer, more humid weather, the duration and intensity of the warm-up should be shortened to minimize the risk of fatigue and heat-related illness. Another potential obstacle during warm-ups may be space limitations. If this is an issue, it is advisable to have back-up exercises and movements that can be performed easily and safely in a small area.
Proper warm-ups should be taught in a systematic fashion. The following guidelines should be adhered to during all warm-ups.
- Begin with simple movements such as marching. Once the athletes demonstrate a level of proficiency with the marches, progress to skipping; as these simple movements become less difficult, progress the athlete to more complex movements and variations.
- Make sure that the movements are performed slowly enough to achieve an acceptable level of performance before attempting to go to full speed.
- Rehearse bilateral work before incorporating unilateral skills, especially with takeoffs and landings. Training ladders may be useful to help improve rhythm, timing, and coordination. The literature supports closed skill movements in various directions over prearranged distances to build correct movement patterns in novice athletes. After a high level of technical proficiency is attained, these tools may no longer be as beneficial from a skill development standpoint. However, they can certainly be included as part of a dynamic warm-up because they will prepare the body physiologically (e.g., increased heart rate, breathing rate, perspiration rate, etc.).
- Perform unloaded or bodyweight movements with proper movement patterns before considering adding some form of external resistance (e.g., resistance tubing). Training sessions should be performed no later than 15 minutes after termination of the warm-up. It has been demonstrated that the positive effects of warm-up begin to dissipate after 15 minutes; ideally, therefore, the athletes should be ready to practice as soon as the warm-up ends.
- Be sure to keep the warm-up appropriate to the fitness levels of the participants. The warm-up should prepare the individuals for training and/or competition without being so stressful as to cause fatigue.
Practical application of age and sex considerations
Most importantly, coaches need to ensure that content is age appropriate. For example, a group of middle school football players should not be performing the same speed and agility training tactics as professional athletes from the National Football League.
Most importantly, coaches need to ensure that content is age appropriate. For example, a group of middle school football players should not be performing the same speed and agility training tactics as professional athletes from the National Football League. Effective age-appropriate program design and implementation will contribute to athlete success in both speed and agility development. During the first window of opportunity, special attention should be paid to body awareness and body control with proper movement mechanics. Once motor skills are successfully performed, speed will develop. Therefore, a strong focus on form is crucial during the prepubescent years. Since speed has been shown to decrease during and following PHV, it is recommended that coaches incorporate speed and agility training during earlier prepubescent stages (girls: 6-8 years; boys: 7-9 years). The addition of these skills earlier in youth development may reduce speed disparities associated with the onset of PHV.
Following PHV, the second window of opportunity is characterized by increases in strength due to surges in androgens, specifically testosterone, growth hormone, and insulin-like growth factor. Strength is closely associated with speed, change of direction, and plyometric ability; therefore, the second period is critical for further improvements in speed and agility and drills that address the aforementioned should be included into the training program design.
It is important for coaches to be aware of adolescent awkwardness. Routinely monitoring stature and body weight of athletes in order to identify growth spurts may help practitioners to recognize this phase. During adolescent awkwardness, limb lengths increase but muscles have yet to reach full size or strength, which contributes to reductions in motor skill performance. Therefore, coaches may choose to spend more effort reviewing optimal movement patterns for athletes at this time. Spending more time on form and technical skill will allow the athlete to retrain the control needed to attain subsequent high levels of speed and agility. Practitioners will likely need to modify existing motor patterns with reduced loads.
Additionally, risk of injury may be heightened during PHV. For example, before PHV there is a decrease in bone mineral density, leading to increased risk of bone fractures. Further, changes in limb length and mass resulting from growth place disproportionately increased stress on muscle-tendon junctions, bone-tendon junctions, ligaments, and growth cartilage. Such imbalances, coupled with the loading demands of sport, may make the affected youth prone to musculoskeletal and overuse injuries. Increases in body mass and height of center of mass without corresponding adaptations in strength and power can lead to excessive loading on the musculoskeletal system during dynamic and reactive actions. Females, specifically, have an increased risk of knee injury due to their increasing body size without the appropriate increases in hip and knee strength to support their skeleton. Females experience a widening of the hips, thus increasing the Q angle of the knee. Larger Q angles are associated with increased pressure on the lower extremities; therefore, coaches should be sure to select biologically age-appropriate drills and encourage proper recovery.
With youth training, it is recommended that emphasis be placed upon exercise programs that promote physical development, reduce injury, and enhance fitness behaviors across the age spectrum. Long-term athlete development (LTAD) refers to the habitual development of athleticism over time to improve health and fitness, enhance physical performance, and reduce the relative risk of injury. A list of the pillars of successful LTAD is provided in table 4.2. This model emphasizes age-appropriate exercises since children's anatomy and physiology differ from those of adolescents in muscle structure, size, activation patterns, and function. Structured training that focuses on age-appropriate drills and movement patterns will provide superior results and reduce the risk of overtraining. Coaches should also educate youth about how their drills will translate into improved performance in their sport. This understanding will help motivate children and build a lifelong future of healthy and enjoyable engagement in sport and physical activity.
Sport-specific agility and quickness training for soccer
Soccer is one of the most challenging sports for which to design an agility and quickness program because it consists of almost constant movement over two 45-minute periods.
Soccer is one of the most challenging sports for which to design an agility and quickness program because it consists of almost constant movement over two 45-minute periods. Given the amount of movement, agility becomes a central element in a soccer player's effectiveness. Training that improves this capacity has the ability to enhance soccer performance significantly, contributing to improvement in all elements of play.
A key factor in developing agility is that it is very context-specific. Although fundamental movement patterns do exist, the ultimate aim of training is to enable athletes to deploy these movements effectively in a game. To this end, it is useful to think of agility as game speed (not to be confused with linear speed). Game speed can be defined as a context-specific skill, in which athletes maximize their performance by applying sport-specific movements of optimal velocity, precision, efficiency, and control in anticipation of and in response to the key perceptual stimuli and skill requirements of the game.
This definition has a number of vital messages. The first is that movement requirements are specific to a given sport, often even to a given position. For example, a goalkeeper's movement requirements are different from those of a central midfielder. Secondly, effective game speed consists of an optimal velocity that should be judged not only by maximal velocity but also by its precision, control, and efficiency. These terms are essential in the context of soccer, where movements need to be maintained for a 90-minute period. Here, the ultimate aim of the game is to express soccer skills, rather than simply to move at maximal speed. Although maximal speed is an important variable, the ability to harness speed and agility is more important for maximizing soccer performance.
Since game speed and agility are context-specific, coaches must be able to break down the movement requirements of soccer to develop an effective program. Soccer movement is intermittent, with each game featuring between 1,200 and 1,400 changes of direction. These movements vary in speed and direction, with players changing directions about every 2 to 4 seconds. Typical sprinting activities span approximately 5 to 15 meters (5.5-16.4 yd) and occur once every 30 seconds on average. The majority of playing time is spent in transitional phases, where speeds vary from walking to high-speed running. These transitional movements occur in many directions, including forward, sideways, and backward. Sprinting activities can be performed straight ahead; however, they often include some COD at the outset of the sprint or at some point during the sprint.
Program Design
Given the vast range of movement requirements across 90 minutes of play, and the different requirements of playing positions, designing soccer-specific agility sessions may be daunting. However, by analyzing the target movement specifications of the sport, coaches can classify soccer movements and put them into a basic structure for building an effective agility program.
To break down soccer movements, it is helpful to determine what athletes are trying to achieve. Coaches can effectively carry this out using target classifications. At any given time, athletes are likely attempting either to start movement or to change the direction of movement (initiation movements), trying to move at maximal velocity (actualization movements), or waiting in transition to react to a soccer-specific stimulus (transition movements). Although agility training often focuses on initiation and actualization movements, far less emphasis is placed on transition movements. Often, when these movements are trained, they are taught incorrectly, with the emphasis on movement speed rather than on control. Athletes' ability to start and move at maximal velocity often depends on being in the correct position to enable effective subsequent movement.
Effective agility training balances the requirements of the exercise and the ability of the athlete. Thus, a session designed for an elite athlete should look different from a session for a beginner. For this reason, a soccer-specific agility program should include a progression in movement challenge and complexity as athletes move through their stages of development. In the initial stages, athletes can benefit from closed drills that allow the speed of the drills to be controlled and often consist of single movement patterns (e.g., shuffling). In this stage, coaches should develop athletes' ability in all of the identified movement patterns for soccer to ensure that there are no weak links in movement ability. The following list provides the system for game-speed development, which shows stages of movement ability and application. As athletes maintain proper movement patterns at one stage, they can progress to the next level.
- Develop general and stable fundamental movement patterns.
- Develop key movement combinations, moving from closed to open drills.
- Develop sport-specific movements in game context.
- Perform sport-specific movements in game context.
As athletes develop, coaches should start to combine movement patterns in ways typical to soccer. For example, backpedal drills can conclude with sprints to the rear, to the side, or forward. These combinations are commonly seen in soccer. As athletes develop, coaches can also deploy drills that are increasingly open. Here, athletes should respond to a range of stimuli, which can become increasingly soccer-specific. For example, athletes can initiate incorporating backpedaling into a sprint drill. Next, athletes can perform a drill where they change direction in response to a coach's signal, and then in response to another athlete's movement. In this way, the movement patterns become increasingly more challenging in a way that progressively reflects the specific movement patterns found in soccer. These types of drills can include great variety in terms of distances, speeds, directions, and stimuli.
Warm-up methods and techniques for agility training
It is an essential and standard practice for athletes to warm up before they practice or compete. The purpose of a well-designed warm-up is to enhance performance and decrease the likelihood of injuries.
It is an essential and standard practice for athletes to warm up before they practice or compete. The purpose of a well-designed warm-up is to enhance performance and decrease the likelihood of injuries. The warm-up also provides an ideal time to learn and rehearse movement skills such as jumping, landing, accelerating, decelerating, and the other various modes of locomotion. The opportunity for mental preparation that this segment of the training session provides is equally important because it sets the tone for the work to follow. An appropriate warm-up reaps several physiological benefits that can positively affect an athlete's performance. The warm-up should increase blood flow to active muscles, raise core body temperature, enhance metabolic reactions, and disrupt temporary connective tissue bonds. These effects can aid the athlete by yielding improvements in rate-of-force development, improvements in reaction time, improved oxygen delivery to the lungs and working muscles, and improvements in acute measures of muscle strength and power. In addition, the increased production of synovial fluid located between the joints will acutely enhance the dynamic flexibility, or mobility, of the joints. Another benefit is that the warm-up helps facilitate the breakdown of glycogen, which is the source of energy most often used for exercise; this translates to more energy available for the athlete.
The mental aspect of the warm-up often does not receive the attention it deserves. The warm-up provides the perfect opportunity for athletes to shut off concerns from the outside world and concentrate on the activities that are about to commence. Effective warm-up sessions direct focus and active participation by both coaches and athletes; even responsible athletes can benefit from performing movements under the diligent eyes of the coach. This means that the coach must actively engage in cueing and teaching these movements to help athletes create the appropriate intent with each movement. For example, a coach instructing athletes on proper plyometric mechanics during a practice session might cue the athletes during a warm-up to pretend they are landing on hot coals; this image could help prepare them for quick landings and explosive takeoffs. Reinforcing proper cues during the warm-up offers a less stressful platform for learning.
Proper posture and body positioning are critical in all physical activities for optimizing performance and reducing injury risk and for maintaining body balance and the proper arrangement of supporting structures. Research supports the contention that correct posture is a prerequisite of a healthy lifestyle but today's athletes live in a world that does not necessarily promote good posture. Excessive use of phones and computers, carrying heavy school or work bags, and poor posture while studying or watching television are just a few examples of habits that prohibit the maintenance of correct posture. The warm-up offers a good opportunity to educate and then reinforce proper posture and body positioning. Here are some simple ways to address this issue.
- Keep the head up at all times and always look straight ahead.
- When landing and decelerating, hinge at the hips and do not round the back to dampen the force with the hips and knees.
- Maintain proper foot alignment and spacing when jumping and landing; for example, takeoffs from a two-footed jumping position should have the feet at hip width or slightly wider; conversely, when landing, land with both feet closer to shoulder-width distance apart.
- Distribute weight appropriately for different movements; for example, when starting mechanics from a stationary staggered stance, most of the weight should be placed on the lead leg to optimize horizontal force into the ground.
- Maintain proper shin angles, especially during the initial driving strides while accelerating. The intent should be to drive the leg back behind the body and fully extend at the hip, knee, and ankle. A significant part of this technique is to begin with a positive shin angle that is a forward tilting of the lower leg bones. A negative shin angle during initial acceleration indicates that the foot is too far in front of the body, which would create excessive braking forces during footstrike.
Because there are many important components to a typical practice or competition, it can be very challenging to coach such technical aspects after the warm-up is over, so the warm-up itself offers an excellent opportunity to refine body positioning and posture as it relates to athletic performance.
There are certain challenges and considerations that coaches must address with respect to the warm-up. For example, while it would be ideal to allow 10 to 20 minutes for the warm-up period, time constraints may reduce that period significantly in real life. Coaches often only have only 5 or 10 minutes of quality work to prepare the athletes for the ensuing practice, so they must consider several factors when determining the length of the warm-up. For example, if the agility session for the day is going to be of higher intensity, the coach may want to allow a slightly longer warm-up period to make sure that the athletes are adequately prepared for the session. It has been well established that a subnormal body temperature has an adverse effect on neuromuscular performance. In colder weather, it would therefore be prudent to minimize the time between warm-up and the agility session so that athletes will not cool down before the session begins. Conversely, research also reveals that heat stress reduces a person's ability to achieve maximal metabolic rates during exercise and that, during exercise-induced heat stress, competing metabolic and thermoregulatory demands for blood flow make it difficult to maintain an adequate cardiac output. Therefore, in warmer, more humid weather, the duration and intensity of the warm-up should be shortened to minimize the risk of fatigue and heat-related illness. Another potential obstacle during warm-ups may be space limitations. If this is an issue, it is advisable to have back-up exercises and movements that can be performed easily and safely in a small area.
Proper warm-ups should be taught in a systematic fashion. The following guidelines should be adhered to during all warm-ups.
- Begin with simple movements such as marching. Once the athletes demonstrate a level of proficiency with the marches, progress to skipping; as these simple movements become less difficult, progress the athlete to more complex movements and variations.
- Make sure that the movements are performed slowly enough to achieve an acceptable level of performance before attempting to go to full speed.
- Rehearse bilateral work before incorporating unilateral skills, especially with takeoffs and landings. Training ladders may be useful to help improve rhythm, timing, and coordination. The literature supports closed skill movements in various directions over prearranged distances to build correct movement patterns in novice athletes. After a high level of technical proficiency is attained, these tools may no longer be as beneficial from a skill development standpoint. However, they can certainly be included as part of a dynamic warm-up because they will prepare the body physiologically (e.g., increased heart rate, breathing rate, perspiration rate, etc.).
- Perform unloaded or bodyweight movements with proper movement patterns before considering adding some form of external resistance (e.g., resistance tubing). Training sessions should be performed no later than 15 minutes after termination of the warm-up. It has been demonstrated that the positive effects of warm-up begin to dissipate after 15 minutes; ideally, therefore, the athletes should be ready to practice as soon as the warm-up ends.
- Be sure to keep the warm-up appropriate to the fitness levels of the participants. The warm-up should prepare the individuals for training and/or competition without being so stressful as to cause fatigue.
Practical application of age and sex considerations
Most importantly, coaches need to ensure that content is age appropriate. For example, a group of middle school football players should not be performing the same speed and agility training tactics as professional athletes from the National Football League.
Most importantly, coaches need to ensure that content is age appropriate. For example, a group of middle school football players should not be performing the same speed and agility training tactics as professional athletes from the National Football League. Effective age-appropriate program design and implementation will contribute to athlete success in both speed and agility development. During the first window of opportunity, special attention should be paid to body awareness and body control with proper movement mechanics. Once motor skills are successfully performed, speed will develop. Therefore, a strong focus on form is crucial during the prepubescent years. Since speed has been shown to decrease during and following PHV, it is recommended that coaches incorporate speed and agility training during earlier prepubescent stages (girls: 6-8 years; boys: 7-9 years). The addition of these skills earlier in youth development may reduce speed disparities associated with the onset of PHV.
Following PHV, the second window of opportunity is characterized by increases in strength due to surges in androgens, specifically testosterone, growth hormone, and insulin-like growth factor. Strength is closely associated with speed, change of direction, and plyometric ability; therefore, the second period is critical for further improvements in speed and agility and drills that address the aforementioned should be included into the training program design.
It is important for coaches to be aware of adolescent awkwardness. Routinely monitoring stature and body weight of athletes in order to identify growth spurts may help practitioners to recognize this phase. During adolescent awkwardness, limb lengths increase but muscles have yet to reach full size or strength, which contributes to reductions in motor skill performance. Therefore, coaches may choose to spend more effort reviewing optimal movement patterns for athletes at this time. Spending more time on form and technical skill will allow the athlete to retrain the control needed to attain subsequent high levels of speed and agility. Practitioners will likely need to modify existing motor patterns with reduced loads.
Additionally, risk of injury may be heightened during PHV. For example, before PHV there is a decrease in bone mineral density, leading to increased risk of bone fractures. Further, changes in limb length and mass resulting from growth place disproportionately increased stress on muscle-tendon junctions, bone-tendon junctions, ligaments, and growth cartilage. Such imbalances, coupled with the loading demands of sport, may make the affected youth prone to musculoskeletal and overuse injuries. Increases in body mass and height of center of mass without corresponding adaptations in strength and power can lead to excessive loading on the musculoskeletal system during dynamic and reactive actions. Females, specifically, have an increased risk of knee injury due to their increasing body size without the appropriate increases in hip and knee strength to support their skeleton. Females experience a widening of the hips, thus increasing the Q angle of the knee. Larger Q angles are associated with increased pressure on the lower extremities; therefore, coaches should be sure to select biologically age-appropriate drills and encourage proper recovery.
With youth training, it is recommended that emphasis be placed upon exercise programs that promote physical development, reduce injury, and enhance fitness behaviors across the age spectrum. Long-term athlete development (LTAD) refers to the habitual development of athleticism over time to improve health and fitness, enhance physical performance, and reduce the relative risk of injury. A list of the pillars of successful LTAD is provided in table 4.2. This model emphasizes age-appropriate exercises since children's anatomy and physiology differ from those of adolescents in muscle structure, size, activation patterns, and function. Structured training that focuses on age-appropriate drills and movement patterns will provide superior results and reduce the risk of overtraining. Coaches should also educate youth about how their drills will translate into improved performance in their sport. This understanding will help motivate children and build a lifelong future of healthy and enjoyable engagement in sport and physical activity.
Sport-specific agility and quickness training for soccer
Soccer is one of the most challenging sports for which to design an agility and quickness program because it consists of almost constant movement over two 45-minute periods.
Soccer is one of the most challenging sports for which to design an agility and quickness program because it consists of almost constant movement over two 45-minute periods. Given the amount of movement, agility becomes a central element in a soccer player's effectiveness. Training that improves this capacity has the ability to enhance soccer performance significantly, contributing to improvement in all elements of play.
A key factor in developing agility is that it is very context-specific. Although fundamental movement patterns do exist, the ultimate aim of training is to enable athletes to deploy these movements effectively in a game. To this end, it is useful to think of agility as game speed (not to be confused with linear speed). Game speed can be defined as a context-specific skill, in which athletes maximize their performance by applying sport-specific movements of optimal velocity, precision, efficiency, and control in anticipation of and in response to the key perceptual stimuli and skill requirements of the game.
This definition has a number of vital messages. The first is that movement requirements are specific to a given sport, often even to a given position. For example, a goalkeeper's movement requirements are different from those of a central midfielder. Secondly, effective game speed consists of an optimal velocity that should be judged not only by maximal velocity but also by its precision, control, and efficiency. These terms are essential in the context of soccer, where movements need to be maintained for a 90-minute period. Here, the ultimate aim of the game is to express soccer skills, rather than simply to move at maximal speed. Although maximal speed is an important variable, the ability to harness speed and agility is more important for maximizing soccer performance.
Since game speed and agility are context-specific, coaches must be able to break down the movement requirements of soccer to develop an effective program. Soccer movement is intermittent, with each game featuring between 1,200 and 1,400 changes of direction. These movements vary in speed and direction, with players changing directions about every 2 to 4 seconds. Typical sprinting activities span approximately 5 to 15 meters (5.5-16.4 yd) and occur once every 30 seconds on average. The majority of playing time is spent in transitional phases, where speeds vary from walking to high-speed running. These transitional movements occur in many directions, including forward, sideways, and backward. Sprinting activities can be performed straight ahead; however, they often include some COD at the outset of the sprint or at some point during the sprint.
Program Design
Given the vast range of movement requirements across 90 minutes of play, and the different requirements of playing positions, designing soccer-specific agility sessions may be daunting. However, by analyzing the target movement specifications of the sport, coaches can classify soccer movements and put them into a basic structure for building an effective agility program.
To break down soccer movements, it is helpful to determine what athletes are trying to achieve. Coaches can effectively carry this out using target classifications. At any given time, athletes are likely attempting either to start movement or to change the direction of movement (initiation movements), trying to move at maximal velocity (actualization movements), or waiting in transition to react to a soccer-specific stimulus (transition movements). Although agility training often focuses on initiation and actualization movements, far less emphasis is placed on transition movements. Often, when these movements are trained, they are taught incorrectly, with the emphasis on movement speed rather than on control. Athletes' ability to start and move at maximal velocity often depends on being in the correct position to enable effective subsequent movement.
Effective agility training balances the requirements of the exercise and the ability of the athlete. Thus, a session designed for an elite athlete should look different from a session for a beginner. For this reason, a soccer-specific agility program should include a progression in movement challenge and complexity as athletes move through their stages of development. In the initial stages, athletes can benefit from closed drills that allow the speed of the drills to be controlled and often consist of single movement patterns (e.g., shuffling). In this stage, coaches should develop athletes' ability in all of the identified movement patterns for soccer to ensure that there are no weak links in movement ability. The following list provides the system for game-speed development, which shows stages of movement ability and application. As athletes maintain proper movement patterns at one stage, they can progress to the next level.
- Develop general and stable fundamental movement patterns.
- Develop key movement combinations, moving from closed to open drills.
- Develop sport-specific movements in game context.
- Perform sport-specific movements in game context.
As athletes develop, coaches should start to combine movement patterns in ways typical to soccer. For example, backpedal drills can conclude with sprints to the rear, to the side, or forward. These combinations are commonly seen in soccer. As athletes develop, coaches can also deploy drills that are increasingly open. Here, athletes should respond to a range of stimuli, which can become increasingly soccer-specific. For example, athletes can initiate incorporating backpedaling into a sprint drill. Next, athletes can perform a drill where they change direction in response to a coach's signal, and then in response to another athlete's movement. In this way, the movement patterns become increasingly more challenging in a way that progressively reflects the specific movement patterns found in soccer. These types of drills can include great variety in terms of distances, speeds, directions, and stimuli.
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