Do Popular Agility Drills Improve Agility For Football Players?

Agility drillget a bunch of references from the web are used to improve sports agility, the ability to change direction while in motion. The ability to change direction while in motion is very important in many sports but especially in team and dual sports. For example, a football running back must be able to quickly change direction when he sees an opponent preparing to tackle him. A soccer player must be able to quickly change directions when dribbling the ball or when trying to get the ball away from an opponent. A tennis player must be able to quickly change directions when moving to a position where the ball is expected to go but instead finds the ball going in a different direction.

But do current, conventional agility drills help?

Agility has an important technical component because in order to make a change in direction, you must have the ability to stop or modify movement in one direction and initiate movement in another direction. This is a learned skill. It must be mastered before it can be used in any agility drills.

Explosive muscles + trained technique = Barry Sanders

Changes in direction, especially sharp changes, are known as cutting and are the key to quickness. Cutting is a combination of technical abilities to execute the movement and physical abilities to execute it in a powerful and explosive manner. In order to exhibit the greatest quickness, you must have well-developed explosive muscles and excellent technique. Without these prerequisites the changes in direction will be relatively slow and require stutter steps in order to slow down sufficiently so that the change in direction can be made

Ladder Drills Do NOT Cut It

Most popular, conventional agility drills that are commonly used to improve agility require lifting the knees up high or making very short changes in direction with the feet. For example, ladder drills are very popular in which you must touchdown in each segment of a rope ladder which lies on the floor. It is also possible to see higher ladders in which you must step up and over the rope (or tire) and touch down in between.

Or, the agility drill may require lifting the leg (more specifically the knee) in order to step over a cone or hurdle as quickly as possible. Very often the drill may involve raising the knees to waist level in an alternating manner as quickly as possible. In most of these drills the player must be able to execute an upward knee drive and then a quick down drive.

Such drills, however, do not imitate or come close to duplicating what occurs in the most effective, powerful and quick cutting actions. The main reason for this is that the drills do not involve cutting actions that duplicate what occurs on the field. You may be excellent at performing the drills but if you do not have the ability to execute a correct cutting action or the required physical abilities to executed in one step in an explosive manner, the drill will be a little value.

The common hurdle, cone and ladder drills do not improve the athlete’s quickness, i.e., the ability to make quick changes in direction. The athlete may develop “faster feet”, but not the ability to change direction sharply and powerfully. These latter movements are executed with the feet close to the ground and are more horizontal rather than vertical. Agility involves fast legs with movement from the hips, not fast feet that go up and down.

Quick Change, Sharp Cuts

Cutting requires very strong lateral or front and lateral movement while running or accelerating forward. At times it is necessary to reverse directions as for example, forwards to backwards, from side to side or combinations of them. Most athletes execute these movements poorly because the cuts are not very sharp or quick. This means that the change in direction is not great, or if it was great, the preparation for the change was too slow or took too long.

For example, when making an 80 or 90° cut to the right or left when running forward at a moderate of fast speed, most players must take a few stutter steps to slow down sufficiently in order to plant the foot and step out to the side. But a well-executed cut is done in only one step. Any time it requires more than one step execution is slower and the player is no longer exhibiting great quickness. However, to be able to make such quick cuts the player must know how to execute the cut and have well-developed muscles that participate in the cuts.