Are Agility Drills a Waste?

Recently there was an article published on Dave Tate’s site Elite Fitness busting speed training myths. In this article the first myth that was “busted” was that agility training improves football agility. The author went on to state that running through agility drills may help a beginner but the return on investment is almost nil and then goes on to suggest that doing power cleans and jumping rope will improve your agility. This is a common belief in the strength and conditioning field. I have heard Charlie Francis espouse the same concept. Essentially the belief boils down to the fact that playing a sport is a read and react situation and thus the mechanics are a hind brain activity. The athletes do not consciously think about how to change direction.

Very interesting but is this true.

Yes and no. Yes, in sport the athlete should not be thinking about their change of direction mechanics. However no because teaching proper mechanics is important for one primary reason…

Motor Learning

It seems that people tend to forget this aspect of training. Buddy Morris has said that the quality that is least trained is least retained. Or maybe you have heard that practice makes permanent. In essence the more you practice a skill the more ingrained or hard wired it gets in your nervous system. So much so that at some point it becomes reflexive and a hind brain activity. For example think of typing. When you first got to a computer you probably typed very slow. After years of typing papers for school, e-mails, instant messaging, writing reports for work your typing speed increased well beyond the old hunt ‘n peck style you used when you began. Now most typing is a hind brain activity for you. Your nervous system has learned where the keys are and now your fingers know where to go when you type without even having to look at the keyboard. This is motor learning. Best part is the more you type the better you become.

Agility drills are the same thing. Now most people have coaches just put cones out and say “run around the box” or “run in a zig-zag pattern”. I believe this is why people think they are worthless.

Thing is these coaches don’t actually coach change of direction mechanics. It’s not their fault, they never learned how and are just doing what their coaches did. Changing direction efficiently is a foreign thing and many people have learned how to do it the wrong way. The only way to turn properly is to consistently practice quality repetitions. You need to get more right reps in than wrong ones you have done in your life. Think of how long you have been playing sports. That’s a lot of wrong repetitions. That means you need to do a ton of correct reps to master the skill. How many? I don’t know but the Soviets believed it took 10,000 reps to master the Olympic Lifts so that may be a good guideline. You need to follow the rules of motor learning and work so hard on changing direction properly that it becomes hard wired in your system.

What is the right way? I’ll give some pointers but be on the lookout for our DVD that we are working on. This will show you how to turn properly, help you identify what your athletes, or yourself, is doing wrong, and give you a periodized program.

1. Drop your center of gravity

2. Get your heels in the ground

3. Look where you want to turn before you turn

4. Open step towards your target

- Alex