I’ve been having a little bit of fun with agility drills lately, and I wanted to share them in a fun way. So today I present ADOTW—animated for your enjoyment!
Agility drills have some great benefits. Not only can you train all 3 planes of motion:
Sagittal = forward or backward
Frontal = side to side
Transverse = rotational
you can increase your body/mind awareness, coordination and speed. I like to add 3 to 4 agility drills to the end of each workout to keep agility fine-tuned. They are also great metabolic finishers, which burn the last bit of energy you have to increase endurance and keep calories burning off long after you’ve finished.
Pro Tips
- Use your whole body to perform the drill: swing your arms and drive the actions with both your hips and legs.
- Look up! Train as if you were training for your sport, so don’t be caught looking at your feet when you could be focusing your eyes on what is happening around you.
- Form over speed: do a run through once or twice at a slower pace to get the rhythm and form right. Speed in these drills won’t benefit you if you are running through them like a wacky waving inflatable tube man. Once you’ve gotten a handle on technique, go for speed.
1-Foot Lateral Ladder Drill
Increase your lateral power and speed with this drill. The fun and not-so-fun part about this drill is that you are training single leg stability as well, so you will find your lower leg on fire by the end. The stronger your lower leg muscles are, the faster you can react.
Start with both feet to the side of the agility ladder, a few feet away. Then, loading your right foot, hop laterally to the outside of the ladder with your left. From there you will quickly hop to the inside of the ladder and back out with the same foot. Load your left foot, then hop back out to the side but forward to the next starting position. Repeat on both sides.
And don’t forget, have fun!