Top athletes of today seem to have more demanding programs than athletes of previous generations.
Seasons just keep getting longer and records consistently broken.
This is just as true for student athletes.
This means an athlete even at the school and college level needs to be constantly aware of their physical condition and take steps to maintain high physical standards.
If you're such an athlete, then you already know you're expected to train hard and maintain your fitness levels.
This is particularly true for the off season because you're expected to be ready when the competitive season arrives.
There are different aspects of physical fitness you need to maintain and their importance varies on the basis of what sport you play along with what role you have.
However, speed and agility training is exercise relevant for virtually all sports including football, soccer and basketball.
While strength and conditioning training provides stamina and aerobic capacity, speed and agility arms an athlete with the combination of explosive pace and ability to out maneuver an opponent.
Speed and agility training improves an athlete's coordination, quickness, balance and stability by developing various muscle groups.
Depending on your sport, and needs, schedule between 2-3 speed and agility sessions per week where the focus is on acceleration and body positioning.
THE SPEED PORTION: Quick acceleration and increased stride length play important roles in providing speed to an athlete, so the focus on exercises should be high speed short sprints with repetitions and longer recovery period between sets.
While shorter recovery periods do aid stamina it works against increasing your speed.
Sprints should be between 30-100 meters with repetitions of between 4-10 sprints.
Exercises to help with speed and stride length include high knee kicks, resisted running and glute kickers.
THE AGILITY COMPONENT: The primary goal of agility training is to allow an athlete to rapidly change directions without loss of speed, balance or control.
As a by-product this type of training aids reaction time and increases flexibility to decrease risk of injury.
In order to avoid exercises where an athlete can anticipate the next movement and invalidate the benefit of the agility exercise, the session leader should provide random directional orders throughout the session to simulate competition play.
Agility drills include Shuttle Runs using side-to-side and forward-backwards runs, Dot Runs are great if you play racket sports and Speed Ladder drills use equipment to harden knee and ankle stability.
Speed and agility training is something worthwhile participating in regardless of what position you play at or which sport you are involved in.
Furthermore, speed and agility training is one way for you to maintain your fitness levels during the off season.
Seasons just keep getting longer and records consistently broken.
This is just as true for student athletes.
This means an athlete even at the school and college level needs to be constantly aware of their physical condition and take steps to maintain high physical standards.
If you're such an athlete, then you already know you're expected to train hard and maintain your fitness levels.
This is particularly true for the off season because you're expected to be ready when the competitive season arrives.
There are different aspects of physical fitness you need to maintain and their importance varies on the basis of what sport you play along with what role you have.
However, speed and agility training is exercise relevant for virtually all sports including football, soccer and basketball.
While strength and conditioning training provides stamina and aerobic capacity, speed and agility arms an athlete with the combination of explosive pace and ability to out maneuver an opponent.
Speed and agility training improves an athlete's coordination, quickness, balance and stability by developing various muscle groups.
Depending on your sport, and needs, schedule between 2-3 speed and agility sessions per week where the focus is on acceleration and body positioning.
THE SPEED PORTION: Quick acceleration and increased stride length play important roles in providing speed to an athlete, so the focus on exercises should be high speed short sprints with repetitions and longer recovery period between sets.
While shorter recovery periods do aid stamina it works against increasing your speed.
Sprints should be between 30-100 meters with repetitions of between 4-10 sprints.
Exercises to help with speed and stride length include high knee kicks, resisted running and glute kickers.
THE AGILITY COMPONENT: The primary goal of agility training is to allow an athlete to rapidly change directions without loss of speed, balance or control.
As a by-product this type of training aids reaction time and increases flexibility to decrease risk of injury.
In order to avoid exercises where an athlete can anticipate the next movement and invalidate the benefit of the agility exercise, the session leader should provide random directional orders throughout the session to simulate competition play.
Agility drills include Shuttle Runs using side-to-side and forward-backwards runs, Dot Runs are great if you play racket sports and Speed Ladder drills use equipment to harden knee and ankle stability.
Speed and agility training is something worthwhile participating in regardless of what position you play at or which sport you are involved in.
Furthermore, speed and agility training is one way for you to maintain your fitness levels during the off season.
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