Speed & Agility > Agility Training
Agility is a combination of acceleration, deceleration and changing direction.
To create fast, multi-directional movement, you need to teach your body to move, challenging your central nervous system to adopt a movement pattern and perform it successfully. Once it's learnt correctly it will be stored in what may be termed 'muscle memory.'
Football movements are complex combinations of smaller, simpler movements. The reason some players are better at performing certain movement skills is that they more easily bring together all the smaller movements and co-ordinate them. Breaking agility down into it's components and training them independently is the first step. These movements are:
- Foot speed
- Balance & Reaction
Foot speed is the ability to touch the foot quickly to the ground while reducing the time that the foot is in contact with the ground
The Foot Speed Ladder forces legs and feet to adapt to the demands of the spaces between rungs and provoke fast patterns of footwork. The length of the Ladder allows for repeated movements for fast and effective learning, and the rungs may be manipulated for a variety of drills.
How fast you move your feet is dictated by how efficiently the joints of the lower body work with each other.
Because football is a multi-directional sport, foot speed is vital for effective and efficient positioning, particularly when in possession of the ball. Missing a tackle or avoiding a defender is often reliant on foot speed
Balance and reaction training teachings joints and muscles to work together.
Acting upon your choice of positions is the responsibility of your balance and reaction. Beat your opponent with deception by
reacting swiftly. A great product for balance and reaction training, which is particularly applicable to evasion and defence, is the Evasion Belt (shown below).
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