Foundation of Agility

I recently read an journal entry by Holmberg, Patrick M and I thought he did a great job of breaking down agility parameters in his entry.  He speaks about the interference involved in placing two or more tasks together into a complex of agility drills.  This past week I witness the destruction of a training session of a football skills coach who tried to teach a player to become more agile by doing a series alphabet named drills.  The fundamental mechanics have never been set and then a multitude of problems occurred at every part of the drill.  You fall into one of those modes where you don't know what to fix first.


After reading Patrick's entry on the NSCA he speaks about progression of agility tasks from low interference(one skill) to high interference(multiple skills).  I can't stress the importance of mastery to what I believe is the critical zones.  Most critical zones in agility is the collision with the feet on the floor and the rebounding action that occurs after(this is why jumping is so important to agility).  Identification one skill that makes or breaks the movement is usually landing and taking off.  If you do this well you win if not you lose.  Identify that and train that all the time in different and challenging environments.  Then place that skill in the context of a more complex arrangement of various dynamic movements.  


Patrick also talks about the presences of pre-programmed drills.  I wonder when is this training concept of doing cone drills to improve agility going to fade away.  I have seen very little transference from these drills to sport performance improvement.  I am not sure what 101 speed ladder and cone drills really do for athletes.  One point to remember is that time is ticking with our athletes and it is very important that we make the most of each session.  Discard anything that doesn't make athletes perform better in their sport and stick to what transfers over to the game.  Athletes only get better at what you practice so why practice every drill in the book...remember the SAID principle.  The cone drills can only be teaching methods to support the critical zone.  I rarely even see error correction of mechanics in the drills only measurement of the stopwatch.  In my opinion true agility can only be improved by strength development(stability/mobility), jump training(withstand/creating force) and reactive competitive mirroring(practicing).   


I still believe that the appropriate progression for agility is skill acquisition, closed drills and partner mirroring.  First identify the critical zones for success, then challenge those tasks with high interference or multiple movements and finally allow them to perform in an open environment against a partner.  The combination of jump training which will help with the raw ability to change direction effectively and strength development will assist with forcing the body to stabilize.