Agility is your ability to control your body's position while quickly changing direction in response to an outside stimulus. Agility requires coordination, balance, power and speed. When playing agility-reliant sports such as football or tennis it is beneficial to find ways to improve your ability to move quickly and safely by incorporating certain agility practices into your fitness routine.

What is Agility Training?

Agility training consists of exercises that help condition your body to be fast, balanced and better coordinated. Examples of agility exercises include:

• Lateral Plyometric Jumps
• High Knee Drills
• Side-to-side shuffle
• Box Jump Drills
• Shuttle Runs
• Skaters

Find Your Balance
Having control of your balance is vital to being able to get the best out of agility training so make sure you have it on lock before you start agility training. You can practice shifting your weight from one leg to the other while walking forward and side to side. Once you feel comfortable balancing on one leg, you can start agility training.

Start Off Slow
You may want to jump right into fast footwork but while it might sound strange, it is best to start off slow if you are unfamiliar with this kind of training. Focus on your coordination, posture, and what your body is telling you to safeguard you from overstepping your limit and hurting yourself in the process.

Speak Up
Usually, when you are part of a group class or with your Personal Trainer, there are verbal cues to follow to help you concentrate when performing exercises. But when you are training alone, saying the exercises out loud to yourself can really help keep you on track with the workout you are following, especially if it is a fast one.

Add Them To Your Warmups
If you workout 3-5 days a week, it's good to use a couple of those days to incorporate agility training. However, if this training style is not your favourite, you can use agility exercises as your warm-up to the workout you want to do. Simply spending 15-20 mins on agility training can help improve coordination, balance, and speed.

To learn more about agility training, you can speak to one of our in-club personal trainers who will be more than willing to help!