Explosive Soccer Agility in 3 Simple Steps
Many soccer players rely on their skill work and ball drills to develop faster feet, quickness, and overall agility. Did you know that real agility training isn't just about fast feet? It's about integrating the mind and the body to prepare for game situations.
For example, when dribbling down the field and making a hard cut to get around a defender, that's agility at work. And there are three steps to train properly training agility.
Stage One: Pre-Determined Change of Direction
Your first handful of "agility" drills should be simple change of direction drills. These drills should have predetermined movement patterns. In other words, you should know which direction you're going to move before you actually execute the drill.
The drills you select for stage one should include a combination of change of direction "mechanical" drills, plyometrics, and drills that sharpen your acceleration and deceleration.
Some favorites include:
Lateral Broad Jumps
Lateral Shuffle Shuttles
Carioca Quick Steps
Line Hops
Lateral Ground Starts
And there are a bunch more to choose from.
Stage Two: Change of Direction With a Cognitive Component
Now we're in the meat of our training. In the first stage, you've hopefully built up the mechanical movement patterns you need to safely, efficiently, and effectively change directions. Now, we can throw in the cognitive component.
And this is what makes agility training agility training...
The cognitive component. This cognitive component will create better instincts, more fluidity, and more awareness on the field, and it comes in multiple forms.
The first is a visual cognitive component.
Here, you react to a visual stimulus like a coach pointing which direction to move or another athlete.
Then there's an auditory cognitive component.
Obviously this is where you respond to a sound, direction, or instruction. As a coach, we have athletes respond to visual stimulus then auditory, as it's easier to respond to a visual stimulus.
Some of the best pure agility drills are:
Lateral Shuffle w/ Cognitive Component
Mirror Drill
Jump Cut Drill w/ Cognitive Component
Ball Drops
Lateral Cone Hops w/ reaction
And that's only scratching the surface.
Stage Three: Sport-Specific Agility Drills
Finally we arrive at the apex of agility training:
Sport-Specifics.
When it comes to sport-specific agility drills, they serve as a low-level kind of skill training. Usually skill training is left to the... Skill trainers. But, in this case, I perform sport-specific agility drills with our athletes that still fall under the umbrella of what we do in the gym.
These drills are labeled sport-specific agility drills because they contain movement patterns that are specific to an athlete's sport. They also present the athlete with stimulus that is specific to their sport.
The most simple example related to soccer would be for a goalie. Their sport-specific drill would be reacting to shots. A defender may have a drill that requires him to cover someone who's dribbling a soccer ball.
The sport-specific agility drills should be specific to your sport AND your position.
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