What is Agility?

‘Agility is a whole body movement with a change of velocity or direction in response to a stimulus’ (Sheppard & Young, 2006)

Deterministic Model

This deterministic model identifies the importance of factors that may help coaches develop and train agility. Below is a picture of the model.

I did not realise how many factors affected agility!

Testing Agility

Based on a study by Nimphius et al., (2016) this is a test to test a persons change of direction speed.

Work out a persons 10m sprint time.

Then work out their 5-0-5 sprint test (L+R)

Take the 5-0-5 sprint time from the 10m sprint time to really see how fast an athlete changes direction.

References:

Nimphius, S., Callaghan, S., Spiteri, T. & Lockie, R. (2016) Change of Direction Deficit: A More Isolated Measure of Change of Direction Performance Than Total 505 Time. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research.

Young, W. & Farrow, D. (2006) A Review of Agility. Strength and Conditioning Journal. Vol. 28.