Review of Agility Matters in Developing Athletic Abilities

Speed is a highly prestigious ability in the world of competitive sports, one that turns good players into amazing players. Not to mention the significant jump in salary and reputation that players receive based on their athletic metrics (mainly in football and basketball, though in the last five years also in soccer).

Because of this, one might think that the best ball sport athletes would necessarily be those who grew up in various track and field disciplines such as sprinting, high jump, or middle-distance running. However, when these athletes are brought in for evaluations, a huge deficiency is immediately identified in their ability to channel their immense power in all possible directions suddenly^1,2 (a concept known as agility), not to mention the technical deficiency in ball handling and game understanding.

Since the “performance angle” of these athletes from track and field is well known in advance and lacks any external challenge in the form of contact or sudden interactions (unlike the starting gun in sprints) – they can focus on very specific technical cues as instructed by their coach and know with full confidence that it will manifest during competition.

Of course, these top athletes do not see this as a disadvantage. It is their lack of emphasis on training for abilities that are not required in their competitions (such as agility) that achieves their high level in specific matters.

Basketball, soccer athletes, and others are in a chaotic and unpredictable arena, where the level of knowledge about the next running direction is close to zero. Not to mention distractions in the form of physical contact, tactical constraints, ball-handling constraints, and the need to be unpredictable against an opponent who is also well-trained.

The use of this comparison will become clear later in the article, where a philosophical foundation for agility training in skill development will be laid. This will allow us to emphasize from which perspective to approach agility training – whether from an exercise-based perspective or a sensory-based perspective.

Therefore, the simple question arises – what is the relationship between speed and agility? Does one need to be fast to be agile? After all, we have concluded that the opposite is not true based on diagnostic observations, as most world champions in track and field are not particularly agile when asked to perform unpredictable chaotic actions.

In this article, we will discuss the nature of speed and agility from a philosophical perspective, point out the differences between “athletics” training and athletic ability development training, provide specific examples of proper practice, and mainly lay a cognitive foundation to accompany us throughout the training program. A clearer understanding of the goal will significantly increase the pace of progress and the transfer of ability to the playing field.

What is “speed” in the context of skill development, and why develop it if the game will not allow pure, uninterrupted speed?

When talking about speed in the context of skill development (as opposed to physics) – it is usually defined as the rate at which the athlete covers straight lines, sometimes measured in km/h or with a stopwatch over a certain distance.

Indeed, at the Red Fox, there is a serious emphasis, especially at the beginning, on developing pure, uninterrupted speed – mainly over distances of 10-60 meters. Hence, the logical headline question arises, as we have already concluded that in competitive ball sports, pure speed does not manifest sufficiently to justify its specific training.

However, the famous specificity principle, as taught in universities; which states that ball sport athletes should train only the abilities they use and in a game-like manner, is completely wrong on this subject and disconnected from modern science and experience. The specificity principle is a kind of sub-chapter in plyometric training and program design with many physical reservations, but for some reason, only its part about “game-like” training reached the classroom walls.

Let’s take the 30-meter run as an example, a well-known metric worldwide for testing an athlete’s acceleration ability from a standstill to maximum or near-maximum speed (the most significant aspect of speed for a ball athlete).

A beginner athlete in athletics with talent and an average body fat percentage for the league they play in will run this distance in about 4.20 seconds when fully fresh. The reason to aim in the initial stage for technical and mental improvements to achieve a result below 4 seconds is far beyond specificity.

4.20 is not just a speed statement, but also a statement of the athlete’s technical and biomechanical state. 4.20 necessarily means that they are far from running with the correct mechanics, not using their upper body athletically, not striking the ground with their foot in the right places, not knowing their body and its capabilities at all, and are probably at some injury risk due to poor biomechanics.

The table of contents of the theoretical book called “Getting under 4 seconds” is extensive and provides the athlete with real and important abilities that will necessarily change their automatic motor skills forever (in my experience) and relatively quickly – an ability that will transfer to the field because its learning is done while developing the athlete’s personal style and not as a coach’s directive execution.

For example, it is known that runners over 4 seconds in 30 meters first channel all their power to the surface using their toes. Very small joints that cannot transmit a high amount of force in a direct moment, and therefore the body’s mechanism knows this and neutralizes other significant muscles to minimize force production through the toes to prevent immediate injury. Part of the training in getting under 4 seconds includes relearning the foot surface and the ability to rely on the new knowledge automatically and with great confidence.

We said we like specificity and agility on the field, right? Even here, Fox, we need the foundations of speed for several reasons.

Agility is one word for us, but in science, it is divided into several “foxy” abilities such as braking, changing direction, responsiveness to external stimuli/physical forces, and frequency (how many times per second) the athlete performs an action. All of these (including frequency!) heavily utilize the athletic foundation we created earlier in our efforts to gain speed.

The abilities of changing direction and braking use the biomechanical principles of the foot and acceleration, while responsiveness uses the neural motor skills we learned from the latter part of the 30-meter run. And, of course, the speed between the various changes of direction is likely straight-line speed itself.

It is much easier for an athlete to reach an expert level in the spectrum of agility when they have the right athletic foundation. This athlete will prolong their career in terms of injury resistance, be happier, and most importantly, perform at a much higher level.

This does not require years and years of laying foundations, as is often perceived in most of our connotations. There are very simple things that need to be learned, most of which are habits of years that can certainly be overcome.

The sharp among you might ask at this point, “But coach, you said the fastest sprinters in the world are not agile, and now you say it’s a necessity, it doesn’t hold up.”

Indeed, Olympic sprinters are not agile people. But we are not Olympic sprinters, we are ball sport athletes who probably never experienced authentic technical training and seek to improve several abilities in a short time as part of competitive sports that sometimes do not allow space for this within team training. Our basic speed is not “Olympic speed” – but rather a modest speed that a high-level athlete in 2023 should aspire to. For example, the fastest soccer players will run 30 meters in 3.6 seconds, while an Olympic sprinter will run it in 3.3 and below, a difference of whole meters to the bystander.

Moreover, an Olympic sprinter who chooses to learn the art of agility and retires from their profession as a sprinter will find that they can become amazing very quickly. Their technical foundation is so strong that when they come to learn agility matters, we will deal almost exclusively with fine motor issues and not with crude road-paving. This is very common in the football world, where sprinters are transferred to technical positions in the game (sometimes because there they find a more realistic career option). As can be seen, many famous NFL players in speed positions are former sprinters – and there is no doubt about their agility quality.

Endurance in ball sports is often measured by the athlete’s ability to perform a large number of specific high-intensity activities. This is called “speed endurance,” and it can be argued that it is one of the most significant factors in an athlete’s success!

The endurance improvement due to the speed foundation manifests through two mechanisms:

1. Technical Economy
2. Relative Endurance

Technical economy is the fuel savings we get due to more correct biomechanics, cleaner power lines, less rotational movement, and more uniform direction towards the goal we are running to. Typically, the untrained ball athlete will run with a strained face, tense shoulders and trapezius, clenched fists, and knees pointing forward and outward. There is no way in the world this will lead to endurance because that athlete is doing double the work per kilometer compared to the economical athlete. This is equivalent to a car “guzzling fuel” unnecessarily due to poor engine design.

Throughout a basketball or soccer game, poor technique in one area can quickly snowball into unnecessary slowness and fatigue.

Relative endurance is the ability of the faster player to “get tired” and still remain faster than their competitor due to their higher initial speed.

Let’s take Player A, a soccer player who runs 30 meters in 4.4 seconds. Player A is not economical, not aesthetic, but fights hard on the field.

In the opposing position, Player B runs 30 meters in 3.6 seconds, he is economical, efficient, and assertive.

Player A plays for about 60 minutes and tires in a snowball effect (due to poor biomechanics) to a level of 5.2 seconds for 30 meters during the game, or 4.8 seconds if his endurance is really good.

Player B plays for about 60 minutes and is still running under 4 seconds under fatigue and with average endurance.

Do you understand the difference under fatigue between the two players? And this is even without discussing what would happen to Player B in specific speed-endurance training. Fox athletes routinely achieve very fast results even under fatigue and injury because much of the ability has shifted from the muscle itself to the art of leverage.

So, no – we are not sprinters. But it is known that an athletic foundation will serve as a huge bargaining chip in the art of skill development, and it doesn’t need to take years at all, just a good mindset, a smile, and a strong desire.

Agility – An Unclear Mystical Art

Much research has been conducted on agility and its range of qualities (decision-making, responsiveness, change of direction, braking, acceleration, and body adjustments), but as hinted, the relationship between speed training, quick plyometric contacts, and even specific agility training and actual improvement in game metrics is not fully understood.

Before discussing how to draw conclusions through a cluster of inconclusive studies, let’s try to define the different qualities from the world of agility.

Change of Direction: The entire range of abilities related to changing the angle of running or movement due to a known or sudden need. Right to left, forward to backward, up to down.

Responsiveness: The neural ability to respond to a sensory or command stimulus and act quickly – whether through the eye, ear, or touch. For example, a goalkeeper’s reaction time during a penalty kick.

Tendon/Muscle Responsiveness: The ability to change “gear” from concentric muscle contraction to eccentric quickly, and the ability to release “spring-like” elastic energy as a result. For example, a box jump.

Braking and Acceleration: Derivatives of tendon responsiveness; the ability to absorb significant kinetic energy without biomechanical leaks. For example, a short pass to a winger in soccer who has already reached top speed and now needs to brake and move backward to avoid losing the ball.

Body Adjustments: The ability to use body weight as kinetic assistance for muscle and tendon activity. For example, a defender’s slide tackle, a goalkeeper’s leap to the top corner, a player’s feint.

To be even more precise, we can say that “agility” is a collection of the unpredictable components on the field, while the rest (such as change of direction) are simply predictable athletic abilities. If we draw a parallel to the world of computers – agility is an “online” state where there is a constant exchange of live information with the world, while abilities like change of direction, braking, and acceleration, etc., are scrolling in offline mode. Both are necessary.

Let’s first examine a very popular aspect of skill development, which is plyometric training in the gym using body weight or resistance. It makes sense that plyometric activities in the gym such as various types of quick jumps, box jumps, depth landings, and squat jumps would indirectly improve speed and change of direction due to the shared use of contraction/stretching mechanisms. However, this was not the finding of a study that investigated whether elite female hockey players would improve their change of direction through 6 weeks of plyometric training.³

The study concluded that the improvements in change of direction were so minimal that it could not determine that the plyometric component is the main factor in the art of improving agility.

Another study on the plyometric aspect also did not find a high correlation between explosive strength training in the gym and agility, but it noted in defense of the plyometric effort that a slightly more significant correlation was found in the depth jump exercise. (Depth jUMP)⁸.

So, what about classic strength training, which aims to increase the relative strength of the trainee through derivatives of squats, deadlifts, and various hip extensions? How will they affect improvements in change of direction?

A large study published in the “JOSC” examined the impact of two years of classic strength training on change-of-direction tests in young international-level soccer players and found very significant improvements in muscle strength, which translated well to improvements in the specific tests.⁹

However, the researchers noted that two years of strength training with soccer players would likely improve any athletic ability that uses the leg muscles, regardless of agility. This shows how powerful classic strength training is for athletes, but it also diminishes its specific importance for developing agility.

This is not to diminish the importance of plyometric training, of course, which has been researched for nearly 100 years as effective in the art of improving muscular performance. However, since we are focusing on agility, we will concentrate on this component alone.

What about sprint training, as discussed at the beginning of the article? Does it directly help in developing agility? Thirty-six males were examined under a 6-week speed training regimen, which led to significant improvements in their straight-line speed. After cross-referencing with agility test results, to try to find a connection between the increase in speed and improvement in agility times, the researchers could not reach a definitive conclusion that speed equals agility.

Therefore, as mentioned, the improvement in speed for us only serves as a foundation for the real work that will become clearer later. These studies should not be used as an excuse to avoid working on certain qualities, but rather to try to understand the full picture.

Success in the “agility component” is so poorly understood that a large study even concluded that decision-making time on the field (something unrelated to muscular ability) is the main component of the package, more so than the subsequent action .⁵

This suggests the dominant cognitive ability in agility, as a rugby study concluded that training “response to an attacker” through video clips improved decision-making time from 340 milliseconds to 240 milliseconds⁶, a very significant improvement . We will expand on the cognitive component in agility training later.

Another large study that also sought a correlation between fitness components and agility found the “secret” in the cognitive component rather than in the muscular components .¹⁰

Therefore, unfortunately, evidence of the link between fitness components and the development of agility is very rare, and we will need to focus on the cognitive component along with other factors to fully understand agility.

So, “agility as a mystical art” is perhaps an understatement. The practical mind might ask, “So what’s the bottom line, what’s the best?” but that’s not the right question to ask, as the question itself undermines the complexity of the solution – similar to asking “what’s the best soccer technique training,” which indirectly underestimates the broad world of soccer.

It is my belief that by staying engaged in ongoing discussion, we can avoid potentially erroneous assumptions and find our personal style, connecting our worldview with athletic performance in a harmonious rather than existentially and depressingly manner. However, we will indeed discuss the practicalities of the matter later on, which will satisfy the thirst for practical science.

Enter – Agility Endurance

Here too, following the balance paragraph from the previous chapter, I wanted to use an interesting endurance study to derive a theory (which, in my humble opinion, is the correct way for a coach to work with scientific data) and introduce a new term in the field of capability development.

The question arises, after all the talk about agility as a decisive factor between elite athletes and semi-professional athletes: what about agility-specific endurance? Does intensive endurance training, since it shares the same chemical mechanism with agility endurance, also cover the ability to perform agility exercises and make decisions well under fatigue-induced chemistry?

I will try to establish a cognitive-endurance connection through tactical training of security forces worldwide, which, like ball games, require both coarse chemical ability and mental/cognitive ability to perform surgical actions under harsh conditions.

A study by the U.S. Air Force showed significant improvements in endurance, memory, visual distinction, reaction time, and selective hearing ability through the installation of agility training instead of traditional military physical training⁴, which includes running and bodyweight exercises. This indicates the strong connection of agility training to brain processing mechanisms.

If we take this hint, we can even tune endurance training to practice the ability to maintain agility mechanics by extending familiar agility exercises to endurance distances. The coach ensures that agility principles are maintained even under lactic acid (even if with naturally lower power output).

In most cases, the first thing that will happen to athletes under the first drop of lactic acid in an agility exercise is a lazy movement of the foot and toe dominance, followed by lower-than-usual knee transitions and shoulders rising towards the ears.

With the right instructions and sufficient insistence, these effects can be significantly delayed, as the technique required for optimal agility does not necessarily require more energy than the flawed technique described. This leaves the technical aspect under chemical fatigue as partly cognitive/mental/faith-based. This means the exercise itself does not matter as much as the insistence/inspiration of the coach to use counter-intuitive techniques (keeping the knee up despite fatigue, etc.).

As we know from group training, a basic station workout that includes 5-6 agility exercises performed in a sequence theoretically targets this agility endurance capability and will indeed improve agility times.¹¹ However, without personal emphasis on the correct mechanics and adapting the exercises so that each individual can discover something about their body, there will be no significant transition to a competitive state, which we will explain later.

In conclusion, it can be said that “agility endurance” is a term that can be used to describe the quality of actions under fatigue (such as the quality of direction change, quality of passing, quality of decision-making, and quality of responsiveness) as opposed to “endurance,” which simply measures whether you are moving or not (as is famous in sports analytics – mileage per game/number of sprints).

Mechanical Principles for High Level Agility

The Red Fox athletes know several mantras related to agility by heart and are required to answer “pop quizzes” several times during training concerning the same collection of biomechanical emphases related to the world of agility. We will describe some of them here:

1. Concrete Yamaka
2. Weight Loan
3. Contact Prediction

Concrete Yamaka

It is the primary measure of an athlete’s mechanical/cognitive ability to perform significant work from the hip axis while staying low and maintaining stability.

Typically, when a low-athletically positioned athlete in defense performs a significant push-off against the ground, they will accompany the action with a knee extension that raises their center of gravity, preventing them from responding appropriately afterward.

Initially, even when the athlete is asked to stay low “with force” using a visual cue they must not surpass, they will give up the hip axis and lazily drag their foot to maintain the height instruction.

Therefore, “Concrete Yamaka” is a warm-up exercise that asks the athlete to stay below the coach’s hand and also to flex the hip up and down with intensity. This is easier said than done but forms an essential foundation for any athlete’s approach to the world of agility.

This principle can be applied to any exercise, with endless possibilities.

We call it Concrete Yamaka because we imagine a heavy yamaka head cover on our heads that prevents us from squatting up, while having to do solid work under us.

Weight Loan

Weight loaning is the ability of a player not to perform an explosive athletic action while on their entire body weight. I intentionally described weight borrowing in the negative because its description is counterintuitive to a bipedal animal’s body.

It can be observed that the least agile athletes will perform athletic actions while upright, with their body weight stable on their legs, even during direction changes.

More agile athletes will subconsciously utilize physical principles of momentum and kinetic energy, throwing their body weight in a specific direction (either directly like in the first picture below, or indirectly for trickery like in the second picture).

This concept, of swinging your body weight similar to the swings in weightlifting, is crucial for agility and the quality of the action. When performed together with static principles like the “Concrete Yamaka,” it turns the athlete into a real weapon.

Think of the leg press exercise in the gym and how it sometimes puts you in a lying position to maximize the biomechanical leverage. Try to transfer this leverage of the push angle into the world of athletics. This will eventually necessitate weight borrowing, as the subconscious fear of falling disappears.

Contact Prediction

Ground contact prediction is more of a cognitive ability than a physical one because it requires a fundamental change in the “natural” command to the muscles to maximize the stretch/contraction mechanism and minimize ground contact time. Although it is the third in the order of required qualities for agility fundamentals, it is trained from the first practice session as well.

In short, ground contact prediction is the proactive aspect of agility, directing power towards the desired next direction instead of the current one. For example, if we want to hop in place with both feet, the intuitive method would be jumping, landing, releasing, absorbing the force, and redirecting it upwards.

The method that uses ground contact prediction would look like a jump, where even during the landing, there is an active and biomechanical intention to redirect upwards, so the landing becomes “responsive” rather than “intentional” and slow.

These three abilities form the cognitive foundation for the advanced learning of agility, which we will briefly describe later.

Cognition – Agility’s Engine

So far, we have discussed the science of agility and its characteristics, and we have also hinted at the cognitive nature of excellence in this field.

To deeply understand the desired training nature and make specific recommendations, we will support the topic of cognitive agility with theoretical science and discuss it.

In recent decades, the question of the brain differences between elite athletes and amateur athletes has been increasingly raised, and the research findings are indeed interesting.

A large study from London found an overdevelopment of white matter in the brains of elite karate fighters, specifically in the areas related to voluntary movement control.¹²

“White matter,” as mentioned, is a type of tissue in the central nervous system composed of nerve cells, whose function is to transmit information, similar to an internet network cable.

Similarly, another study found that elite athletes possess increased anatomical thickness of the cortex in certain areas, which was directly related to the athlete’s skill level¹³

Motor learning of movements occurs in several stages within the nervous system. First is the fast learning phase, where most of the raw motor knowledge is acquired. Then comes the consolidation phase¹⁴, where memory formation takes place, and finally, the optimization phase, where precision and timing are refined. The last stage is also called “automation” because the motor knowledge becomes so deeply embedded in the nervous system that it requires much less attention compared to the initial stages of training/learning.

But these things do not provide any comfort at all – because the question arises, what is the best way to approach these three stages?

The material on the subject begins to thin out, but a scientific debate can be found between two motor learning methods in young people. One method is explicit learning through declarative knowledge, where the movement is learned through explicit instructions from the coach with a clear set of rules, provided by producing explicit and articulate memory/knowledge.

The second method is implicit learning, performed without rigid rules and with little declarative knowledge. In other words, knowledge that asks “how to do” rather than “what to do.”

According to most of the literature, it can be seen that there are several advantages to implicit learning¹⁵, and as noted in a wonderful review by researcher Paul Reber on the comparison between the two methods mentioned above, it is stated:

In other words, unlike explicit memory, implicit memory is a kind of flexible ability in the brain’s processing mechanisms that functions intuitively and learns from primitive experience, rather than through IQ or intelligence.

Another advantage of implicit learning was researched by Liao and Masters (a very dominant researcher in the field) in 2001, noting that the difference between explicit and implicit learning may not necessarily be seen immediately but rather with the addition of a secondary ability to the primary ability (a fundamental aspect in competitive sports)¹⁶. Furthermore, it has been proven that implicit (analogical) learning leads to an ability that is not impaired under pressure (a very common phenomenon in competitive sports), unlike an ability learned explicitly through declarative knowledge and rules¹⁷. For example, a penalty kick in a Division B league game would rely more on explicit factors and a clear set of rules, whereas a penalty kick in the World Cup final against the best goalkeeper in the world would test the embedding of kicking ability through implicit memory.

Additional support for the theory comes again from the famous cognitive researcher Masters in the form of the “reinvestment theory,” which describes a significant decline in performance under acute pressure of a motor skill that was learned explicitly¹⁸ – a phenomenon that is significantly minimized through implicit and analogical learning due to the non-reliance of implicitly learned skills on “memory processing.”

Even without research, one can observationally see that the best players in their field cannot rhetorically explain the biomechanics they use in depth, nor can they rhetorically articulate why they are good using language. They know how things feel, how things sound, and they know what a good kick or a good jump looks like compared to other fields. They talk about their performance in sensory terms, unlike their coaches. This is a significant hint about how to train a talented individual.

The Metaphor – A Powerful Training Tool

One of the many tools discussed in implicit learning (alongside the tool of example, the tool of observation, the tool of rhetoric, and the tool of sensory feeling) is the metaphor, a powerful subchapter of the art of rhetoric and a main component in the roots of all art.

The metaphor directly appeals to the human mind’s instinct for unity, which subconsciously demands to find unity and commonality in all aspects of the world (similar to the hidden mental pressure experienced in a very messy room, where there is a hidden demand in the brain that an untidy room equals an untidy mind—a kind of metaphor).

Therefore, motor skills learned in a unifying context with the external world, and not as foreign to it, through cues and metaphors, discussions, and inspiration, will necessarily lead to less mental stress when used, and thus be less affected by existing mental pressure.

The metaphor dissolves the limitations of language as an inefficient tool attempting to describe reality using linguistic rules into a mixture of senses that involve reality itself within the language in a unified connection—a kind of fluid and temporary bridge between the world as it is and the world of language governed by rules; hence, it is widely used in all forms of good art.

When a metaphor is widely used, it gradually becomes an explicit and clear sign, but with one key difference—the meaning of the sign comes before its explanation, and hence the power of the metaphor in motor learning for the reasons we mentioned in the previous chapter. Viewing exercises through mechanisms of meaning and inspiration, rather than through mechanisms of dry knowledge, is a key to developing unexpected abilities.

Art historian Ernst Gombrich writes on this topic, noting that if we only had the meaningless words “ping” and “pong” in the language and had to describe an elephant and a cat in nature with them, it is quite clear which word would go with which animal. This hints at the primitive meaning connections in human cognition that precede the rules of language.

An interesting Russian study looked precisely at the difference between training young soccer players (under 10) using metaphors and symbols versus training with “clear” tools.¹⁹

The study examined one ability related to agility: dribbling a soccer ball using the inside and then the outside of the foot, ending with a shot on goal.

The participants were divided into two groups that used short instructional videos on the selected skill. One group (the explicit group) watched clear illustrations of a coach figure performing the action, and the other group (the symbolic group) looked at metaphors and symbols related to the action. It should be noted that at the end of both videos, there was footage of a coach performing the movement, and the metaphorical addition was only for one group.

The study confirmed the hypothesis and found that the players who used metaphors to learn the action improved more than those who did not in the tested action. Additionally, it discovered that these athletes also developed a personal style during the learning process, in contrast to the explicit group, who were more uniform.

Implications for Agility Training and Discussion

The reason we delved into cognitive matters is precisely due to the fundamental premise of the agility world—that it is the desire to perform optimally under unexpected variables. This article addresses the understanding that if we are dealing with unexpected matters, it is essential to comprehend the cognitive/physiological components at the root of the ability. This is far from the populism of the “do exercise X and get result Y” philosophy prevalent on social media and various fitness apps.

Therefore, according to science itself, while dry scientific knowledge regarding program design principles, biomechanics, and physiology is important, it cannot be conveyed without the presence of a coach. Only the coach can deliver it to the end customer correctly after integrating their personality with the information, rather than cheaply passing it “from the importer to the consumer,” a future scenario where any AI app could deliver the same information for free.

So, if you are a coach or an athlete training to get better—stop idolizing the exercise and see it as a way to express yourself. Speak through the exercise, show us who you are through the exercise, and yes—you can do it differently from someone else and still not be wrong.

Example Agility Session

Following the reservation above, we can demonstrate several exercises where it is easy to get the athlete to “dance their dance” and “play their song” with the right coaching. I will briefly outline the correct approach for each exercise, though the purpose of this article is not to provide an “agility workout” but rather the spirit of things as they are taught at the Red Fox.

After an athletic warm-up, we will start with a specific warm-up and nervous system preparation with pogo jumps.

We will continue with the principle of “ground contact prediction” by measuring the number of jumps on a sidewalk in 10 seconds. The Red Fox record is 27 if you want to try it yourself.

We will start running a bit with a directional change exercise in a circle at the coach’s command—this combines the three agility principles mentioned above plus a reactive element.

We will compete a bit with the Hunter and Prey exercise—the hunter (standing) starts about a meter and a half from the prey. When the prey gets up and turns to run, the hunter is allowed to run after and touch them to win. This introduces an element of urgency, and usually, the mechanics learned will break down here due to competitive pressure, and the athlete will revert to old habits. However, the coach’s goal is to make the athlete trust the new mechanics they have learned, even in a competitive situation.

In the Mirror Exercise, one partner will lead the movement, and the other will respond. Among movements of forward/backward/left/right (in any variation you choose), the follower must react quickly and stay with their body close to the leader. Here too, initially, there will be a breakdown of agility principles, and the coach’s role is to get the athlete to trust them in a tactical situation.

Another exercise that we perform regularly is the “Brazil Drill,” described below.

In conclusion, as Dr. Ford said in the successful series Westworld:

Evolution forged the entirety of sentient life using only one tool – the mistake

We will benefit if we train our abilities in a more relaxed manner, one that requires inspiration and self-discovery of the correct mechanics and does not fear mistakes, as they are the tools through which we find the best version of ourselves.

As always, I am available for any questions or discussions in the contact section. Good luck, foxes.

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