Agility Training Concept: From Extensive to Intensive Work

This idea first came from a desire to work on conditioning at sub-maximal intensity (in order to enhance metabolic flexibility) differently from the classic, linear-long run way. I wanted to find something cooler and that challenges movement so that people would enjoy more their workouts – and so that they would be eager to move and workout more often. However, I realized the framework of this concept of agility training could also be really useful in the performance world, from rehab scenarios to high-level performance training. In this sort of essay, I’ll try to explain to you why I believe so.

Regards & Theory

First of all, I want to acknowledge the influence of Lee Taft’s work and Paul J. Fabritz’ work on everything that I’m going to present. Lee Taft’s formation on speed and agility training (Speed Insiders) has been really helpful to help me structure this concept and to give me movements’ ideas. Regarding Paul J. Fabritz’ work, I’ve been a real fan of a lot of the things this man does for the past two years. I’ve listened to all his podcasts, studied some of his programs and many educational videos that he puts up on his Youtube channel or on the EdgeU website (a wonderful educational platform that I would recommend to every strength and conditioning coach).

This concept of training is in line with the logic of extensive plyometrics for tendon health, by giving the musculo-tendinous unit (MTU) the kind of interaction specific to sports – or at least some of them. It helps prepare the body structures to this type of interaction more and more intensively over time. It’s the right mechanical stress to prime the tendons for athletic activities, the task itself is dictating the MTU adaptations.

As extensive plyometrics for intensive plyometrics, I believe that extensive agility is the right thing to do to prep the body for intensive agility (and for sports practice), by building resilience in the tendons and in various other tissues (passive or active) through low intensity elastic contacts on the ground. It’s also useful for the warm-up, before executing more aggressive and more demanding movements in terms of spring forces (by using similar movements to those that will be used during the session, or by using totally different movements).

By using extensive-type movements, we introduce elasticity at low-level and we train the co-contractors of the entire foot-ankle-lower leg complex to be able to support more and more intense efforts with time. Strengthening those structures is a welcomed feature when it comes to injury prevention, in this complex as well as in the knee and hip.

Another aspect to take into consideration is the general movement bank development, which offers the athletes more movement options to choose from during the practice of his sport. It also contributes to the evolution of the global neuromuscular coordination of the athletes (in various planes of motion). With time, it will help them be able to adjust more quickly to the demands of the chaotic environment of their sport, by using a movement solution more appropriate.

Moreover, exposing young athletes to a large variety of moves is really interesting, especially in the case of hyper-specialization. With this concept, they can be exposed to a lot of different footworks and movement challenges (from other sports than the one they play), something that’s good for performance and for long-term prevention (by creating some sort of a better balance in the body).

Regarding the moves, the only limit will be creativity. We can associate several complex movement patterns, sport specifics or not, we try to challenge the athletes in many different ways to create better movers.

Note on training surface

I suggest starting introducing this concept on a soft surface (e.g., grass or gym mat) to limit impacts on the joints (plus it’s easier to go barefoot on those). Then, you can progressively go towards harder surfaces until you reach the surface of the sport (e.g., wooden floor for basketball players, obviously not barefoot).

It’s essential to end up on the sport’s surface because it’s the only way to adequately prepare the tissues to accept forces and deal with the impact on this particular surface, through the adequate MTU interaction (in a preventive perspective, to avoid injuries). When going towards harder surfaces, because they are more stressful for the body, it’s also important to decrease slightly the volume compared to the softer surfaces.

Concept description

At this point, you may wonder what really IS the concept that I’m talking about since the beginning. It’s pretty simple: you take some moves that can be seen in basketball, football, soccer or any other sport, and you start executing them extensively (i.e., with low-moderate intensity for several repetitions). Over the weeks/months, you gradually increase intensity, quickness and volume, and you go from basic low-level moves to complex high-level moves.

By doing so, you prepare the body to the specific moves/efforts of a given sport, you increase your movement bank and you work on global coordination by using some moves that your body isn’t accustomed to do (because it doesn’t come across them in the given sport). I think that exposing the body to all this variety of movements can be really beneficial for performance and for building resilience in the tissues.

This concept gives the opportunity to work on specific moves for a given sport, and accumulate many repetitions of those moves in order to perfect their execution. It also gives the possibility to sort of balance the two sides of the body, because every movement can be done with both legs (while sports can sometimes be very imbalanced in this respect).

Side notes

Given the flexibility of this concept, it can be used every day, whether it’s a Low Day or a High Day, by manipulating the variables accordingly.

This concept can be done barefoot – as you can see in the videos below -, while ensuring that not ‘’too much’’ is done ‘’too early’’. A proper progression as to take place in order to avoid unpleasant sensations in the plantar fascia (something that you must be aware of and that you must take into consideration). All of this should be done pain free, and you can regress it in a lot of different ways if you need to. Besides that, I believe it’s a fantastic occasion to let athletes get off of their shoes, and it’s a great way to enhance the overall health of the foot-ankle-lower leg complex (by exposing this complex to forces in a large variety of angles and positions).

I think that doing a lot of different moves on grass (outside if possible) and barefoot is a really nice stimulus for the athlete. It also represents a good time to let him freestyle within his movement bank to explore his body’s abilities.

When the intensity is relatively low, I would encourage you to breathe using only your nose, to emphasize a little bit more work of the respiratory system.

Even for non-athletes (as it was originally designed), it could be a really fun concept to incorporate into any training to bring some variability and to make it a little bit less monotonous (if that’s the case).

Framework

The framework I’m going to give you is obviously not exhaustive, but it’s the one I’ve used and I find it reasonably good. It gives a structure to this concept (although many other organizations are possible), from which you can build your own framework according to your needs (if you’d like to).

General guidelines

Way Out = Run for 20-50 yards, with low-moderate intensity
Way Back = Simply jogging
Perform each repetition randomly
Don’t try to put too much intensity at first, just try to get good sensations and relatively quick ground contacts
Build upon that by increasing gradually the intensity of the movements, as long as sensations stay good and you don’t feel any pain

Try to breathe as much as possible with the nose during all this workout.
2 to 5 minutes per movement. 1 to 3 minutes of recovery between movements.
6 to 12 different movements per session.

There are 4 levels to this:

Level 1: the athlete does the specific movement when he decides to
Level 2: the athlete does the specific movement when a signal (e.g., auditory, visual, mirroring another athlete) is given, and the direction of the movement is known
Level 3: the athlete does the specific movement when a signal (e.g., auditory, visual, mirroring another athlete) is given, and the direction of the movement is unknown
Level 4: combination of several repetitions of the same movement (or various movements), with unknown directions (e.g., mirror-type drills, defensive cornerback coverage-type drills)

At every level, you can modulate the intensity (of the run and/or of the moves), the frequency of repetitions, and the volume (duration of effort and of recovery between bouts) to offer further progressions and regressions. You could also remove the use of the arms to force athletes to have proper force application angles on the ground (something I might’ve seen on Lee Taft’s formation or read on the last Frans Bosch’ book on agility).

Note regarding videos of the movements

Because I’m French, and because I shot all the videos for a program that I just released, I give the instructions in French in every single video. However, I also demonstrate how to perform each move in those videos, so you should still be able to easily understand what the moves look like (hopefully). Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions (via my instagram account or my website) about the moves that I show just below.

I’ve split the movement bank into 6 (non-exhaustive) categories: