Ways to Improve Your Agility and Do Better in Your Sports
Agility is not only about the ability to move. It is about fast movement of the whole body that allows you to respond quickly to a partner or a moving target, and thus, finding ways to improve your agility is not only vital in sports but also in overall health.
When it comes to sports, an improved agility means increased strength and range of motion. Agility is very important in multi-sprint sports like basketball and soccer. Keep in mind that different athletes have different ways to improve their agility in sports. For football players, they perform drills with tires; for martial artists, they do extending training drills.
Agility training is actually very useful for different athletes. A boxer needs to be as agile as he can to avoid the punches of his opponent and to land his own effective punches. Same is true for endurance athletes like marathon runners. A more agile runner is a faster runner Agil.
One of the ways to improve your agility is through speed and agility drills. It starts with a thorough warm up and a typical session can include several sets of sprint repetitions. These drills are suitable for different sports but you can be more specific by adapting them to resemble the movement patterns you use in a specific game. One of the popular exercises being used in improving agility as well as speed is the ladder drills, where a ladder-like pattern is laid out on the ground and you can skip, hop, jump on the squares of the ladder, which can be done forwards, sideward or backwards.
Practicing balance and developing better coordination are also important in agility training. You can practice balance by doing the simple balancing exercise used by martial artists. For better coordination, play table tennis or tennis. These games are also great ways to improve your agility.
Running an obstacle course is also another form of exercise to improve agility. You can use household items like old tires and ropes in creating your own obstacle course in the backyard. You may also want to sign up for fitness boot camps where training is often done like those in an obstacle course.
Dancing can be an excellent exercise to improve agility as well, specifically hip-hop and ballet. But the perfect type is freestyle dancing. It improves agility when you incorporate several different moves.
Another way to improve your agility is through rope jumping drills. With these drills, you can perform speed rope, square rope and line rope jumping. A standard agility drill that is good for soccer and hockey players is the shuttle run. Dot drill is best for basketball players and skiers for making quick changes of landings and directions.
You can also include sprint training and plyometric agility hurdles in the list of exercises and ways to improve your agility. Forward-backward sprints are beneficial for athletes who need erratic speed and quickness. The agility hurdles are good not only in improving agility but also in improving coordination and building power and speed.