Primarily, many people have been misled to believe that speed and agility training is mostly a waste of time because they are things that athletes are either born with, or they are not. However, such an outdated belief could not be further from the truth. While not every athlete can be turned into Carl Lewis or Marion Jones, every athlete can make significant improvements in their ability to quickly accelerate, change directions or maintain top speeds.

The reason for this is simple, most athletes do not train properly. They either run too slow for too long or they try to run fast, but don’t rest long enough to get the type of recovery required to improve acceleration or allow them to practice change of direction techniques that will allow them to move laterally and avoid their opponents. An athlete can not expect to get faster by running at slow speeds. At the same time, if athletes try to run ‘wind sprints’ at high speeds but only get very short rest periods between each run (less than one minute rest per 10 yards of distance run) then they can not expect to see consistent, positive results in their so-called speed and agility training.

This is why it is critically important that your training be organized. Every component of each training or practice session must have a plan. That plan, from top to bottom, must follow guidelines that have proven to develop explosive speed and agility in athletes, regardless of age, gender or experience level. It is a proven fact that young athletes have similar weaknesses when it comes to athletic movement and eliminating these efficiencies carries over to every sport. That is why you must implement a complete speed and agility training program with your athletes in order to maximize their success. Both speed and agility are skills that you can teach and learn yourself, as long as you are using a guideline that works. To just make things up on the way to practice, assume that because you were successful they will be successful or use old training methods that have proven not to develop the type of speed and agility that your athletes are capable of would be to do both yourself, your team and your athletes the type of disservice that has brought you here to this site today.

When I first started training athletes, I generally made things up as I went along, relying on my experience as a Division I athlete as the ‘stamp of my expertise’. I found that my athletes were inconsistent: quick and agile one day, but sluggish the next. Eventually, as I began to study the many elements of speed development, I learned that consistency and order were the foundation of any successfully program. Implementing a system of training components that allowed me to track improvement and make assumptions based on scientific logic has provided me and my athletes with the good fortune of countless victories, personal bests, team and individual championships. When it comes to speed and agility training, what system will you use to create your dynasty?