The agility exercises They are those that gradually improve the maneuvering speed and the athlete’s reaction speed, emphasizing different parts of the musculature through fast and highly dynamic routines. For example: obstacle course, crossfit, juggling.
In this sense, agility exercises are sustained based on the coordination, which is nothing other than the immediate muscular response capacity to the designs of the central nervous system. The exact opposite of clumsiness.
Examples of agility exercises
- Jumping exercises. The long jump not only indirectly enhances agility, by strengthening the muscles involved in takeoff and landing, but also by bringing them into relation to maintain balance while in motion.
- Crawling exercises. By forcing the four limbs to move in coordination, this type of exercise increases basic agility, especially when doing it at maximum speed.
- Four point exercises. It is a type of circuit exercise, in which a base point (south) is located and three points pointing to the other three cardinal points. The exercise will consist of running towards each cardinal point, touching it with the hand and then going backwards towards the south; run to the next and so on. This exercise allows you to coordinate your body’s relationship with space even when you are not looking at it directly.
- Obstacle courses. As in the Olympic sport of the same name, it is about running at top speed while jumping or dodging various obstacles. This represents an intense exercise of coordination, resistance and speed that directly affects the athlete’s agility.
- Jump the rope. Common practice for boxers, whereby they not only exercise their aerobic endurance but also their agility, since they can jump rope in combinations of one foot, the other, or both together, at high speeds.
- Basketball. This sport is known for being one of the most agile ones, since its practitioners are at the same time running, passing the ball and obstructing the route of rivals. Practicing it often is a good way to develop agility.
- Balance exercises. A good way to exercise leg strength as well as agility is to balance your entire body on one leg and then the other, maintaining a straight posture and then trying to raise your arms and legs.
- Chase exercises. Similar to the children’s game of “the stain” or “the ere” or “the headdress”, it is an exercise that requires at least one pair of athletes, in which one of them must chase and touch the other in some part of the body , and the other’s task is to dodge their attempts and run away.
- Exercises on a ladder. Going up and down a ladder at full speed, stepping on each step with a corresponding foot and without skipping any, will enhance agility and coordination of the feet, while toning the muscles.
- Zigzag race. Another relatively simple agility exercise, which involves positioning cones or other objects in a straight line and zigzagging between them without knocking over any.
- Skip the hopscotch. This children’s game can be rescued to make balance exercises more complex. It consists of a series of paintings painted on the ground that force us to jump on one foot from one to the other until the end, where we change our feet and return to the beginning.
- Dance. Although it may not seem like it, dancing is a very entertaining way of exercising agility and perfectly incorporable into social contexts, in which we teach our body to follow the rhythm imposed by music.
- Rhythmic gymnastics. Sports discipline that combines ballet, dance and gymnastics, as well as different implements such as a ball, maces, ribbons or hoops, and which requires its rapid, coordinated and aesthetic use. A challenge to the agility of athletes.
- Crossfit. This is the name given to a training made up of various routines of functional exercises, of high variety and intensity, executed in a stipulated and timed time. It has been a trend since 1995 and is widely accepted in the world of physical training.
- Defend the archery. Inherited from soccer football, this exercise consists of stopping the balls that a teammate or coach kicks directly towards the goal, preventing them from entering the net, one after the other with a narrow margin of recovery time.
- Round trip. Several points or cones are located on the ground, one next to the other, forming a straight line that reaches several meters in length. Starting from the first point or cone, you must reach the first, touch it and return to the initial one; touch it and continue with the second and so on.
- Agility ladder. Using a sports ladder, or making one from old tires, you run through the rungs (or holes in the tires) alternating one foot on each to the end and then back to the start.
- Agility Hoops. Using rings or delimiting the area with paint, a route is traced in circular segments separated from each other by at least one meter. The exercise will then consist of advancing in the trajectory jumping from one hoop to the next with only one foot and at maximum speed.
- Bar exercise. Climbing the bars, moving from one to the other, holding on with your legs and inverting the figure… all are valid agility exercise techniques with an ordinary bar system.
- Juggle. Juggling encourages coordination and sharpens reaction time, thus enhancing our hand-eye agility.