We are wasting time and resources on theatrics.
“‘Athletes must possess the necessary strength to absorb & redirect forces, overcome inertia, and then re-accelerate in another direction.’
-Joe DeFranco
Simplified:
Weak kids chopping their feet and shuffling around isn’t speed & agility.
You couldn’t get further from it.”
-Ray Zingler on X
There is nothing wrong with speed & agility.
In fact, I think the construct is critically important for sport performance, which is why I regularly talk about it.
The problem is that the “speed & agility” industry is largely a fraud because those implementing what the consumer perceives to be speed & agility don’t actually (sustainably) increase speed & agility.
“Yes it does! My kid went to <insert turf box> and he got faster.”
Well of course he did. If you’ve never been read a book and then you read a book, you get to call yourself a reader.
You can get “newbie gains” from just about anything if you’ve never done it before.
This is why the speed & agility gurus market so hard for the young kids. It checks all the boxes, right? And by all the boxes, I mean two.
Palatability – It looks safe.
Leverage the unknowing’s desires – “My kid isn’t as fast as all the other kids. I went here twice and it looks like he got faster!”
Again, they go from doing no speed & agility to a few ladder drills, feel a little placebo effect, and then either keep going because 1) the place makes cool Instagram videos 2) It makes them tired and sweaty so it must work.
Or they stop going because rationale kicks in — “it worked initially but then it stopped working.”
It stopped working because speed & agility by itself is the cowboy hat.
But in order to be a cowboy you must have the cows.
“Huh?”
You can’t get faster and more agile without the requisite strength to allow you to access higher levels of speed & agility.
If you don’t (appropriately) strength train, in conjunction with (real) speed & agility (this is a topic for another post, lol) speed & agility gains will never, and I mean never be anything to write home about.
Want to get faster and more agile?
Here ya go:
1) Get Strong (Sorry, ya have to.)
2) Practice Acceleration (Applying force into the ground.)
3) Play & get better at sports (Sport is the most sport specific training in the world.)
*Seek a real coach before you find out the speed & agility stuff doesn’t work.
**It saves time & money.
