How Often Should You Do Speed and Agility Training?

Training for speed and agility is vital for any athlete to perform well and to secure a top position. Although the drills vary from one sport to the other, it also depends on the performance level and experience of an athlete. A young athlete may need a mixed set of easy to moderate levels of drills, while an intermediate or an advanced level athlete may need a set of medium to hard levels of challenging drills with varied frequencies. However, always remember success in speed and agility training depends on the athlete’s stamina, determination, and right supervision.

So today, in this article, you will learn about how often you should do speed and agility training. Whether you are a young athlete or an advance level athlete, you’ll get your answers here.

Let’s start!

Youth Athletes

• 1-2 Days/Week

In any sport, being fast and quick is a key advantage. If an individual or team is more rapid than its opponents, it means the team is already ahead of competitors in the game. So, speed and agility training is a fundamental part of any sport training. Doing speed and agility training for 1 to 2 days per week is enough for youth athletes.

• Incorporate Your Sport In Your Drills—Keep Things Fun

The purpose of speed and agility training for an athlete should be introducing quickness and agility in his respective sport. For instance, during young soccer players training, a soccer ball in speed and agility training drills can make things fun for the athletes. Youth athletes will take more interest in the training drills, and including unique drilling ideas in training will help them become fast and agile in that particular sport.

• Utilize Cones or Ladders To Give Them A Goal

Most young athletes, in the beginning, don't have in-depth knowledge and understanding of agility and speed training. So during initial stages, don’t make things challenging for them, but try to keep them involved in speed and agility training sessions. As you move forward into the training session, focus on utilizing cones, and ladder specific drills frequently. Keep varying the drills structures by using cone shuffles and ladders in different areas of the field. Cones and ladder drills have an end goal: to help to keep the young athletes motivated and engaged in the training.

Intermediate - Advanced Athletes

• 3-4 Day/Week

High school and college-level athletes are more grown-up boys, and so their bodies are more developed and composed as compared to youth athletes. As per their athletic-level, they need more constant speed and agility training to give better results in the top-level competitions, where having high skillsets are a must. College and high school athletes should participate in the speed and agility training 3 to 4 days per week.

• Longer Distance Sprint

Intermediate/Advance level athletes should raise their performance bars and perform speed and agility training drills on higher frequencies. The training regime with specific drills can be scheduled on specific days, like cone shuffle drills on Monday, ladder exercises on Tuesday, sport-specific on Thursday. However, one more thing that should be included in the training is long-distance sprints. It will increase speed and additionally helps in increasing stamina of athletes.

• High-Intensity Exercise Like Box Jumps, Depth Jumps, And Resisted Sprints

High-level performance demands higher level workouts and drills. For intermediate/Advance level athletes, higher intensity workouts or drills should be added to the schedule. High-intensity exercise, like box jumps, depth jumps, and resisted sprints, help increase agility.

Things To Be Careful With

Sometimes speed and agility training can make the body stiff, if overdone. Athletes need to be careful regarding this; anyway, here are some things they should be careful of.

Let’s talk about them;

• Talk To Your Athlete About Their Soreness

It is the responsibility of a trainer to supervise the athletes and observe how their bodies are responding to the activities. The trainer should talk to the athletes if they feel any soreness in specific parts of the body, and if so, then the trainer should modify the training sessions accordingly.

• Shin Splints

Sometimes athletes feel pain during exercise, especially in the front area of the lower legs. It is due to inflammation in muscles and tendons. So being an athlete, if you feel any such issue, scale back your frequency. Give your body rest or more intervals of time between the exercises and observe how it respond to the pain. You can also cease on high-frequency activities and focus on low impact exercises later.

• Knee Pain

When you overdo the high impact activities, like depth jumping and box jumping, it can cause knee pain. In this case, scale back to low frequency activities and stop doing high impact workouts. Instead, focus on lower-frequency drills and observe how your body responds towards it.

• Low Back Pain

In case of low back pain, take off from high impact workouts, and let your body recover from the pain, and then start with low impact exercises. Your lower back pain can get severe, so you need to be very careful.

How Often Should You Do Speed And Agility Coming Back From An Injury?

• Release From Doctor

Firstly, visit your doctor in case of an injury. Take great care of your injury and follow the instructions of your doctor. Give time to your injury to heal perfectly and don’t perform any tough exercise during the recovery period. Once you get fully recovered and feel fit, only then move into the training.

• Start The Progression Low Impact First

After recovering from your injury, don’t just jump straight into the previous speed and agility training. You need to be very careful and do things gradually. Start your training with low impact exercises. Do some nice and easy cone shuffles and ladder drills only once per week.

• More Frequency With Low Impact Next

After some sessions, if your body starts moving freely, you can increase the low impact exercise frequency. You can do low impact exercise 2-days/week with higher duration of the exercise.

• High Impact Less Frequency

When you observe your body is responding perfectly to the low impact high-frequency workouts, only then can go for high impact exercises. But, you can only make a high impact with less frequency. One session every week would be enough for you. Observe your body’s response to the high impact exercises and see how well you are making progress.

• High Impact Full Week Of Training

Once you start feeling full control over your body with high impact lower-frequency workouts, then you should consider a full week of high impact training. If your body’s response is great and you feel no pain, you can revert to the previous speed and agility training schedule.

We hope this article will help you understand the main idea of this write-up. If you have any questions, then get in touch with us, and we would try our best to get to you on your queries.