Acing The Combine: 20 Meter Agility Test

There's quite a few different agility tests used for different sports but the AFL uses this one in the Combine seen in the video at this link at the 2 minute mark:

http://www.afl.com.au/news/newsarticle/tabid/208/newsid/149102/default.aspx

Any agility has a moderate requirement for foot quickness but a huge requirement for strength, making it very similar to training for the 20 Meter Sprint. You will quite often the see the same names in the top 10 of the agility and 20 meter sprint tests which shows that they possess the same qualities.

Foot Quickness

We've probably all seen agility ladders or rope ladders at one time or another and they are instantly thought of when players think of agility training. Let me gibe the heads up, these ladders do nothing for agility.

Getting faster at the agility ladder means exactly that, getting faster at the agility ladder but there is no ladder in the test, and definitely no ladder on the playing arena.

Here is a video I whipped off Youtube showing a shit load of these "apparent" agility increasing drills:

Now have a look at the foot movements and joint angles in these drills. When do you ever take such little steps on the football field? 

Never.

This is why they will not improve your agility.

Eccentric Strength

Now we're getting to the good stuff. My training for this off season is focusing a lot on eccentric, isometric and concentric strength, where as most programs simply focus on the concentric portion.

What this allows you to be able to do is to decelerate your body when going into a turn. The quicker, and thus less steps you can take into a turn, the better. You'll still to perform a few of those small shuffle steps, but if I only need to take 3 of them and you need to take 5 of them, then I'm going to be doing each turn quicker then you, no doubt.

In the next 2 videos you'll see my training partner Rob do his 20m agility test and then mine. It is a different test then the AFL one but watch the difference in the turns:

So eccentric strength is required to slow down the quickest.

Isometric Strength

Going into a turn, there is actually a very quick isometric contraction where you have fully decelerated your body and are about to move in the opposite direction.

You now have to overcome your bodyweight like the start of the 20m sprint but you also need to overcome your momentum as well.

Again, if we have the same eccentric strength but I have the greater isometric strength then again I will be quicker at each turn because I'll be generating acceleration while your still stabilising yourself from deceleration.

Concentric Strength

This is the acceleration component of the agility run where you come out from each turn and is what traditional gym weight exercises like squats and deadlifts enhance.

One important thing that most trainers don;t know is that the more force you can put in then the more force you can put out. This makes eccentric strength very, very important.

Think of a rubber band, the further you pull it back, the further it flys once you let it go.

So to enhance your agility then basically train the same as the 20 meter sprint - heavy back squats but also include some eccentric and isometric work in with them as well at heavy, moderate and lighter loads.

Technique

The one and only technique tip you'll need for this is to stay low by dropping the hips, especially during the turns. When you accelerate out of the turns yo still want to stay low as it puts you in a far better position to decelerate then when standing up tall. This is why shorter players will have the wood over taller players, as their center of mass is closer to the ground.

So ditch those shitty agility ladders and hit the squats!!