Great article from the IYCA membership site
Learning Skills & Training Drills for Speed & Agility
by Richie Whall - Training Director, Hex Training
When working with youth athletes, do you recognise and understand the difference between learning skills and training drills? Do you know why each is important, how they link to each other and which is most appropriate for use with youth athletes at different stages of their athletic development?
The need to know the difference between skills and drills is particularly important when developing speed & agility for youth athletes. The ability to move fluently and efficiently at speed, to start and stop or change direction with precision and control are all dependant on how well you can co-ordinate the action of your feet, legs, trunk, and arms, how well you can control and master your body to create optimum angles to apply or absorb force, synchronising the action of muscles and joints to cover optimum distance with every step, come to an abrupt halt or seamlessly switch movement skills or direction with minimal loss of speed. It is about skilful movement combined with awesome strength and power, two separate but inter-dependant qualities, both of which can be developed and improved.
For effective and safe development of speed & agility, the initial focus needs to be on learning skills. Learning skills requires patience, consistent practice and perseverance, gradually developing mastery and movement quality across a range of movements before challenging in different conditions including movement direction, rhythm, range of movement and linked movement sequences or combinations.
Training drills on the other hand are used to develop the physical qualities of speed, strength, power and endurance and are best used to challenge and extend skills once they have been successfully learnt and mastered. Using more physically demanding drills to challenge skills in which you are not yet competent is often counter-productive and can greatly increase risk of injury.
Central to the Hex Training System is our skills framework, a structured and progressive series of movement skills developing from fundamental to specialised speed & agility skills. Through the fundamentals phase, the focus is on learning the skills for:
As your athletes begin to refine and master the fundamental skills, these are then extended and applied to build the specialised speed & agility skills which focus on:
Skill learning is therefore arranged into a structured series of increasingly more complex skills, progression through the skill levels follows a general sequence of:
Movements in-place to on the move (at increasing speeds and range of movement)
Movements in one direction through to multi-directional movements
Movements pre-planned and guided, then pre-planned but unguided, unplanned but limited options and finally unplanned, reactive movements in a game-like environment
Learning skills in isolation (then extended) to building movement sequences and combinations
Practicing skills at own pace then adding pressure through time or competition
Only once high levels of proficiency have been shown in these skills do we start to incorporate training drills such as plyometric or interval training to further enhance their movement skills.
