As football season draws to end for HS and College athletes its now the time when we get to see the craziest most asinine “agility and speed” drills all over social media… Yay!

Ive said it before… a football play last 4-7 seconds. Most skill athletes usually make 1-2 (sometimes 3-4 cuts its rare) combined with linear sprints all out. Lineman are basically in one little square box and sometimes sprint up to 10 yards straight ahead for the most part.

So tell me why we see “speed and agility” experts putting kids through drills with choppy feet, jumps, circles around cones into a sprint that last 25 seconds. There is no sport, let alone football where an athlete does this crap.

This type of training isn’t making them faster sprinters. It’s actually further facilitating the problem most kids have and that is sprinting with short choppy steps “going nowhere fast”.

This also doesn’t make them more agile. Agility is based off reaction not pre-planned.

The angles and forces don’t translate to sports.

Check out the highlight of this Penn State vs Ohio State football game. The best guys are straight fast. All the plays are sprint. Cut. Sprint. Deliver Contact/Absorb contact. That’s it. Why do athletes get drafter higher than others? Bigger, stronger, faster. End of story.

So when did this become athlete training?

Also, just because a pro does a type of training doesn’t mean it right for a young athlete. Often times pro’s are in the pro’s despite training not because of the training they get. Use drills to learn fundamental movement mechanics such as sprinting, cross over running, backward running, shuffling, cutting. Once mechanics are mastered they need to be put in reactive situations. Honestly, the best way to develop agility is by playing basketball. It checks all the boxes and its fun.