Agility & Endurance Training

What is Agility?

Agility is a skill-related component of physical fitness. This component necessitates the use of isolated movement skills that require balance, coordination, speed, reflexes, strength, and endurance.

Which sport or activity is agility useful?

Sports requiring a high level of agility include, but are not limited to:

• Badminton
• Basketball
• Football
• Hockey

• Rugby
• Squash
• Tennis
• Volleyball

Why is agility important?

During movement, agility enables the body to retain optimal posture and alignment. Agility exercises also help our bodies develop the ability to maintain proper body alignment. The lower back, shoulders, and ankles are protected while moving fast because of effective agility training. Training for agility is a crucial part of performance recovery. The goal is to strengthen the mind-body connection when processing signals and cues from the environment by focusing on the development of the connection between the physical and psychological systems required to carry out challenging multidirectional tasks in response to a stimulus. This helps to lower the risk of injury and help you perform better.

How can you improve your agility?

Agility can be improved by performing agility tests and incorporating specific drills into your workouts. Cutting drills with cones, agility ladder drills, and short circuit workouts with lateral movement, for example, are all ways to have better agility.

What is Endurance training?

Endurance training generally refers to training the aerobic system as reluctant to the anaerobic system. The Aerobic energy system uses fats, carbohydrates, and proteins for re-synthesizing ATP (Adenosine triphosphate) for energy use. The Anaerobic System provides the body with explosive short-term energy without the need for oxygen.

The need for endurance in sports is often asserted as the need for cardiovascular and simple muscular endurance, but the offspring of endurance is far more complex. Endurance is divided into two categories:-

• General Endurance
• Specific Endurance

General endurance symbolizes the ability of your whole body to tolerate endurance exercises and reduce fatigue. Whereas, Specific endurance symbolizes the ability to stand against tiredness in sport specific conditions. The better your sport specific endurance, the better you perform at this specific sport. And the better your general endurance the better you can stand longer efforts at your sport.

Endurance training is essential for a variety of endurance sports such as running, cycling, dancing, tennis, football, swimming, badminton, etc. Athletes also undergo endurance training when their sport is not necessarily an endurance sport in the whole sense but it demands some endurance.

Here are some Benefits of Endurance Training for Athletes:-

• Endurance training can boost production of the hormones and helps increase metabolism.
• Endurance training is effective at improving the heart’s ability to pump oxygenated blood and reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease.
• Reduces the symptoms of depression and boosts confidence and self-esteem.
• It improves muscle mass and immunity of an athlete
• Improves bone density and overall strength
• It improves mental health and sleep quality