Why Is Agility Important?
Agility helps performance in activities that require quick change in direction while maintaining balance, speed, strength and body control. It is an important aspect in many sports. Good agility can translate into better performance and faster response, and can give one an edge over his competitors.
Agility is the power to move quickly and easily. It allows someone to decelerate, accelerate and change direction while keeping perfect body control and without losing a lot of time in transition. Besides the skills required for specific sports, agility is the principal determining factor for success in sports. Racket, squash, tennis and badminton are some of the sports that require considerable level of agility. Other sports where agility plays an important role include rugby, football, basketball, volleyball and hockey.
Agility helps ensure an athlete’s collective coordinative abilities and gives a competitive advantage for athletes with height, size, speed or strength challenges. Martial arts such as judo, taekwondo, karate and kickboxing require great level of agility. Skills can be enhanced with agility training drills as well as improving the specific individual fitness components of balance, speed, power and coordination.
The demands of high performance agility sports dictate that athletes rapidly blend together a continuous collection of sophisticated and flexible physical and mental activities. Effective agility training can help avoid injury by improving the body’s ability to efficiently control eccentric forces in different directions.
