People always like to hear the secret, the quick gains how to, the massive improvements in just 3 short weeks and I am going to give to you straight: Massive gains in a couple of “short” weeks are quite possible BUT, they are not for newbies.  Let me elaborate on this, when you are first starting any endeavor, both physical and mental, you can expect to get easy increases at the beginning. Training for speed and agility is no different. This is despite improper training, unoptimal eating habits, drinking, yes, a newbie can get past all of these simply because there is so much untapped potential in his body.

Harsh lesson: most newbies won’t get that far after that, and then, frustrated, they will quit.  I will wager that this is especially true for speed and agility training. There are some very different approaches in the world: some people, called information junkies, like to read up and know everything there is to know about a subject before doing anything at all. At the other extreme, there are those people who jump in and just start doing. Neither are doing it right. The information junkie people are wasting time, they are throwing away time that could be used to start molding their minds and bodies into a machine of explosive speed and agility for the sake of the most quantity of information.  I am not going to even address the topic of lousy information and people teaching stuff that simply is not effective, just to throw you a bone.  Then when frustrated and plateauing, get you to buy their products – that don’t work.

The people who just jump into speed and agility training seem to have an advantage in the beginning, this is because if you do anything, just getting off your couch and doing any speed and agility training, you will get some results. This is due to the untapped potential I’ve mentioned earlier. But, the problem with this approach is that they will tend to flatline pretty fast and after that, doing more of the same thing will unlikely produce any more improvement. This is why people who run laps every day will not improve their speed, they will just build more and more endurance, which is fine, as long as that is what they are going after. This is where the info junkies have the edge, this is because:

Practice does not make Perfect, Perfect practice makes Perfect
…and info junkies have the best chance of eventually coming across the good information and getting the right speed and agility training.

Another problem for people who just jump into things is that they may learn improper techniques. Tiger Woods had to relearn his whole swing, because it was not a sustainable swing and would have eventually led to carrier ending injuries. This is the problem most frequent with people who train without guidance. So the best thing is to get the best of both worlds, you need proper guidance and you need to take action. In the world of speed and agility training this is even more true due to the high risk of injury.

Speed and agility training has a higher incidence of injuries and a higher severity of injuries than training for strength, endurance, muscle size, etc. Take a good look at my ankle and learn from my mistakes. Six screws, a titanium plate and 2 months in crutches. Hope you’ll be smarter than me.

This is why I must caution you to be aware than speed and agility training is a long term process. If you want to get anywhere worth going in the shortest amount of time, then think of things in terms of a two year process. This is just a guideline. I don’t want to make this article any longer so let me tell you that I hope you have enjoyed and got something out of it.

Leave a comment and tell me what you though of the article: here.

All the best,
Damian

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