Speed-Agility-Quickness Exercises

Speed-agility-quickness exercises enhance your ability to move from side to side, forward-backward and upward-downward. Improving your efficiency at traveling along these three planes of motion can assist your performance during various sports and activities. These exercises are also useful for developing your strength and power.

  1. Speed

    • Speed-enhancing exercises help you move from point A to point B as fast as possible. To increase your speed, you can sprint for 30 to 100 meters at 50 to 100 percent of your maximum speed, depending on your current fitness level, allowing a four- to seven-minute rest period in between. You can improve your speed further by performing other speed-enhancing exercises such as leaps, squats or uphill leaps. These types of exercises target your leg muscles, improving their power and strength.

    Agility

    • Developing your agility is a matter of enhancing how well you can travel at accelerated speeds, quickly change direction and then continue to accelerate toward an alternate or opposite direction. Perform exercises like shuttle drills to improve your sideways movements or weaver drills to enhance your ability to make continual changes in direction during accelerated travel. Three cone pro-agility drills also help you change direction while in motion by having you align three cones or objects and then sprint from cone to cone while decelerating, changing direction and accelerating throughout the drill.

    Quickness

    • Ballistic exercises like lunge jumps, straight leg bounds or tuck jumps enhance your agility and speed by having you perform a series of explosive movements that encourage your muscles to react and expel energy quickly. Perform line hops by drawing an imaginary line and standing on one side of it. With your feet together and parallel to the line, jump from side to side across the line as quickly as possible.

    Considerations

    • Speed-agility-quickness exercises provide a high level of stimulation to your muscles. You can perform them as part of a circuit workout by choosing an exercise for each type of movement and doing them in succession. Make sure you adequately warm up with a light jog or stretch to jump-start your circulation and prepare your muscles for the drills.