Football drills for speed and agility are essential for most of the breakaways, and Football conditioning helps you gain more strength in covering Footwork, pass protection skills, run blocking, and develop overall speed and agility.
Without a Football drill, even a team with an abundance of skills will find difficulty moving the ball forward. No one can deny the fact that acceleration is the name of the game. Most of the breakaways in the NFL rely on bursts of speed that is gained, which generally lasts for 4 to 8 seconds.
For this reason, a lot of times, it’s said that maximum speed velocity training for non-track athletes is useless. The only speed worth is acceleration speed.
Football drills for speed and agility involve a lot of strengthening and constant constrain within the back and the legs, including heavy training, maintaining body control, and many more.
Let’s Explore Football drills for Speed and Agility
Before knowing about speed and agility, you should understand why you need speed and agility in football. It is about how quickly you can change your direction of running without losing your body balance. Many of them think it’s something that people are born with, but with intense practice and consistency, anyone can achieve the agility level you are thinking about.
Whether you are a player or a coach to improve or make your student improve on its core and strength, you have to schedule a regular drilling practice to improve your game and speed.
Consistency will be the key everywhere, and every player knows the importance of speed in the game. In this blog, I will share top Football drills for speed and agility, which will help you gain more strength in covering Footwork, pass protection skills, run blocking, and develop overall speed and agility.
Circle Around the cone Drill.
The Setup for Circle around the cone drill is simple; all you have to need is one cone close to you and a pair of cones in a distance of 6 to 8 yards for your finish lines.
- Motive Behind the Drill: This Drill would help you achieve high agility skills like changing direction and some critical transitions, and would allow you to gain overall body control in your game.
- Set up: You need one cone next to you and a pair of cones for the finish lines.
- Procedure to do the Drill: You can start this by standing from left or right from the cone, shuffle in front of the cone before back paddling and make a circle around the cone and run as fast as you can maintaining the overall body balance.
When you come towards the next cone, rush towards the finish line cone.
There are some points which you should consider while moving around the cone drill.
- Try to be as close as you can while you are moving towards the cone.
- Keep your shoulder square as you run around the cone.
10 Yards shuttle run Drill
- Motive Behind the Drill: 20 Yards shuttle runs another Football drill which helps in overall speed and agility, this Drill used to assess the linear momentum and change in direction.
- Set up: The setup for this Drill is similar to the picture shown above.
- Procedure to do the Drill: You have to stand with one leg wide apart in the middle line and start running in the snap count of three, towards left or right, depending on your coach’s instruction and make sure that you are pushing yourself to your full potential.
You have to touch the next line and push yourself to run again towards and middle and then run towards the third line, touch and then continue with the same process.
This won’t be easy initially, but you will start enjoying the process as you get used to it.
Speed ladder change of direction Drill
- Motive Behind the Drill: The speed ladder is another Football and conditioning Drill that will help you change direction faster, give you faster feet, and the ability to turn or dime over time while maintaining body balance.
- Set up: For this, you need a speed ladder, lay down the speed ladder on the ground, and around 10 yards from the ladder place a pair of cones for your finish line.
- Procedure to do the Drill: In this, you have to start by placing two feet in and two feet out inside the ladder, in your start either back-paddle or move the way you want but complete the whole set of blocks inside the ladder.
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- Lateral high knees
- Forward in and out
- cross behind, etc
As you complete the final block in the ladder, run towards the finish line with your full potential.
For doing a ladder drill properly, I would advise that start with paddling slowly, if you have just started and increased the speed by placing two feet in and two feet out gradually.
Keep your hips low and stay tight to the ladder.
Single leg Hops Hurdle Drill
- Motive Behind the Drill: Next Football Conditioning Drills focuses on producing intense ground power through one-foot, Single leg hop gives better results with how fast you are doing the jump.
- Set up: In Single leg hop for which you need eight mini hurdles arranged in a single line.
- Procedure to do the Drill: Keep the distance of the hurdles according to the level of drill intensity you are trying to achieve, don’t keep the length less than a yard, the less the distance between the Hurdles easier it becomes, so arrange accordingly.
Start with choosing one leg left or right and start hopping over the hurdles in a single leg, and as you complete the last hop run for a sprint of 30 to 40 meters.
Single leg hop is rapid football Drills, so try to be as fast as possible.
Working a three-set of a single leg would be sufficient for one session.
Single leg ball Squat
- Motive Behind the Drill: Single leg ball squat is one of the Effective Football conditioning tests, which helps you strengthen the core of your legs and majorly focuses on single-leg strength and stability.
- Set up: For this, you need one Swiss ball and a flat wall to which you can place and Squat.
- Procedure to do the Drill: Place the Swiss ball against the wall and put your back in the ball by pressing it through your back. If your one leg is weaker and one leg is more potent in this Drill, it helps develop both legs’ same strength.
For an offensive Linemen, both legs should be equally stronger to run faster, and this Drilling helps you achieve that.
While pressing yourself into the Swiss ball, lower your body by squatting with your one leg, start with your stronger leg, and gradually move to the weaker.
To have an effective Football conditioning drill, try to make your back straight while you squat, and also, as you get better with both the legs, start with lifting weights and continue squat.
Cone L-Drill
- Motive Behind the Drill: Cone drill or L drill is another Drill used to increase football conditioning skills and agility, which helps in changing directions and used by many sports like American football and coaches.
- Set up: Three cones positioned in the shape of a cone or L.
- Procedure to do the Drill: start with the first cone and run towards the next cone in 5 yards and move low to touch the cone and again go back to the starting position, take around and sprint back towards the center of the cone planting out your foot for a hard turn around and continue to the first cone. And repeat the same process just by changing the direction of your sprinting.
Left to right Drill.
- Motive Behind the Drill: This Drill focuses more on single-leg strength and stability.
- Set up: You need nine hurdles for this Drill, follow the video to understand more about the positioning.
- Procedure to do the Drill: You have to start with one leg, jump from the first hurdle and by continuing with the same one leg posture hop left and then again hop right and complete the whole hurdle circle with that single leg, and then change the portion and follow the same process.
Lateral Shuffle to Sprint Drill
- Motive Behind the Drill: Lateral shuffle to sprint deal is another strength-building drill that majorly focuses on the lower leg of the person and helps instability and overall speed of the player.
- Set up: You need two cones placed in the same line, and two resistivity bands to attach in the feet.
- Procedure to do the Drill: The procedure of Lateral shuffle and sprint drill is effortless, you have to move sidewards touching both cones with a resistance band attached to your feet, you have to start from cone one go back to cone two, and then run with your total potential.
Cone Alley
- Motive Behind the Drill: The Cone Alley is another Football and conditioning Drill that will help you change direction faster, give you faster feet, and the ability to turn or dime over time while maintaining body balance.
- Set up: You need seven cones placed in a cone shape.
- Procedure to do the Drill: Cone alley focuses on increasing the stamina and concentrating on long-distance sprint drills. Each cone is four yards apart and slightly offset in the size of the cone.
For this, you have to sprint to the first cone, and when you get there, sink your hips to the back paddle and move towards the same back directly to the next cone moving at a slight angle.
Mirror Drill
- Motive Behind the Drill: Mirror drill focuses on fighting fatigue and includes a lot of sets which helps in increasing overall agility and speed
- Set up: You have to set up two cones 3 to 5 yards apart.
- Procedure to do the Drill:
- As the coach blows the whistle, the defender moves in front of you in different directions following your movement.
- You have to stand in front of him.
- He can bull rush, juke spin, or might employ a wide range of actions.
Make sure you keep your chest up, elbow tight, and your hand on your chest.
The Drill will be over when the coach blows the whistle, and the set of time is over.
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