Agility Challenge (T-drill)
Why is it important?
Agility contributes to your daily well being. It keeps you from tripping and slipping, and helps you to avoid collisions. Agile people tend to be good at games like basketball, volleyball and soccer, as well as the SportFit T-Drill station!
How can I improve?
Play Tag
Tag is also about agility. As you run around trying to avoid getting tagged, you are constantly changing direction and running off quickly to a new place.
Skip rope
When you skip rope, your body is forced to change directions from going down to jumping up according to your swing of the rope. If you are really good at skipping rope, you can try some jump rope tricks to improve your agility even more!
Dodgeball
Agility comes into play in dodgeball as you deke out of the way of the balls. You depend on your agility when you stop suddenly, jump sideways or backwards, and run back and forth on the court.
Crab soccer / Walking around on your hands and knees
Walking on your hands and knees face up forces you to move your arms and legs faster than you do normally, as well as forces you to coordinate all of your limbs so that you don’t trip over yourself. Because you are constantly shifting your weight over your hands and knees, the joints have to move through a range of motions and your muscles have to work in a few different ways to keep you going. The combination of quickness, range of motion and pull of the muscles contributes to good agility.
Tap dance
Tap dancing relies almost entirely on agility. Tap dancers move their feet very quickly and in different ways to create the sounds and rhythms of the dance.
Walk backwards or shuffling sideways
When you walk backwards or shuffle sideways your body uses your joints in ways that are unfamiliar to your muscles. The muscles have to learn to contract in a different way in order to support the change of balance of the body. As your muscles get used to the new pattern of movement, they become better able to quickly change directions when you’re moving at high speeds.
Hackey sack
Hackey sack is a great way to improve agility as it’s a fun game that you can play either with others or on your own. All of the kicking, jumping, twisting, and shuffling required to keep the sack off the ground is a constant test of agility. And because the placement of the sack constantly changes during the game, you have to move quickly to prevent it from falling.
