Speed and Agility Drills vs. Conditioning: What’s the Difference?

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One of the most abused phrases among team sport coaches is when they say they are taking their players through “speed and agility drills” when, in reality, their players are being herded through glorified conditioning sessions. 

I don’t say this in arrogance because I was once there . . . trying to move 2 dozen or so athletes through station work in a designated period of time and feeling like you’re not working your players hard enough if there is any sort of break in the action when they’re not bent over gasping for air.  I know the feeling.  There’s a certain gratification in humbling your players, showing them who’s boss, puffing out your chest, and walking away from the field with the feeling that your team just got better because they’re so whipped.  

But, consider that working harder instead of smarter could cost your kids athleticism and that there is a very distinct difference between speed training programs and sports conditioning programs.  To succeed in sports, athletes must be exposed to both, but an effective training program must strike a balance between the 2 and definitely not lump them into the same training pile. 

Let’s look at this logically.  To truly train for the speed and agility you would hope to see on gameday, don’t you want to see your athletes performing their training drills at or near 100%?  And, I’m not talking about 100% effort; I’m talking about 100% maximal speed, which you can’t possibly do when you’re performing sprint after sprint with little to no recovery time. 

Speed training performed at less than 90% of maximal speed isn’t speed training…it’s either a warm-up or it’s conditioning. 

So, here’s where coaches have to set their natural instincts aside and ALLOW THEIR ATHLETES TO RECOVER between sets…if they intend for their players to get faster, quicker, and more explosive. 

Another very important factor to consider is continuous training at less than 90% of maximal speed can actually make the athlete less athletic.  Think about it.  Training under constant fatigue doesn’t allow the athlete to fire the fast twitch muscle fibers at their full capacity.  As a result, the intermediate muscle fibers, which adapt based on the activity they experience, become more accustomed to producing at 60-80% maximal speed.

So, when the athlete needs that game-time burst, it’s not there. 

Coaches often ask me where they should place their running relative to their training day.  First of all, “running” is far too generic.  So, I usually follow this question up with 1 of my own.  “What are you trying to accomplish, speed training or conditioning?”  This often puzzles them, because more times than not, they have considered these options to be 1 in the same . . . far from it!

Speed training must be placed up front in the workout, before strength training or conditioning.  This ensures fresh athletes and the potential for maximal efforts.  Speed training should be performed with full recovery to recruit 90-100% of the athlete’s maximal speed.

On the other hand, conditioning should be performed at the end of a workout, so as not to compromise the fast twitch movements that make up the rest of the training session.  The conditioning portion of the workout should include structured intervals of work and rest based on either predetermined ratios or, even better, heart rate monitors.  Heart rate monitors are the preferred choice, because they individualize the recovery time, rather than predetermined work-to-rest ratios that assume the same recovery time for all athletes. 

Once you determine an athlete’s target heart rate zone, it’s fairly easy to monitor rest intervals.  For athletes with a top-end target heart rate zone threshold in the 160- to 170- beats per minute (bpm) range, a 40-bpm recovery is recommended.  For athletes above 170, 50-bpm recovery is more suitable.  To track this accurately, I would suggest using a Timex monitor.  I’ve gotten great use out of mine, and prices have dropped significantly over the past couple years.

The big takeaway here is that speed and conditioning are both critical to the success of an athlete, but they’re 2 different animals that have to be trained independently and with distinct guidelines.  The bigger the group of athletes, the more challenging this is to accomplish, but it can definitely be done with a little more effort. 

One final point to mention regards communication to your athletes.  I make it very clear to my athletes what the objective is during a segment of training.  If we’re performing speed and agility drills, I’ll emphasize to them the quality of their reps versus the quantity and make sure they are responsible about their recovery time, so the next rep isn’t performed under fatigue.  When the agenda is conditioning, I communicate up front what their work-to-rest intervals will be and that they will be expected to perform the next rep under fatigue while maintaining as much efficiency in their movement as possible. 

I’ve found when these objectives are communicated up front, it sharpens the focus of the athletes, and they approach the segments with a mindset of improving rather than survival.

Let me know what you think about these concepts or maybe even your own experiences/mistakes when it comes to this element of training. 

Your Coach,

Brian Utley

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