Get Fit Friday 08/21/20 - Agility Training

Beth Jeffers and Whitney Brown break down agility training and why it's so important to add to your workout routine.

Beth jeffers: good morning.

Welcome to get fit friday, i'm beth jeffers.

I'm joined here at the fitness factor with whitney brown.

Whitney brown: good morning.

Beth jeffers: and today we are going to talk about agility training, and i think that a lot of people associate agility training with athletes.

Whitney brown: right.

Beth jeffers: and it's definitely not just for athletes.

Basically what agility is going to help you with is to be able to move in different directions quickly and kind of unexpectedly.

Whitney brown: sure.

There's also a balance component that comes into that, so when you change directions you're forced off balance a little bit.

So it helps with that, and as you age and as we age, we want to be able to move, not necessarily at top speeds all the time at 100% max, we want to be able to move quickly.

To get up and get down off the floor, to change directions pretty quickly.

We talked about moving better, feeling better, living better, and the way to do that is to make sure that you're able to move, get up, get down, move right, move left, rotate a little bit.

And so we practice a lot of agility training here at the factor, both with our training clients and in some group exercise settings.

Whitney brown: we set up stations and we just practice some of these things.

In a second, you're going to see some agility ladders, you're going to see some hurdles, you're going to see some quick feet on the step, and what we're trying to get people to do is to move quickly as fast as they can.

Again, we're not trying to be nfl professional athletes here.

What we're trying to do is to just start to practice moving quickly.

Beth jeffers: right, and i think that normally we never go right and left and we're not going to go side to side in our normal pattern, but we might be forced to go side to side to reach over, to grab, to get up on a step, move out of the way of a moving object or something like that.

So our body needs to be prepared and be able to move in that direction.

What you're going to be seeing is we'll be doing the ladder, we'll be doing some different things fast and slow to give you an idea, and you don't even have to have this equipment.

You can take your body in those movement patterns.

Whitney brown: sure, and if you do have the equipment at the gym, i'm assuming that you can just put it out in a little space.

You don't need much room.

Spread out your ladder, get a hurdle or two, and like you said, like beth said, practice some of these things on your own, moving right and left, moving forward and back, moving and rotating and those types of things.

It doesn't have to be super organized, just do something.

Just some kind of quick movement working on your elastic recoil of your feet, quick bounces.

It's great practice.

Beth jeffers: because remember this, if you don't do it, you can't do it.

Whitney brown: right.

Beth jeffers: and your body's not going to be ready to do it, and you have definitely a higher risk for injury when you actually have to be, you're forced to get into that movement pattern.

Watch carefully, and we hope you enjoyed this segment and give it a try in the gym.

You are not going to look crazy.

You think you will, but do it.

It's for your own benefit.

Have a good week this week and we'll see you next week on wcbi.

Announcer: for more get fit fridays with the fitness factor, go to wcbi.com.