Reaction Time & Agility Training
Both reaction time and agility are remarkably complex components of sport performance. They require a high degree of blending between various skills and abilities and therefore are a product of both practice and training. The fact of the matter is that some components of reaction and agility are optimized in the sporting environment while some of the components are optimized in the weight room/gym. This means that there are important roles that both the sports coach (SC) and strength and conditioning coach (SCC) play in the development of reaction and agility. This is important because it is highly common for coaches (especially SCC’s) to drift out of their lane.
First, let’s define our concepts. “Reaction time” is usually used to describe how quickly an athlete responds to a stimulus with some sort of movement-related response. Imagine a basketball player reading a developing pass, making a quick steal, and initiating a fast break down the court. Many people would attribute the player’s increased reaction time for the success of the play. In this example, there was a pre-stimulus warning (reading a pass play), a stimulus (the action of passing the ball), the decision and initiation of the movement required to make the steal (maybe a directional lunge), and the time to execute the entire movement. Consider how this example aligns with the image below:
(figure 1, “Reaction Timeline & Components”)
It is important to note that the colloquial usage of the concept of reaction time includes this whole timeline despite the true scientific meaning primarily pertaining to the decision-making portion of the whole equation. Also recognize that there are components of overall reaction responsible to the SC (sport practice elements in purple) and components that belong to the SCC (gym training elements in green).
Very similar to the concept of sport-related reaction time is the idea of agility. Agility is usually used to describe a sporting action that mixes reaction time with change of direction speed (CODS). The basketball player may have utilized quick reaction time to steal the pass, but he would have additionally required a level of agility to sequence his directional lunge into a fast acceleration down the court. There is a high degree of overlap between these qualities, but consider the following image to understand the breakdown of components:
(figure 2, “Agility Components”)
If we utilize both images, we can describe what the basketball player did to successfully make the play. He utilized visual scanning (maybe he saw an open passing lane and an open player signaling/waving) and auditory scanning (maybe he heard the open offender calling for the pass) during the foreperiod time leading up to the stimulus (pre-stimulus warnings). When the ball handler initiated the pass (the stimulus), the defender responded by reacting (making a decision) and executing the necessary movement (directional lunge + acceleration/sprint) quickly (CODS skills and abilities).
It is very important to understand these components of reaction and agility because there is a significant amount of time wasted in gyms trying to improve the purple pieces to the puzzle laid out above. Athletes “reacting” to flashing lights, whistles, or “right!” and “left!” shouts are not improving the athletes’ sport-specific reaction time or overall agility. These are examples of what is known as “simple reaction” and real sporting scenarios are far from simple. Sport-related reaction involves lots of dedicated practice that improves their “sport intelligence” which helps with their cognitive-perceptual and decision-making skills. Furthermore, most reactions in sport are not even in direct reaction to a stimulus, but rather a reaction to anticipating what is going to happen before it even happens (“reading the play”, i.e., perceptual skills during the foreperiod). All of this is to say, stop wasting time on reaction time in the gym.
The real role of the SCC is to improve mobility, strength, power, speed, and CODS. The blue components of agility (CODS skills) may or may not be the responsibility of the SCC. This marks a gray area between coaches. Sometimes some basic motor skills need to be practiced in a dedicated learning environment outside of the chaotic sport setting. However, it is important to note that sport practice always includes CODS skills and therefore this element is often unnecessary in the gym environment due to redundancy. If the goal in the weight room is agility, then most of the time they just need to work on speed development.
Takeaway Points:
>Improvement in reaction time and agility requires the confluence of sport practice and intelligent weight room training.
>Generalized reaction and agility training is largely a myth. Most components that comprise these complex traits are highly sport-specific and require lots of game-related practice to improve sport-intelligence.
>The fastest “reactions” in sport are often not even initialized with a stimulus, but rather by anticipating an upcoming action using cognitive-perceptual and anticipatory skills.
>95% of effective agility training in the gym is just the development of mobility and power (strength expressed quickly). Stop wasting so much time attempting to directly “train” reaction and agility.