Physical Literacy - Session 8

Skill Focus: Speed, Agility and Quickness

All sports require speed, agility, and quickness. Short explosive movements and changes of direction are an important part of play, putting you into open space to receive a pass from your teammate or beat a defender to score.

Value: Get There

Developing skills like speed, agility and quickness is often difficult and requires that you give maximum effort throughout each exercise. The same is true with mental agility! Giving maximum effort to schoolwork or your job, will help you improve as time goes on. 

Opening Community Circle

  • Call your life play – on a scale of 1-5 how are you feeling today?
  • Turn to the person next to you and share what you think agility is! 
  • In our everyday lives when do we need agility and or the ability to move or think quickly?  
  • Which sports require high levels of agility and short quick bursts of movement?  
  • We also need mental agility as well as physical agility sometimes, what do you think is meant by mental agility?  

Warm-up #2

This warm-up is great to prepare for sessions focused on speed, power and plyometrics. View in the Warm-Up Library.

Skill Focus: Speed, Agility and Quickness

Demonstrate each exercise before breaking students into 4 groups. Each group will spend 5 minutes on one exercise before rotating. These can be made competitive through races or individual, best times.

Students should utilize their fitness journal to document success and RPE. Click on each exercise for a video demonstration!

Varations to Increase/Reduce Difficulty

  • Slow down/speed up movement 
  • Increase/reduce number of reps 
  • Increase/reduce rest between exercises and/or rounds

Cool Down #3

This cool down offers a chance to lay down after a tough workout, with students taking some deep breaths and stretching tired muscles. View in the Cool Down Library.

Closing Community Circle

  • Call your life play – on a scale of 1-5 how are you feeling after this session? 
  • What was the hardest exercise and why?  
  • What does the value of “Get There” mean to you? 
  • Do you think you gave maximum effort during today’s session? Why or why not? 
  • Do you think you can improve your speed, quickness and agility without giving maximum effort?