Your Most Important Agility Training Tool Is Other People

One of the best training tools for agility is also the simplest: other people.

You can buy a lot of things to make you more agile — good news, since agility is a reliable marker of healthy aging. Reactive light pods that flash and demand you cut left. Apps that beep and time your split-second reactions. Video drills that flash a defender’s move on a screen. All of them promise the same thing: sharper reflexes, faster feet, and better athletic performance.

None of those tools can help your agility quite like a person can. Other people remain the richest, most unpredictable training stimulus we have access to at any age. And that unpredictability is what helps you develop the ability to start, stop, and change direction quickly.

We Already Knew Group Workouts Hit Different

Even beyond the agility gains, it’s a good idea to train with other people. A 2021 study which looked at the benefits of group exercise found that working out with others increased “feelings of cohesion and social support that both contribute to greater attendance,” ultimately driving higher physical activity levels overall.

A 2017 study out of the University of New England tracked medical students through 12 weeks of either group fitness classes or solo workouts. They found that the group exercisers, despite training for less time, saw meaningful gains across mental, physical, and emotional quality-of-life measures, plus a real drop in perceived stress. Meanwhile, the solo exercisers put in twice the time and barely moved the needle aside from a modest mental health bump.

Those studies are about how we feel — what the group workout does to our mental health and motivation. A newer body of research on agility training gets at something more mechanical: training to improve agility with other people may just be the best way to improve your ability to react quickly. 

The Case for a Human Stimulus In Agility Training

A recent review in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine dug into how team-sports athletes train agility — the ability to change direction in response to something unpredictable.

Researchers compared training against light-based cues, video footage, and live human opponents. The athletes in question were able to measurably improve their agility — great news for team-sports athletes, who need to start and stop sprinting or change direction very quickly. 

Sport scientist Dr. Eric Lichtenstein, PhD, who researches related topics but was not affiliated with the study, says the findings should be interpreted with caution. The human training component wasn’t the central question of the study, but an observation made within, and the researchers themselves even acknowledge a low-to-moderate level of certainty to their findings.

But the authors still encourage athletes to use human stimuli in their agility training, because this type of agility requires both perception and action. And training for improved perception with other athletes best reflects the demands of competition, tapping the “perceptual-cognitive demands of true agility.” 

According to Dr. Lichtenstein: “The benefit of human stimuli is that they are most reflective of the demands of the competition. They are unpredictable in time (when do the stimuli come?) and space (where do the stimuli tell me to go?) and potentially have several stimuli (distractors) where you have to identify the correct one.”

His prescription is a hybrid one: technology for controlled, adjustable difficulty when you’re training alone or in a small group, paired with real, mixed-up human matchups to keep your nervous system honest.

The Big Takeaway: Agility Is More Than the Ability to Change Directions

Studies show that pre-planned change of direction drills and the tests that measure them fall short of real-world demands. And because they “lack perception-action coupling and involve movement out of context from the game,” some researchers say these types of exercises shouldn’t be defined as “agility” work at all. 

“An example is the Illinois agility test, which requires the athlete to execute nine changes of direction by weaving around cones in a predetermined path as fast as possible. Tests requiring multiple changes of direction around obstacles may also be described as tests of ‘manoeuvrability.’”

True agility, on the other hand, draws on higher-order cognitive abilities, like working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. If you’re looking to improve your ability to make split-second decisions when faced with other athletes, there’s no better agility edge than training alongside other athletes.

And, it’s worth noting: the concept applies beyond agility, too. Whatever you’re training for, strive to recreate the actual movements and situations you’re going to be facing on the field. (For instance, if you’re looking to reduce your risk of falls on unstable surfaces, you should absolutely be training on unstable surfaces). Apply this principle across your exercise routine and you’ll see significant real-world gains.

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