ABSOLUTE ASCENDANCY

Commencing operation . . .

Overview

The speed and agility ladder. I’ll be honest. I had never come across them until I did some research on training to improve cardiovascular ability. I have an acute awareness that cardio is something that needs to be constantly trained as inactivity, even for a short period can be detrimental. At the same time, though, doing the same routines over and over can get boring after a while. So I was keen to find ways of mixing things up a little, and I came across a few tools. The training mask was one such discovery, and another was the agility ladder.

Unlike the mask, however, the ladder has been around for a long time, I just wasn’t aware until a few years ago. Many different types of athletes from boxers to runners to football players use the agility ladder to supplement their cardio training. The tool can do so much more than provide a means of improving cardio; however, and I will dive into the other benefits below.

Footwork

It is brilliant for developing superior footwork coordination, which let’s face it; virtually all sports require a good level of footwork ability. As a martial artist, even more so as a lightweight fighter, it is imperative that I have grandiose movement capability as the lightweight divisions feature many fighters who are agile and swift. Keeping up or even better, training to out speed these opponents is a high priority for me.

Agility

After gaining a newfound sense of footwork ability, an increase in agility is soon to follow. Being agile means that you can adapt and move your body in unexpected directions very quickly without compromising your composition. For me, this aids in avoiding attacks, slipping off to the sides and striking from a variety of angles and distances. Agility can be applied to many sports and even in daily life – a more agile person is less susceptible to injury as their body can react more readily and in a way that is less likely to put undue stress.

Speed

Not to be confused with agility which has been described above. Speed is all about how quickly you can get yourself from point A to point B. While improving coordination grants me high evasive capability, training to enhance speed allows me to close the distance to an opponent quicker as well as backing away.

Recommendation

I did initially purchase a bog-standard agility ladder, but I pretty quickly ran into the issue of it getting tangled up while storing it away. Unfortunately, this meant I was unable to use the product all that much before it became a cumbersome effort to untangle the damn thing. I did some more shopping and found the best agility ladder which has worked much better for me. It is versatile in that you can create different shapes to practice your speed and agility drills. You can even raise some of the rings to create pseudo hurdles to jump over, and unlike my previous ladder, these cannot become tangled!

The one caveat I have found, however, is that one of the black connectors broke while I was folding the rings together. Again, this happened while I was trying to store them away after a training session. I was too lazy to disconnect all the rings, so I tried to fold them together to create a stack, but while I was doing so, one of the black connectors snapped so if you do purchase one of these, be a little mindful with stacking the rings together.

My favourite drills with the agility ladder involve speed-running and hopping through the rings, but there are loads of exercises out there to implement.

Conclusion

We can all benefit from improved agility and mobility, and I cannot think of a tool that can get the job done so effectively for such a reasonable price.

Mission complete – Overlord Drakow signing out.