Posted by ISSA Online
Although strength training is a huge part of football, SAQ training is just as important. Football requires proficiency in many areas:
Reaction time
Explosive
Running speed
Quickness
Conditioning
Agility
To excel in this sport, athletes must improve these skills through SAQ training—speed, agility, and quickness. Cone drills, ladder drills, and even hurdle training can help your clients experience improvements in these three areas.
As a coach, it is important to make sure your football players focus on performing each drill at top speed and with quality footwork. Let’s take a closer look at how to design and implement SAQ training.
Strength and Power Drills
In football, strength and power development comes through resistance training. To gain speed you must develop high amounts of muscular force. Power is crucial at the beginning of a sprint, but also throughout. A speed drill does not always involve only a sprint. Instead you can use conditioning, plyometric, and strength exercises:
Speed barbell back squats
Sled pushes
Power cleans
Split jerks
Sled runs
Squat jumps
Box JUMPS
Bulgarian split squat jumps
Agility Training Drills
Agility exercises are crucial for football players. All agility training helps players keep up with the demands of the sport. All positions in football require quick movements and constant change of direction.
For example, a running back has multiple roles. These include but are not limited to running, catching, and blocking. When receiving the handoff, a running back must read the defenses scheme and adjust as the play goes on. To adjust and make something happen, they need to be agile. Being quick on your feet applies to all positions in football, just in a different style.
Ladder Drills
Agility requires change of direction, acceleration, and deceleration. Focus on these components by incorporating forward, backward, and side-to-side movement during an agility drill.
Ladder drills like the single leg shuffle, ski jumps, lateral in and out, and the icky shuffle are beneficial to football players. These will all help improve agility.
Cone Drills
Some of the most popular cone agility drills for football include the following:
L-Drill or 3 Cone Drill
X-Drill
W-Drill
These drills support constant change of direction including acceleration and deceleration. Providing a great measure of speed as well as agility.
Quickness Training Drills
By now you should recognize how speed, agility, and quickness can be used interchangeably. SAQ training for football is often intertwined. But quickness mainly emphasizes speed when an athlete changes their body position.
Ladder Drills
Agility and speed ladder drills repeat for speed, agility, and quickness. But specific ladder drills that mainly work on quickness include:
High knees
Lateral quick steps
2 feet in and 2 out
Icky shuffle crossover
Cone Drills
One of the biggest cone drills that measures quickness in football is the pro agility drill. Also known as the 5-10-5, the pro agility drill evaluates speed with a change in body position. Running 15 yards in a 10-yard distance showcases an athlete’s ability to accelerate and decelerate. All while body position changes.
Quickness also depends on reaction time. Drills for this include a ball drop or mirror drill. Reaction ball drills are a great addition to quickness training.
The ball drop drill can be performed in different ways. Start by standing 10 feet away from an athlete. Drop the ball and as soon as you do your athlete will run to catch it. They must catch it before it bounces a second time.
The mirror drill involves two athletes. They begin by facing each other in a marked off distance. One athlete begins shuffling trying to lose their partner. The athlete who leads can go any way they want, while the second athlete mimics their movements.