Why Agility Ladders are Useless for Foot Sped

This may be quite a surprise to some people given that SAQ and the use of ladders in many premiership rugby and even premiership football clubs.  Michael Boyle, the esteemed strength coach puts it better than i ever could when he says, "using ladders is like putting flashy alloy wheels onto a car". Yes it makes your car look faster but does it actually go any faster? NO!!

What you really need to be doing is to put all that wasted money into improving the acceleration, brakes and horsepower. It is the same with athletes and the best example of where ladders may help is for michael Flatley, but could he dance through opposition like Jason Robinson?

Who do you think changes direction fastest?

Agility is the ability to change direction and to do that we need to be able to stop as fast as possible and also accelerate as fast as po

ssible. With ladders we are asking athletes to put there feet into holes and not to project maximal force into the ground in order to get maximum response from the ground which as we know from Newton's third law makes us move fastest.

When doing lateral movements through ladders athletes are often seen tapping the ground whilst the centre of mass (COM) stays in the centre and the legs simply move out to the side. This is not how athletes change direction.

Jason's centre of mass is over his outside leg as he steps unlike in ladder drills

Rather than messing around with ladders athletes would be better served investing their time into building massive strength and power bases progressing onto plyometric drills which give them the ability to accelerate quickly and importantly stop on a sixpence!

To summarize, if you want to develop fast feet and change of direction then you need strong legs which produce huge amounts of force against the ground. Patting the ground for hours during ladder drills looks pretty but it will not help achieve this goal. For me ladder drills being done by professional athletes (unless its hopping maybe?!) is a waste of time.