| About SAQ
Blinding
speed - Rapid acceleration changes - Explosive lateral movement
- Lightning fast responses - Explosive vertical movement.
These
are the qualities that all athletes long to possess, the qualities
that spectators yearn to see when they watch sporting events. Once
thought to be genetic, we now know that the skills required to move
laterally, linearly and vertically with speed and precision can
be trained and nurtured.
Agility
is the ability to change direction without the loss of balance,
strength, speed or body control - it is fundamental for improved
performance in athletes of all standards. Often neglected in traditional
training sessions, SAQ programmes emphasise the importance of agility
training to equip athletes with the best methods and techniques
for greater quickness, speed, control and movement.
Agility
training has many other benefits for the athlete including a reduced
risk of injury and improved body awareness. The key to creating
an instinctively quicker athlete is to remove the unnecessary, inefficient
and extra steps that athletes often take. This is achieved by removing
restrictive mental blocks and developing/reprogramming the neuro-muscular
links within the body.
The vast majority of quickness work involves improving the athlete's
biomechanical efficiency. This can be achieved through innervation,
that is, isolating fast contractions of an individual joint that
result in increased firing rates in the muscles. Therefore the amount
of force and rate of force development initiated by this process
is crucial to developing explosive speed.
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