Team sports often require athletes to produce sharp changes of direction in response to a stimulus, most commonly an opposition athlete. The purpose of this review was to provide an outline of current methods and literature on the testing and development of agility in team sport athletes. This review aimed to cover the physical, technical and cognitive aspects of agility development while providing strength and conditioning coaches with a practical guideline for implementing agility training into a periodized pre-season framework. Primary and secondary searches located a total of 17 articles through Google scholar, PubMed and SPORTSDiscus as well as strength and conditioning books. These searches were focused on articles outlining training and assessment methods of change of direction speed (C.O.D.S.) and reaction agility. Further searches were based on the development of other factors of agility. Reactive agility assessments are more suited to the modern definition of agility and have been shown to be valid when differing between athletes of different levels of competition (3,4,5). However, due to the large amount of historical data available, many coaches and organisations will assess agility using C.O.D.S. tests. When developing agility within a periodized pre-season framework, it is recommended that coaches begin with C.O.D.S. drills to develop the technical aspects of agility such as foot placement, stride adjustment, body lean and posture. As pre-season progresses, it is recommended that reactive agility drills take priority to develop perceptual skills in a sport-specific setting. Small-sided games have been shown to improve decision time 31.4% leading to improved agility performance (18).
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