Attacking Agility Actions: Match Play Contextual Applications With Coaching and Technique Guidelines

Abstract

Attacking agility actions, such as side steps, shuffle steps, crossover cutting, split steps, spins, decelerations, and sharp turns, are important maneuvers in invasion team sports, often linked with decisive match winning moments. Generally, the aims of these actions are to (a) evade and create separation from an opponent, (b) generate high exit velocities and momentums, or (c) facilitate a sharp redirection. However, these actions are also inciting movements associated with lower-limb injury. Given the importance of agility actions for sports performance and potential injury risk, in this review, we discuss the importance and contextual applications of attacking agility actions, while providing coaching and technique guidelines to best optimize the performance-injury risk conflict.

A classification of specific movement skills and patterns during sprinting in English Premier League soccer

“…The current study is unable to wholly distinguish the cause of this prominence of ‘typical’ sprinting movements in soccer. The constraints, sport-specific stimuli, tactical scenarios, and overall visual scanning requirements (i.e., game patterns, tactics, location of attackers, defenders, ball, and environment) imposed during the match may influence this outcome [ 20 , 25 ], or the individual’s skill level may mean they perceive affordances (i.e., opportunities for action) differently which leads to different action outcomes that may have been seen elsewhere [ 15 , 26 ]. As such, future research is needed to better understand how physical, tactical, and technical performance interrelate (i.e., full integration) with regards to contextual sprinting (i.e., how and why) in soccer [ 16 , 18 ].…”

“…Thus, with the present study providing a greater understanding of the sprint movements that occur in soccer, training drills that seek to mimic these can be designed more effectively for primary transfer of training [ 47 ]. Through a constraints-led approach, drill design can be focused on creating ‘repetition without repetition’, where the athlete is exposed to tasks that allow for exploration and promote movement degeneracy and diversification through the seeking of movement solutions [ 25 , 37 , 46 , 48 ]. The constraints to these representative drills can be manipulated; for example, by introducing contextual interference, altering starting positions, manipulating stimuli (i.e., location of attackers, defenders, and ball), and reducing or increasing the pitch size to elicit differing responses and learning experiences [ 45 , 49 , 50 ].…”

“…It has been documented that soccer players perform arced runs, swerves, and curved sprints during soccer match-play [ 19 , 21 , 22 ], whereby curved sprinting can promote different neuromuscular, mechanical, and bioenergetic demands on the inside and outside legs during such actions [ 20 , 23 , 24 ]. Moreover, due to the visual scanning requirements associated during soccer (i.e., location of attackers, defenders, ball, environment) [ 20 , 25 ], and continuous changes in locomotor activity during sequences of match-play [ 20 – 22 ], generally over 360° [ 20 , 22 ], it is important to understand the transition, initiation, and actualization movement patterns of sprint actions during soccer ( Table 1 ) [ 26 ], For example, sprints in soccer could be performed from different transition movements (e.g., linear, lateral, jockeying etc; Table 2 ), initiated from various starting positions (e.g., linear, lateral, rear etc. ; Table 2 ) or from a COD, performed in a straight line or with some degree of curvature, potentially with some form of torso orientation for visual scanning purposes [ 6 , 26 ].…”

Development and trainability of agility in youth: A systematic scoping review

“…Although movement specificity and the representative design of practice are related to transfer, training can be remote to the target movement and sporting context and still be capable of improving agility performance ( 112 ). Thus, it is not a strict necessity to train agility as a whole, and improvements can also be attained by training individual components of agility ( 113 ).…”

“…Outcome measures of agility performance in the included studies were exclusively time-based. Since not all in-game agility events happen at maximal speed ( 15 , 113 ), a qualitative, more direct, and possibly more task-representative approach is to assess the immediate outcome of an agility event (e.g., successful or failed evasion or tackle) ( 92 ). In addition, athletes could potentially better exploit their repertoire of agility actions in outcome-based tests (e.g., successive application of different agility techniques or feints).…”