Agility: The Macro View

When you hear the word agility, what comes to mind? I’d bet you have images in your head of someone moving through one of those footwork ladders really quickly or maybe a football player running side to side through some sort of constellation of athletic cones. Well, believe it or not, agility isn’t about fast feet.

Agility is best defined as the capacity to move from one action pattern to another pattern quickly and seamlessly. In the micro perspective, that’s why agility ladders are called agility ladders, not because of the fast feet part, but because the demand is a quick changing of patterns. Left, forward, right, forward, left, forward, etc. In the macro view, however, agility looks like our ability to participate in multiple different capacities and transition effortlessly. You’re agility socially, for example, is your ability to dine with royalty and break bread with the poor with equal grace. Can you hold a conversation with a Pulitzer winner and entertain a kindergartener? That is agility, too.

Don’t forget the breadth of the goal here in the GPP (general physical preparedness) program. We’re improving, in macro way, the agility of your physical potential. For instance, if you can move a barbell and run like the wind, but struggle with the basic tumbling prescribed to you in the skill work today, we’ve got work to do with your agility.

Raise your game with agility!

 

 

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach