Do Agility Ladders Work
One of the most frustrating pieces of equipment in the fitness industry are agility ladders. Why? They offer so many benefits, but their name misleads athletes.
Despite their name, agility ladders aren’t effective in increasing agility. Put simply, they don’t require enough change in body direction or acceleration to tap into your agility threshold. Instead, they are a better tool to increase co-ordination, balance, and endurance.
There are three criteria for agility, which ladders don’t tick. These are:
- Doesn’t Improve Body Acceleration.
A huge element of agility is how quickly you accelerate. To do this, you must generate lots of force over a short period (Rate of Force Development). Ladders are about being light on your toes. This doesn’t build enough power in your legs to increase explosiveness (RFD). Yes, your feet become quicker; but it’s irrelevant if the rest of your body can’t accelerate with them. - No Change In Direction.
You may think you’re improving agility by incorporating body twists, backward/ side steps, or touching the ground into your ladder workout. This is true until you start building muscle memory and go into autopilot. At this point, it’s the same as running in a straight line! You need to constantly change your movements for it to be effective. - Doesn’t Improve Reactive Agility.
Reactive agility refers to how quickly you react after a stimulus, in sports this is a change in possession, the blow of a whistle, or recovering from a dummy. Ladders don’t incorporate this – you know exactly when, where, and how you’re going to take your next steps.
Don’t be too disheartened. Agility ladders have their place, they just get a bad reputation from their name. There are major advantages to using them which we get into below.
Do Agility Ladders Make You Faster
If you want to incorporate agility ladders into your workout, your footwork will stand out far from the competition. However, will this translate into the ability to run faster?
Unfortunately no, agility ladders won’t make you faster. It’s simply not the intention of the workout. To increase your speed, you must build power and explosiveness in your legs, usually by resistance training. But, with ladders, they’re a plyometric exercise, with essentially no resistance, so it’s unlikely you’ll build sufficient muscle fibers.
When we look at the running technique anatomy, there are four parts of the technique you need to better if you want to run faster. These are:
- Stride Length (SL).
- Stride Frequency (SF).
- Driving Force (DF).
- Fly Time (FT).
Put bluntly, agility ladders won’t tap into any of these areas. Repeatedly taking small steps only makes you better and quicker at that. It won’t improve your strides which is essential to running faster. Ask yourself this, would you expect to improve your long jump by playing hopscotch? No. The same logic applies.
Many assume that because their footwork gets faster they’ll run faster. While it sounds logical, this isn’t the case. Sprinters move with elegancy and big long strides, not small, rapid steps.
Does this mean someone will run at the same pace if they trained hard on the ladder than if they sleep all day?
No, they still build fast twitch muscle fibers that help their sprint. It’s just coaches advice against using them as there is a minimal impact on your speed and way better alternatives to pick. So while it’s better than doing nothing, you should never train with the expectation of getting faster. It’s just a bonus. If this is your main goal, try exercises such as lateral bounds, hill sprints, or deadlifts.
Advantages Of Using Agility Ladders
So far, we’ve only criticized ladders! So why are they frequently used? American football, soccer, and basketball players all train with agility ladders. It just may not be the reason you think it is…
Weight Loss
Ladders are a plyometric workout, so a sudden burst of energy is released. Because of this, you’ll spend the majority of the exercise respiring anaerobically. This is an ideal threshold to be in for weight loss as your body turns to glucose for energy. This results in burning calories, a reduction in fat levels, and thus, a reduction in weight. Though, the extent depends on how intensely you take each step.
Improved Footwork
It’s a skill itself to direct your feet to a certain section in the ladder, at a specific rate, for a pre-counted number of times. Because of this, you improve your balance and coordination. As a result, you refine your footwork, and lateral speed increases (ability to move your body side-to-side). You also improve brain cognition as you process fast-paced steps a lot quicker.
Beginner Gains
You’re constantly on your toes; so, your calves hold your body weight throughout the workout. If you’re new to fitness, you’ll initially experience hypertrophy in your calves – an increase in size and strength. This is why beginners may become marginally faster from ladders alone. But, the gains quickly plato as your calves become better conditioned to your body weight.
Injury Recovery
Many athletes turn to ladders during rehab. When trained on an appropriate surface (a field, track, or mat) they’re kind to your joints and muscles. What’s more, you dictate the intensity depending on how severely you were injured. While it isn’t recommended using them after something like a knee injury, they’re good to get back into your sport after, for example, an arm injury.
Disadvantages Of Agility Ladders
We’ve touched on a few limitations of ladders above; however, they have disadvantages of their own too. While they aren’t significant, they’re worth learning about to better tailor your workout plan.
Misleading Name
The big one. Agility ladders that don’t improve agility – ironic right! As they don’t do what they say on the tin, some athletes quickly discount them. Then again, balance and coordination ladders don’t roll off the tongue as nicely! It’s mostly beginners who feel the sting because they feel they could’ve become so much more agile if they picked a more suitable workout. But remember, it’s all a learning curve!
Limited Scientific Evidence
Ladders haven’t been extensively studied, but the research that is available doesn’t conclude in their favor. For example, one 2020 study looked into the relationship between agility ladders and dribbling performance in soccer. It resulted in saying “6 weeks of training with an agility ladder seem not to represent a time-efficient stimulus to increase physical fitness and dribbling performance.” Another study claims the idea “that agility ladders improve agility and other physical skills is premature.” Not great!
Lack Of In-Game Practicality
While the foot patterns used with ladders are excellent for improving footwork, they don’t reflect the realism as it would be in a game context. Let’s use American football as an example, there is a constant acceleration and deceleration, spinning your body in opposite directions and having to keep balance while an opposition tackles you. These elements aren’t tested when drilling ladders.
Are these disadvantages so major you shouldn’t use agility ladders? No! To maximize the benefits, and minimize the drawbacks, embed them into your workout with a range of other training methods. This could be a warm-up, cool-down, adding variety, etc. But, don’t use them exclusively to expect an increase in performance!
What Muscle Groups Do Agility Ladders Use
The last section we will touch on is what muscle groups agility ladders use. In short, they contract your:
- Calves.
- Core.
- Gluteals.
- Hip Flexors/ Lower Back.
- Hamstrings.
The core, hip flexors, and hamstrings carry the majority of the movement, so it’s where you’ll ache most on the next day. It’s also worth mentioning, that you may feel lactic acid in your quadriceps. This isn’t directly from the agility ladders, but a consequence from planting your body weight on your toes.
You may be asking yourself, will agility ladders build muscle?
Yes, but it won’t be noticeable. In fact, only beginners build muscle as experienced athletes‘ legs will be conditioned to withstand much greater resistance. It isn’t the case where the more agility ladder drills you do, the bigger your legs get. Instead, there is an initial increase in muscle fibers, which then stops growing after a few sessions.
Remember, muscle growth isn’t the intention of agility ladders. The focus is to enhance softer components of fitness, for example, balance, coordination, and endurance.
Say your fitness goal was to increase muscle mass using agility ladders, is there much you can do?
In this case, you have to overload your legs. This can be done through ankle weights, a weighted vest, or limiting the steps to one foot. This way your legs undertake more tension, so your muscles adapt by becoming bigger and stronger.
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