Agility is the ability to start/stop/change directions, and accelerate quickly, and is absolutely vital to your performance as a fit, fast and strong athlete.
These agility drills will help Players to improve their ability to rapidly change direction, stay with a dodging opponent, escape a defenseman, develop a great split dodge, etc. Agility training also helps with overall quickness, reaction speed, balance, conditioning, etc. This type of training should be an integral part of a Player’s workout routine.
Before any agility training, Players need to stretch in order to help avoid potential injuries. They should also warm up their muscles before any agility training. Good warm exercises include running place, jumping jacks, mountain climbers, etc. Here are a variety of agility drills that lacrosse players use.​
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Shuffle Drills – Create a square with a cone at each corner. Players sprint forward to one cone, shuffle laterally to the next cone, run backwards to the next cone and then shuffle laterally to the last cone in the square. You can create variations of this drill by adding diagonal movements within this square (versus just forward/back and side-to-side movements).
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Lateral Movement Drills – Conduct lateral movement drills by spacing two cones apart on the field. In one drill, an athlete must shuffle laterally as quickly as possible, touching one cone and shuffle laterally back to touch the starting cone. They usually have to touch each cone 3-5 times.
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Cone Drills – Cone drills (such as the T-Test and L-Drill) are great exercises for improving agility and change of direction skills.
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​The T-Test is a timed cone drill that focuses on forward, lateral and backwards agility. This agility drill involves running forward 10 yards to a cone, shuffling left laterally 5 yards to a cone, shuffling right laterally 10 yards, shuffling left laterally 5 yards and finally running backwards 10 yards to the starting point. Players should focus on beating their previous best time.
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Mirror Drills – Players use “mirror” agility drills where they must quickly mimic the movements of a partner (i.e. shuffling laterally, moving backwards, etc.). These drills help agility and reaction speed.
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Agility Ladder Drills – Agility ladder drills work on quick footwork and agility. See the videos below for a wide variety of lacrosse agility ladder drills (i.e. Icky Shuffle).​
