Change of Direction & Agility Training in Las Vegas

Agility is not quick feet through a ladder. It is how fast you can stop, turn and go again in response to something happening in the game. The stopping is the part most programs skip, and it is the part that decides whether a cut is sharp or wide.

Athlete 2.0 coaches change of direction and agility for Las Vegas athletes. Coach April Russell played Division 1 college soccer and holds a B.S. in Exercise Science. Each athlete is measured before the first drill, and the agility work is built on the same mechanics we coach in first step acceleration training.

A cut has three parts. You brake, you reposition your body over the plant foot and you accelerate out. The brake sets up the other two. An athlete who needs five steps to slow down has lost the yard she was trying to win, however fast her feet move afterward.

Braking is a strength quality. The legs absorb several times body weight on a hard plant, and the athlete who can take that load in fewer steps turns sooner. We build the eccentric strength first, then teach the position that lets her use it.

Most non-contact knee injuries happen while landing or cutting, and female athletes tear the ACL at a higher rate than male athletes in the same sports. The mechanics that make a cut fast are the same ones that spread load across the hip, knee and ankle instead of parking it on the knee.

We coach plant-foot placement, knee position over the foot, hip and trunk control, and the eccentric strength behind all three. Parents read that as injury work. Athletes feel it as a faster turn. Both are true.

A memorized cone pattern trains a planned cut with no read attached. Game agility starts with a cue: a defender's hips, a ball off the bat, a teammate's first touch. The athlete who reads it sooner moves sooner, and no amount of ladder work trains the read.

Planned drills still have a job. We use cones and footwork patterns to teach mechanics at a speed where they can be corrected rep by rep. Then we take the pattern away and make the athlete move on a signal, so the read is trained alongside the feet.

Soccer players cut to lose a defender, stop to receive and turn to chase a through ball. Softball infielders need lateral range off the first step. Baseball outfielders break on a ball off the bat. Football players cut out of a route or mirror a receiver. Basketball players change direction off a closeout or a crossover. Each sport reads a different cue, and the braking mechanics underneath are the same.

Sport detail lives on our soccer, softball and baseball pages.

Speed and agility sessions run outdoors at Paseos Park and in Southern Highlands, with strength work at Kaizen. Sessions are weekday afternoons from 3:30 to 6:30 PM and Saturday mornings from 8 to 11 AM. Athletes train with us from Summerlin, Henderson, Southern Highlands, Green Valley, Anthem, Centennial and the northwest valley.

Train in a small group of up to eight athletes, or bring a full roster through team training.

Start with a free first session to get your baseline, then read our guide to speed and agility training in Las Vegas.