Upper Left Performance #33 Rich Clarke - Considerations for COD/Agility in Different Sports, Perception/Action Coupling in General Training, Speed Control

Rich Clarke is a Strength and Conditioning coach and an academic who specializes change of direction and agility.  He is also a Director of the United Kingdom Strength and Conditioning Association and is completing a PhD investigating speed control and deceleration during change of direction movements.

Quite honestly, I have been underwhelmed by much of what I know and see about COD/Agility and think Rich has done a beautiful job rethinking the landscape in this realm. Among the notable things we discuss are the different COD/Agility demands from sport to sport, perception action coupling and how much we can/should train it in a general setting, the importance of speed control when learning skills and much more.

Rich has simplified the language and litany of exercises we see in COD/Agility by boiling everything down to entry/exit speed and angle change and how those factors will impact deceleration demands. In short, I think he's really on to something and this chat opened up my eyes to a lot of things. The structure that might be necessary for the weightroom does not necessarily apply to COD/agility and once we have established a base (which many athletes already have from their sport) we can mix and match using the above mentioned variables.

Rich can be found on Twitter https://twitter.com/RICH_AgilityLab and his website is http://www.athleteagilitylab.com/