Adding agility ladders to your fitness program can help improve athletes’ quickness, coordination, and muscle activation. Here are six agility ladder challenges to add to your program.
1. Boxing Shuffle
Objective: Two-foot jump inside the first rung, then outside, then into the second rung.
Fundamental Movement Skills:
- Locomotor
- Jump
Equipment List:
Setting Up:
- Player stands at the beginning of the ladder.
Instructions:
Player must jump quickly up into the first rung, jump out with feet close together, jump in one rung up…
2. High Vertical Jumps
Objective: Two-foot high vertical jumps inside every rung.
Fundamental Movement Skills:
- Locomotor
- Jump
Equipment List:
- Agility Ladder or set of low hurdles
Setting Up:
- Player stands at the beginning of the ladder.
Instructions:
- Player must complete high vertical jumps powerfully through every rung of the ladder
3. Mountain Climb Push Ups
Objective: Crawl through an entire ladder, one foot per rung, and push ups off one leg
Fundamental Movement Skills:
- Non Locomotor
- Push Up
Equipment List:
- Agility Ladder
Setting Up:
- Player places one foot in the first rung, other foot to the side and off the ground, hands on the floor further up the ladder.
Instructions:
- Player do a three-point push up.
- Player then crawls up the ladder and places the up foot into the next rung and does a push up.
- Continue till the end of the ladder.
4. Lunges with Badminton
Objective: Lunge in and out each rung with both feet while striking a badminton bird against a wall.
Fundamental Movement Skills:
- Locomotor
- Lunging
- Manipulative Send
- Strike
Equipment List:
- Agility Ladder
- Badminton racquet and bird
Setting Up:
- Place ladder a couple steps parallel to a wall.
- Player stands at the beginning of the ladder on one side.
Instructions:
- Players lunge step with both feet in each rung while striking a badminton bird against a wall.
5. Snowflake
Objective: For each team to gain as many beanbags as possible
Fundamental Movement Skills:
- Locomotor
- Jump
Equipment List:
- Markers to create ladders (6 or 7 times 8 strands)
- Three bean bags per team of 2-4 players (8 teams)
Setting Up:
- Make 8 lanes of tiles (like a ladder) that meet in a middle with four squares.
- Place three bean bags at the end of each strand.
- Teams of 2-4 players stand at the ends of each strand.
Instructions:
- At the leader’s signal to begin, players two foot jump into each rung.
- When players meet, they play Rock Paper Scissors with the winners continuing and the losers running to the back of their line while the next player in line from their team jumps into their strand…
- Players that win continue to move down a strand in an effort to pick up a beanbag from another team. When they are successful the run to the back of their line and the next player in line from their team jumps into the strand.
- Play for a preset time.
6. Human Ladder With Pushups
Objective: Powerfully jump over ladder formed by teammates and then roll a ball under their pushup position
Fundamental Movement Skills:
- Locomotor
- Jump
- Manipulative
Send
- Roll
- Non
Locomotor
- Pushup
Equipment List:
- Any ball
Setting Up:
- Players lie in a ladder formation far enough apart that players can jump and safely land between players.
- One player stands at the beginning of the ladder and holds a ball.
Instructions:
- The players holding the balls jumps over their teammates.
- When the get to the end the teammates do a push up and the players with the balls roll them under their teammates to the last player in the line, who then jumps over teammates lying down.
- Repeat so everyone jumps over their teammates 3-4 times.
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