Goal of Program

The purpose of the Speed & Agility or SARQ (speed, agility, reactivity, and quickness) training is to improve sport-specific skills. According to ACE: speed training improves the rate

of force production—the speed at which muscles contract; agility training can improve dynamic balance, which is the ability to maintain control of a moving center of mass over a changing base of support; and reactivity and quickness drills can enhance natural reflexes, helping you to move faster in almost everything you do. SARQ training produces results you can both see and measure. For example, Soccer players are revered for their toned, well-defined legs because the rapid changes of direction and speed required for success in their sport involve all of the muscles in their legs, thus producing aesthetic results that can not be replicated by a single exercise or machine. Most SARQ exercises use the same lower-body muscles. An additional feature of SARQ training is that you can easily track your progress through specific drills and timed movements. Perhaps most importantly, SARQ training can help reduce the risk of a number of different types of injuries. Performing the same movement patterns over and over again can lead to tissue fatigue and repetitive stress injury, while quickly changing speed or direction can lead to a strain if the involved tissue is not able to adequately mitigate the applied forces. SARQ training is movement variable training, which is not only effective for strengthening the contractile element of muscle, but also for improving the strength and resiliency of the elastic fascia and connective tissue, thus improving its ability to rapidly lengthen and shorten. This can help minimize the risk of many injuries related to rapid changes of speed or direction.