Monday 21 September 2015

Build Agility With Hurdles

Jumping hurdles requires the use of over 70 muscles to do.


Jumping hurdles can be a taxing and difficult activity for any level of athlete. Not only does jumping hurdles require a fair amount of running, it also requires agility, balance and vertical jumping. For an athlete to be capable of running and jumping these hurdles, you must be willing to condition your body to contain all of the necessary attributes. There are several things to do when building your agility jumping hurdles.


Instructions


1. Start small. Do not try and run a track of 20 hurdles right off the bat. You will need to condition yourself so that you are ready to do more. Try running a track with two to five hurdles at first. When you are comfortably able to leap all of the hurdles with no problem, add one to three hurdles at a time, progressively doing more each time. Do not try and race your own times when doing more hurdles, your goal is to build agility, so the rate in which you run the track should not be an issue.


2. Space the hurdles closer together. Especially when your track has passed 15 hurdles, you should start to place them at shorter intervals. In doing this, you are required to be more agile at a faster rate. However, you should be sure that the hurdles are not too close together. They should at least be five feet apart at all times to ensure that there is no danger to jumping them.


3. Try jumping a hurdle backwards. Make sure you have padding all around the area to make sure you do not hurt yourself. Simply set a hurdle on a padded area and try and jump it by leaping back instead of forward. Do not try and do more than one of these consecutively and you should not try and get a running start. This will help another set of muscles build a tolerance to agility.

Tags: doing more, jumping hurdles