Trying to get athletes to understand movement is crucial to success in any sport. You will find that being able to swap from one piece of footwork to another is easy or hard for them, some are natural and some are not.

The great news is that you can make the natural better and you can make the athlete who has difficulties with their movement alot, lot better!

When I watch many coaches or S&C trainers I always try to understand why some of the key factors that are needed in footwork or agility training are missed out or plainly ignored.

The goal of any session when involving an outcome of winning competitive fixtures or competitions is to assist the athlete in winning. You may argue that the process part of winning is gradual and different levels are reached before you move onto the next stage of training and sometimes that process is the main objective and not the result BUT let's be totally honest you are either in sport to win or it is a recreational hobby which is not what I am writing about.

The reason why WINNING! is so important is that it sets up the mental framework of the session and the athlete and out of all types of training I have found that footwork training takes that athlete to be the most focused, but only if done how I am going to tell you to do it. I like to call this 'Intelligent' training where every part of what we do has a purpose and meaning behind it....no gimmicky drills or mediocre mindsets here. Which is why it is so hard for a athlete to truly engage. Oh, and hard - hard work...physically pushing every anaerobic and aerobic metabolism button you thought or did not think existed.

So how do you make footwork into 'intelligent training' rather than a multi cone exercise that involves alot of perspiration but very little thinking.

The first part that you need to know about is what makes a footwork drill and what you as a coach, parent of athlete have to consider and how I approach the developing of drills and needs analysis (the need of a particular athlete of team in terms of their movement).

First, consider the movement that they perform when moving sideways, diagonally, backwards and lastly forwards.

This means watching foot position, knee position and hip position which leads to a right or wrong core position.

The other important part of movement is head position and eye line.

Secondly, this is important - every set piece of movement needs to have a distance factor put into it. You have to make sure that getting to the set position (i.e. cone) makes the player consider the space between them and the cone. You should not just let the athlete move and not  consider how close or how far they need to be from the cone.

If you are a tennis player then you need to get to the ball quickly but you also need to consider the position to the ball for the set-up and striking of the ball. This is the same for any sport where you have to hit something.

This is an area which starts to distinguish correct movement training and 'token' movement training.

Thirdly,