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The Best Agility Ladder

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This article was written by Staying Alive Crew Published at 07:19 pm
Agility Ladders

If you're looking to improve speed, agility, and coordination, incorporate it into your workout routine. 

Why not add agility ladder exercises to mix up your workouts, whether you are training indoors or outdoors. 

Agility ladders are awesome fitness tools, they are inexpensive and designed to improve your sprinting, build power and stamina. 

Making you more agile and easy for you to stop or change your pace and even shift direction. 

Ideal for athletes playing a multitude of sports from football to basketball.

Agility ladder drills offer a great cardio workout routine, help develop strength, improve footwork and make you fast, and require immense mental and physical coordination, something that’s essential for elite athletes to perform at their best. 

These days coaches, personal trainers, and even little leagues are leveraging agility drill techniques to make you faster, accelerate and decelerate and change directions and react or switch positions rapidly. 

Search for a premium quality agility ladder to improve your lateral quickness.

We've put together a shortlist of the best agility ladders available, allowing you to focus on your practice as an elite athlete! Strap on your gear and ready, set, go!

Table of Contents

7 Best Agility Ladders in 2024

Agility Ladders Buying Guide

If you’re reading this buying guide, no doubt you’ve made the decision to improve your swiftness, agility, and footwork. 

Agility ladders are a fantastic and inexpensive tool to incorporate into your fitness regime to make you faster, build stamina, enhance your coordination and help prevent injuries.

With so many ladders available on the market, purchasing the right agility ladder can be challenging if you don’t know what to look for. 

That’s why we’ve compiled a guide to help you with what to search for, so you can focus on your lateral quickness!

Agility Ladders

An agility ladder is a ladder made of multi-plastic rungs that you place on the floor on a flat surface. 

How nimble and agile you are is correlated to how swiftly you can move, and change direction which is essential when playing many sports from basketball, to football.

The purpose of an agility ladder is to allow you to do fast-paced drills that rev up your heart, burn calories, help you get faster, and more agile, and improve your overall coordination. 

Ideal for pro athletes and fitness enthusiasts looking for an inexpensive way to incorporate agility drills into their fitness regime. 

Benefits of Agility Ladders

Pretty much anyone looking to improve their health and fitness can benefit from using an agility ladder. 

From pro athletes who play sports such as basketball, and football to pretty much any sport to regular fitness enthusiasts.

Anyone wanting to get some HIIT under their belt can do some cardio pumping drills, whether you are a seasoned pro or a newbie. 

Personal trainers can use this with their clients, to provide versatility to their training, and children and school clubs can use this to develop coordination and skills for a range of sports by doing group drills, making it fun and healthy. 

Agility ladders have multiple benefits from developing quick feet, making you more agile and improving your reflexes, being great for cardio, improving your speed and coordination, and ultimately improving your performance.

So whether you are a boxer, tennis player, or footballer, or the next young kid being groomed to be Ronaldo, you’ll get nimble and faster the more you train.

Features of Best Agility Ladders

Material

Search for an agility ladder that is made of good quality durable materials as you’ll be stepping around and on it when it's laying on the ground. 

Look for agility ladders that have straps that are strong and don’t fray easily and can withstand constant use. Most agility ladders have nylon straps. 

When screening for the rungs look for heavy-duty hardened plastic so that they don’t break or snap if you step on them. 

The cheaper the agility ladder is, the more likely it has plastic rungs and not the heavy-duty hardened plastic that the more expensive models have.

Length

Agility ladders come in a variety of different lengths, ranging from 15 feet to 30 feet. The most common length is 15 feet. 

If you are a beginner, a 15 feet agility ladder is ideal for you. If you are more advanced and in training for a sport or club, you may want to opt for an agility ladder that is around 25 or 30 feet long. 

Rungs

When it comes to a ladder’s rungs, focus on how many rungs the ladder has, what the distance is between each rung, whether the rungs are adjustable, and finally how wide the rungs are. 

Typically the number of rungs will be correlated with the length of the agility ladder. An average agility ladder that is 20 feet will have a maximum of 12 rungs. 

If you plan to travel a lot with the agility ladder you may consider opting for an agility ladder with 8 rungs.

On average the space between two rungs is 15 inches. The general rule of thumb is, the more space you have between two rungs, the easier the exercise will be. 

If you are a beginner, look for agility ladders with around 17 to 18-inch space between each rung.

Agility ladders with rung space of fewer than 15 inches are more suitable for children with small feet and not ideal for adults.

Many agility ladders allow partial adjustability and some ladders are fully adjustable. Ladders that are partially adjustable have a fixed distance that you can move the rung. For example, allowing you to adjust up to 15 inches in either direction. 

Fully adjustable agility ladders on the other hand allow you complete flexibility to move the rungs wherever you want along with the straps. If you are a newbie an agility ladder that is semi-adjustable is ideal for you.

Adjustability

If you want to do a wide range of different exercises using the ladder, select a fully adjustable agility ladder allowing you the versatility to adjust the ladder to cater to all your speed and agility training needs. 

If you plan to use the agility ladder primarily for basic exercises or a warm-up, then a semi-adjustable agility ladder is best. 

Attachment

Screen for whether the ladder can be pinned and attached to the ground on a flat surface so that it doesn’t move or get tangled up during your training session. 

Some agility ladder models come with anchors or stakes to keep the ladder firmly in place.

Portability

If you train at different locations, you want to pick a ladder that is easy to fold and has a carrying bag for easy travel. Also, consider, does the agility ladder gets easily tangled when being assembled?

Agility Ladders FAQ

Are speed ladders and agility ladders the same thing?

The short answer is yes. Speed ladders and agility ladders are the same things, which often confuses people.

The purpose of an agility ladder is to work on speed, agility, and coordination, which is why sometimes they are interchangeably referred to as “speed” ladders.

How do ladder drills improve agility?

Many athletes from football to other sports have agility ladder drills as part of their training, to help them improve their speed, agility, and reaction time. 

Depending on the sport you are playing, you may need to train when to accelerate your speed and when to slow down, change direction, and turn. 

Sports such as football entail players dribbling the ball, dodging players, running to the goal post in one direction and once they have acquired the ball, redirecting and weaving their way to the goal post that they want to take aim to score a goal. 

Agility drills also torch calories and improve your mental health, as you have to mentally remain sharp at all times to ensure your footwork is following the drills correctly and quickly. 

How often should you do speed and agility training?

If you are a newbie to agility training, start incorporating speed and agility into your category fitness regime twice a week. 

If you are training to improve speed and agility as an athlete for a specific goal or sporting event, on average it is recommended you do this 4 times a week to train your muscle memory and body. 

In order to reap the benefits of an agility ladder, you need to use it consistently. See details below of agility workouts.

What are some workouts I can do using the agility ladder?

There are some amazing drills you can do using your agility ladder, using different muscle groups, and revving up weight loss as well as making you faster and more nimble with the right technique. 

Details can be accessed via the video below on how to get you started on 5 speed and agility drills consisting of acceleration, salsa, bounds, multi-directional and single-leg explosive, and stability drills. 

Agility Ladders Sources

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