Speed, quickness and agility are often misinterpreted or mixed up in terms of what they really mean. Let's take a moment to sort this all out. Speed is the ability to achieve a high velocity — think Usain Bolt running his last 40 metres. Quickness refers to the rapidity with which one can move in response to stimuli — think Michael Vick hastily avoiding an oncoming QB sack attempt. Agility is the ability to accelerate, decelerate, and change direction with minimal loss of speed — think Rafa Nadal quickly changing direction and locations on the court based on where Roger Federer is hitting the ball. Getting the idea now?

Speed and quickness are often considered to be components of agility. So it's only natural that athletes often strive to train and improve these components. Training to improve power will improve speed, quickness and agility to a certain degree. Power is the ability to exert maximal force in the quickest possible time. To decrease time, you have to perform movements explosively. If you guys are lucky, I may just go into depth about power on another occasion. In the mean time, you can clearly now appreciate why being more powerful can improve these other factors. All of these components can be maximized via specific training. The following training methods will help you improve these areas assuming adequate time is devoted to improving power as well.

In order to improve speed, you need to realize that linear speed = stride length x stride frequency. There's not a hell of a lot you can do about stride length since we can't make ourselves grow any taller. However, we can train stride frequency since it involves strength and power and neuromuscular coordination. Drills commonly focus on improving speed and or acceleration. Typical methods include technique drills, resistance drills (eg. running with a resistance band), assistance drills (eg. running downhill) and contrast drills (eg. begin as a resistance drill, after a few strides, resistance is released).

There is evidence that suggests improving speed will improve agility. However most say that straight sprinting and relatively complex agility manoeuvres have little in common and are independent or specific qualities. The T-test is the general standard. However, it is pre planned and doesn't require much adjusting so you're not training your reaction time. Remember that agility for performance has inherent quickness. Agility training could include controlled drills or simulated games such as scrimmages. Random conditioning is also a popular method since the trainee has to react to where he or she has to go. Therein lies the tie between quickness and agility since one's quickness determines how rapid he or she can respond to a given stimuli.

Now that you're such a pro on speed, quickness and agility, you can better describe a person's athletic attributes properly. Let's take the great Canadian 100m sprinting champion, Donovan Bailey, above, for instance. When he won that famous gold medal, he was the last guy to explode out of the blocks. Bailey was notorious for never responding to the gun as well as others, therefore he was never that quick. Inhumanly enough, Bailey then accelerated fast enough in order to catch the first place runner. This makes Bailey an exceptionally agile athlete. By the 60-70 metre range, Bailey achieved what is still today one of the fastest top velocities in sprinting history, his true strength that made him notorious for saving him from his terrible starts. In 1996, at the Atlanta Summer Olympics, Bailey was one speedy fu*#er!