Do agility ladders and cones make you faster? Not in any way that shows up in a game. They practise footwork at the speed you already have. Change of direction isn't learned on a ladder, because it's never challenged on a ladder. You get faster from what actually pushes your body: running flat out and lifting heavy, every week, measured.
Watch: the video this post comes from
That doesn't mean the ladder is evil. It means it's taking a slot in your week that something else should have.
Do agility ladders and cones make you faster? Count your week
Here's an exercise. Write out a normal week for a player who should know better. I see this one all the time.
- ✓Monday: ankle stiffness work, calf work, core, light plyos.
- ✓Tuesday: club training. Small-sided games, 6 v 6, 7 v 7, rondos, some strength on the side.
- ✓Wednesday: knee stability, balance beams, a band routine, "recovery".
- ✓Thursday: club training, 11 v 11, game prep.
- ✓Friday: "nervous system priming", hips and core.
- ✓Saturday: finally, the game.
Now count how many times that week you went truly maximal. Not hard. Flat out.
Once, in the game, if you're lucky. Only if the ball goes over the top or you have to chase someone down.
Now count how many times a truly heavy load went through your legs, something you're actually trying to push and progress. Zero.
That's the problem. Every box on the page is filled, and the two things that make you faster aren't there.
Why the ladder doesn't transfer
Your nervous system decides how fast you're allowed to move. It learns from what you do over and over. It adapts to what you give it. If you're never exposed to flat out, it's never asked to go faster.
A ladder asks your feet to be quick at a speed you can already handle. No big force into the ground. No real speed. No defender. Drilling gives you a little adaptation at the start, then it levels off. To keep adapting, the nervous system needs something more stressful.
You learn change of direction by being powerful enough to move the grass, and holding your shape while you come off the inside edge of your foot. Timed, and pushed maximally. See the difference? One is a pattern. The other is force and speed at game level.
Look at the best movers in the world. Tyreek Hill didn't learn his cuts from cones. He was a sprinter first, and his cuts sat on top of his top speed. Lionel Messi changes direction while staying low and falling into the ball, and no cone drill teaches that. It's a position he's had from day one, held up by strong quads and a relaxed nervous system.
The same week, rebuilt
Here's the same week built properly. Same number of sessions. The difference is the engine work is in it every single week:
- ✓Heavy squats that get pushed and progressed.
- ✓Max speed exposure, where you're really running flat out.
- ✓High intensity elasticity work: jumps and bounds where you spend very little time on the ground.
All of it measured and pushed forward. Low volume, maximal effort.
And here's the part people miss. The small stuff isn't missing. It's trained every time you do the engine work. Think logically for a second. Your ankle can't sit out of a max speed sprint. Your knee can't sit out of a heavy squat. Your hips and core can't sit out of a bound. Right?
So you don't need a Monday for ankles and a Wednesday for knees. You need sessions that load the whole chain hard enough that every small part has to show up.
So should you ever use a ladder?
If you enjoy it as part of a warm-up, fine. It's not hurting anyone. The issue is when it becomes the speed training, because then a lot of your week goes into work done at the speed you already have.
Small-sided games, reaction drills with a ball, footwork patterns, ten thousand reps of technical work: all useful for the game. But all of it is done at your current speed. None of it raises the ceiling. You can work on your technique as much as you want, but if the systems for high-level speed aren't built, you're limiting yourself.
What to do instead
Start with an honest audit. Take your last week and mark every flat-out sprint and every genuinely heavy lift. If the number is close to zero, that's your answer.
Then measure. Time your sprints. Film a hard cut side on in slow motion and look at your first three strides out. Long and low, or short and popping up? The time tells you if something changed. The film tells you why.
Every athlete we work with is timed and filmed every session, because a drill count isn't progress. A faster time is. If you want the full picture on cutting, read how to improve change of direction speed.
The first step is finding what's actually holding you back. That's what the assessment is for.