Effects of Football Equipment on 20-Yard [18.28 m] Agility Times

Purpose

The 20-yard Agility test is commonly used by coaches and scouts to evaluate the functional change-of-direction ability of football players. In spite of its traditional use, literature is limited for the administration of this test, as well as the logical validity of translating test times to football performance. Since the traditional timing of football players is conducted in the absence of game equipment, there may be flaws in translating these times to similar times on the football field. There may be differences in traditional testing versus game condition agility times since players will be carrying extra weight from football equipment, as well as possible restrictions of joint motion. Since research is limited in translating game conditions to traditional agility testing, researching this dynamic would be beneficial to players and coaches. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of football equipment on 20-yard agility testing times.

Methods

Participants included 64 high school football players (height 69.61 ± 2.82 in, weight 171.6 ± 34.1 lbs). Participants were timed in the 20-yard agility test in both standard football equipment (FE) and no football equipment (NFE). Testing was performed on a natural-grass field via experienced hand held timers. Participants were randomly assigned to perform the two testing conditions. The first trials were used as a practice and the second trials were saved for analysis.

Analysis/Results

Significance was assessed by means of a dependant samples T-test at an alpha level of (.05). Significance was shown between FE and NFE conditions (p < .05).

Conclusions

Agility times increased significantly with the addition of football equipment. The increase in time is likely due to added weight of equipment as well as restrictions of range of motion to joints. Since equipment affected participant's agility times at varying rates, utilizing the 20-yard agility test in full equipment can be used to target players with functional agility, as well as players who have poor functional agility. The players with poor functional agility would have never been targeted if not for testing 20 yard agility with full football equipment. Future research should focus on varying effects of football equipment on 20-yard agility testing and what type of strength and conditioning programs can improve functional agility in the presence of equipment.