Rhythmic Nature fitness trainer, Frank Fletcher, was recently asked to participate on a panel of experts, consulting with author, Marc Peruzzi and Outside Magazine on the topic of Agility Training.

Frank joins an all-star panel with Per Lundstam (US Ski Team, Strength and Conditioning Coach), Pete Vordenberg (US Ski Team Head Coach - Cross Country), and Daron Rahlves (3 time Olympian, 2001 World Champion in Super-G, with 12 World Cup victories).

Given the names on the panel, you'd surmise that the article focuses primarily on pre-season Ski training.  The exercises, however, are deliberately designed to be applicable to many other sports as well.

The article has been published in the November, 2009 issue of Outside Magazine.  It includes nine or ten of Frank's favorite beginning to intermediate exercises that focus on the topic of Agility as well as Injury Prevention.

Update

November 5th, 2009:  Outside Magazine made the article available on the web at  http://outsideonline.com/outside/bodywork/200911/agility-training-1.html

Franks sections are "Protect your Knees" and "Thrills, Not Drills"

Rhythmic Nature is primarily a fitness and outdoors company. We concentrate our interests and services in three fields.

How can we move easily, efficiently and without pain? It is something we all desire. From our cars to our bodies, modern American society accepts the metaphor that "movement is freedom!"

Anything that restricts our movement is seen as restricting our freedom. This is true for children who are "grounded" to adults who are "imprisoned" to patients or anybody else who's ever been "bound up" with pain or stiffness.

While everybody who comes to us has an athlete inside of them, not everybody can freely express themselves through movement because of pain or stiffness. Post-Rehab fitness is a key component in modern medical, orthopaedic and health services. Our goal is to help our clients re-attain the freedom of movement.

Sometimes we work independently with our clients - as is the case where pain and stiffness is relatively low and can be traced back to possible muscular or fascial dysfunction. Most often, we at Rhythmic Nature Fitness work very closely with the client, their doctor and a physical therapist. It is the Doctors duty to diagnose and medically treat the patients condition. When medical treatment is complete, the patient enters a rehabilitation period. The Physical Therapist is there to facilitate that process, further treating the condition and the localized, immediately afflicted area. The very rare, usually private, excellent PT will treat not only treat the injury but the whole body and the pre-existing conditions. Unfortunately, their time with the patient is often limited.

This leaves the patient with some very important questions...

As a specialist in both Post-Rehabilitation and Sports Performance, I always keep an eye out for new products that may be beneficial to my clients. Knowing this, my ex-manager and friend, Kim Perez, asked if I was interested in attending a demo/talk about a new product - RockTape¹. She has no current affiliation with the RockTape company other than as an interested professional like myself. We went to the demo two weeks ago and at the end, I purchased 2 rolls to try on myself and my clients. What follows are some of the observations and FAQs that I've compiled over the last two weeks.