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Simplifying Performance Rehab Part 3: Speed, Agility, and Metabolic Training

Presented by Phil Plisky and Nate Denning

Video Runtime: 43 Minutes; Learning Assessment Time: 31 Minutes

This course is part of a series designed to be taken sequentially. It is recommended that learners view the series in the following course order:

The final abilities an athlete needs before returning to sport—sprinting, cutting, and sustaining effort under fatigue—are often the ones clinicians feel least equipped to program. Left underdeveloped, speed, agility, and metabolic capacity send athletes back to competition undertrained and exposed to reinjury. This course provides a practical framework for building all three, using a healthy-athlete model to show what a training week should contain. It breaks speed into its acceleration and top-end phases and matches sprint distances to real sport demands; it defines agility as both change-of-direction strength—dynamic, concentric explosive, eccentric, reactive, and multidirectional—and the perceptual-cognitive skill of reacting and deciding under game conditions; and it maps the three energy systems, their work-to-rest ratios, and how to train each. It closes with how heart rate signals mechanical breakdown before an athlete consciously feels fatigue. Physical therapists, athletic trainers, and other clinicians who program for athletes will leave able to construct speed, agility, and metabolic progressions that carry an athlete to a complete return to sport.

Learning Outcomes
  • Define the foundational building blocks and mechanical principles of speed development utilized in athletic training
  • List the core components and building blocks of agility training within sports performance
  • Define the energy system pathways and primary building blocks of metabolic conditioning for athletic populations
  • Outline a one-week training schedule incorporating speed, agility, and metabolic conditioning progressions for a healthy athlete

Meet your instructors

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Phil Plisky

Dr. Phil Plisky is a professor in the University of Evansville’s Doctor of Physical Therapy and PhD in Health Professions Education programs. He is the host of the Medbridge Rehab and Performance Lab podcast and founder of the Coaches Club at

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Nate Denning

Dr. Nathan Denning is the Founder of Integrated Performance and a partner at Athlete Development Solutions. His mission is to revolutionize human performance and rehabilitation through the integration of physical, mental, and educational support. Nate believes that peak performance - whether for an athlete or a clinician - is…

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Chapters & learning objectives

Speed

1. Speed

This chapter defines speed development and its two phases: acceleration, characterized by piston-like leg action, a low forward lean, and horizontal force production, and top-end (absolute) speed, characterized by cyclical leg action, upright posture, minimal ground contact, and vertical force. It shows how to train each phase and matches sprint distances to the demands of specific sports, while addressing how to develop speed in athletes whose sport does not involve true sprinting. Because speed is the foundation of power and a required return-to-sport quality, training both phases ensures that an athlete can accelerate and reach top velocity when competition demands it.

Agility

2. Agility

This chapter defines agility as two intertwined capacities: the physical components of change of direction—dynamic, concentric, explosive, eccentric, reactive, and multidirectional strength—and the skill of agility, meaning the perceptual-cognitive abilities of scanning, anticipation, and decision-making. It clarifies why pre-planned change-of-direction drills are only part of the picture and how reactive drills develop true, game-realistic agility. Building both the physical and perceptual-cognitive sides prepares an athlete to change direction safely and effectively under the unpredictable demands of live play.

Metabolic

3. Metabolic

This chapter maps the three metabolic energy systems—phosphocreatine, glycolytic, and aerobic—detailing each system’s capacity, work-to-rest ratios, and training methods, and it quantifies the distance and duration demands of various sports. It also explains how heart rate rises as an early proxy for mechanical breakdown, often well before an athlete perceives fatigue. Matching conditioning to an athlete’s actual sport demands and monitoring fatigue objectively lets clinicians build sport-specific endurance while recognizing the point at which running mechanics have failed and a session should end.

More courses in this series

Simplifying Performance Rehab Part 3: Speed, Agility, and Metabolic Training

Simplifying Performance Rehab Part 3: Speed, Agility, and Metabolic Training

Nate Denning and Phil Plisky

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