SPARQ for Average Joes
By Brent Gallagher

What do you think about when you hear the words speed, power, agility, reaction and quickness?

Most of you will think of a Ray Lewis crushing a running back, Usain Bolt blowing away the competition in a 100-m run or Lebron James soaring over 2 players to slam home a game changing dunk.

Do you ever think about yourself when you hear these words? If you haven’t, think about the following situations and how they might be described:

1. Sprinting from your car to the store when it’s pouring down raining.
2. Reacting quickly to catch a piece of glass before it falls and hits the ground.
3. Grabbed 9 bags of groceries from the car and managed to make it through the house without falling over or dropping any of the bags.
4. Swerving to avoid a car pulling into your lane
5. Needing to find the strength to re-arrange the living room furniture

As you can see, you need SPARQ training just as much as a professional athlete does.

To implement SPARQ training into your training plan is simple. You can do 10-15 minutes worth of work or you can dedicate an entire workout (30 minutes) just to this type of training.

Here are my top moves for each aspect of the SPARQ training:

S = Speed

1. Sled Drags
2. Woodway Speedboard Sprints

P = Power

1. Medicine Ball Slams
2. Medicine Ball Toss

A = Agility

1. 6 Cone Weave
2. Box Drill – Sprint, Bear Crawl, Back Pedal & Crab Walk

R = Reaction

1. Partner Reaction Ball Game
2. Playing Card Toss

Q = Quickness

1. Ladder Quick Feet Drills
2. Plyo-Box Quick Feet Drills