Age-Related Changes in Agility Time in Children and Adolescents

This study compares agility times in groups aged from 7 to 18 years. Altogether 553 subjects performed an agility test. Their task was to touch, as quickly as possible, with either the left or the right foot, one of four mats located in the four corners outside of a 0.55 m square. The mats had to be touched in accordance with the location of a stimulus in one of the corners of a screen. The result was a sum of 32 multi-choice agility times, in four directions, measured by means of the computer-based system FiTRO Agility Check. A decrease in agility time from childhood to adult age has been found. There was a rather steep decrease in agility time from 7 to 10 years of age (27.1 %) and from 10 to 14 years of age (26.5 %). Afterwards, there was a slow decrease during puberty, from age 14 to 18 (16.5 %). It may be concluded that agility time decreases with increasing age up to early maturity. Since this is the first study testing agility skills by means of the Reactive Agility Test, the obtained data can be used as a set of reference values for comparison with subjects of particular ages.