SEC teams can play more than football. Just ask the LSU baseball team. This past season, the Tigers returned to the spotlight with their first trip to the College World Series since 2004. To find out how they stayed agile during their impressive run, we hit up Jeremy Phillips, the team’s former strength and conditioning coach.

STACK: Why is agility training important during the season?
Jeremy Phillips: Because you spend the off-season conditioning your body to be bigger, faster and stronger. Alone, these attributes do nothing to help your performance in baseball. Agility training, in its many forms, helps you learn how to use them to enhance your on-field performance.

STACK: How often and long do you perform drills during the season?
JP: I get my guys for an hour session twice a week. I try to incorporate some form of agility training for 10 to 15 minutes of that hour. If unable to perform adequate agility training during our lifting session, I manipulate their pre-practice baseball warm-up to incorporate simple movements that keep their bodies as prime as possible.

STACK: When during the workout should drills be performed?
JP: I can incorporate agility during our warm-up, our lifting session, as a separate entity and even as a conditioning session, with low intensity but several reps.