Agility

Etymology

Middle French, from Latin agilis, from agere to drive, act — more at agent

• Date: 1581

Definitions

• 1 : marked by ready ability to move with quick easy grace <an agile dancer>
• 2 : having a quick resourceful and adaptable character <an agile mind>

Description

Agility is the ability to change the body's position efficiently, and requires the integration of isolated movement skills using a combination of balance, coordination, speed, reflexes, strength, endurance and stamina.

In sports, agility is often defined in terms of an individual sport, due to it being an integration of many components each used differently (specific to all of sorts of different sports). Sheppard and Young (2006) defined agility as "a rapid whole body movement with change of velocity or direction in response to a stimulus."

In business, agility means the capability of rapidly and efficiently adapting to changes. Recently agility has been applied e.g. in the context of agile software development and agile enterprise.