Flash reflex training can improve your reaction time, agility, and overall fitness — and it’s not just for athletes.
Between your strength work, cardio sessions, and recovery days, your training program may not have much room for activities that are, quite simply, fun. But utilizing flash reflex (aka reaction light) training tools — small electronic buttons that light up at random intervals — can bring some joy to your exercise regimen, all while improving your agility, enhancing your fitness, and reducing your risk of injury.
Why Try Flash Reflex Training
In addition to creating competition between you and your workout buddies and challenging your body in an unfamiliar way, flash reflex training can provide notable fitness benefits. Whether you’re a professional athlete or a rec league player, this training can help you develop the reactivity required to perform at a high level, says Michael Crandall, CSCS, PN2, a Tier X trainer at E by Equinox - Hudson Yards. If you're waiting to catch a baseball in the outfield or defend a soccer goal, you need to be able to quickly react — mentally and physically — to ever-changing variables, he explains. “The lights, in this sense, are unpredictable,” he adds. “So not only is it training your brain to react as fast as possible, it's training your body to follow that signal as fast as possible.”
This unpredictability is where flash reflex or reaction light equipment has a leg up over traditional agility gear. With ladders and cones, for instance, the athlete can gradually learn the fixed pattern. Consequently, the drills become a demonstration of trained agility (based on how quickly the person can perform) rather than an actual training method, says Crandall. “You need that unpredictable variable for it to truly be agility and to translate it to a useful sense for yourself,” he adds.
Exercisers with goals of improving overall health and fitness can also benefit from utilizing flash reflex training. As you age, the size and contractile function of fast-twitch muscle fibers — which contract quickly, produce high levels of force, and enable you to react rapidly — declines, according to 2022 research. Performing drills with reaction light equipment, however, can train those muscle fibers and keep them intact, says Crandall.
Not to mention, the tools keep various aspects of your fitness in balance and, in turn, can keep injuries at bay. For example, “my mom likes to go for walks, and if she trips on a curb, she not only has to be strong enough to catch her balance right, but she also needs to be fast enough to get her foot in place,” says Crandall. “That’s why it’s good to train speed as much as strength as you age.”
How to Use Flash Reflex Training
If you’re focused on building speed, Crandall recommends performing flash reflex training at the start of your workout, after you’ve stretched. At this point, you’ll have plenty of energy to devote to the activity, so you’ll be able to perform at the top of your game, and the drills will also warm you up for the rest of your session, he says. “On the contrary, say you're more interested in conditioning and your goals are focused around burning calories, you might set up a really long, light [reaction] circuit of five or 10 minutes and finish your workout with that,” he adds.
You might spread a handful of lights throughout the room and sprint toward them when they flash, place them on the floor in front of your body during a high-plank hold and strike them with one hand when they flash, or attach them to a wall and jump up to tap them when they light up. “Honestly, the possibilities to incorporate this could genuinely be endless,” says Crandall.
Regardless of the goal, beginners will generally want to perform flash reflex training once a week and gradually build up to two or three days weekly as their fitness progresses, he adds. Even if you don’t have your sights set on becoming your kickball team’s captain, the training is well worth your time.