I don't understand: if you are sure that it is an ArrayList, why don't you use ArrayList instead of List to begin with? If you are not sure that it is an ArrayList, then you shouldn't use the for(int i = 0...) loop, because accessing each list element in a LinkedList by index would be extremely slow.

As for typing, in Eclipse you just type "for"+CTRL+Space and it completes the for loop for you.