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A Few Current Thoughts on Speed Training

My views are constantly changing the longer I train athletes and the more I study and train myself…

Sometimes I change drastically… and sometimes slightly… and sometimes whats old becomes new again.

Here are a few of my thoughts on speed training:

-The way I approach speed is going to vary depending on the athletes sport, season, and physical preparedness.. MOST of what I say below you can add the phrase “it depends” to because these are all generalities and specific athletes might have different needs.

-MAXIMAL Strength is king for most athletes to improve speed. Don’t waste your money on speed schools that don’t address the strength issue or do mindless running with no end goal! I did a video on that here:

https://youtu.be/nAN32eQgab0

 

-After max strength, athletes need to jump train to build explosive strength. The combo of the maximal strength and jumping is enough for most HS kids to get fast!

-Less volume or quantity of speed training seems to be winning right now for most… 1-3 sessions per week.

-I used to coach or critique technique way more than I do now. There are a few things that I focus on but after that there are many ways to run fast.

-Wide stance squatting and deadlifting have made our guys more mobile and its helping them produce more lateral ground force…I think that the combo of these two things have instantly made them faster changing directions, cutting, agility, etc… I talked about this in a video here:

-Acceleration in team sports is still king. Acceleration is best trained with resistance of different types. Here is how we use an exergenie:

https://youtu.be/cwcob7m-2GI

-Top speed or Max Velocity sprinting (30-60 yards) becomes more important as athletes advance.. Its especially important for football players to train at MAX V sometimes because they forget what it feels like to run top speed without stopping, starting, cutting etc… One of my college football players (wr) said for as much as they run he feels awkward at top speed because its never trained.

-Once technique is good you can only get faster by sprinting 95% and up. Conditioning and submax sprints to improve speed on trained athletes doesn’t work.

-Almost all sports run way too much and its usually useless running… sub max conditioning type stuff. This is why most athletes have all sorts of leg injuries. Football and baseball players don’t need to run gassers and mileage. They are strength and power sports. Even endurance runners would benefit by cutting down the running 25-30% and focus on producing more ground force (jumps/strength), dragging sleds, and carrying things. This will build up capacity and strength at the same time. Just make it time specific to your event/race.

-Top sprinters produce a 1000 pounds of ground force in each step… in a 100 meter dash thats about 50,000 pounds of force… you’d better be strong and have a huge base of GPP if you want to have any longevity in sports.

-All the fancy speed training equipment is cool but they are just tools in a tool box… its knowing when and WHY to use each tool.

-Agility drills are ok to teach footwork, break down technique, and work on some of the mechanics of changing direction but thats where it ends. Live action is very difficult to replicate in drills. Most social media videos of crazy footwork is useless in sports… I did a video on this too here:

-Power walks have become a staple here at BT that everybody does. It gets you ready to run through conditioning and strengthening the muscles used to run with high repetitions and thus we can eliminate useless sub maximal running and get right to the good stuff when needed! I did video on them here: