What You Really Need for Speed Training 04/10/2011
 Pictured Above -- what USED to be Velocity Sports Performance. I had recently learned that the Velocity Sports Performance franchise in Greensboro shut down. http://www.velocitysp.com/greensboro/articles?news_id=2167 Now this isn’t a blog about why that happened because I don’t know the details so it’s not my place to comment on things I don’t know. I can make some assumptions that their high overhead involved with running the facility, their fairly high price of membership and the current state of the economy had something to do with it. But just as Velocity closed its doors, let’s close the doors on some common misconceptions about speed and agility training. See I get questions from athletes and parents all the time about how to get faster. The problem is I do not always give them the answers they want to hear. These days most people believe that speed, agility and quickness training is what they see on the Nike commercials or in brochures for places like Velocity. There are SPARQ “ratings” which are awesome for helping Nike sell SPARQ equipment but do very little to educate people on how to get faster. Velocity had a very organized program of speed drills…but not much education on how to get faster. So what I want to do is provide a little education about speed training. I don’t want to get into a lot of technical talk about body position and ground force contact and all these things that will bore you to sleep unless you are an exercise science geek like me. Let’s keep it simple. Amongst “real” trainers it’s a generally accepted fact that the best and most efficient way to get faster is to get stronger…specifically increasing your relative strength. Now that’s not what a lot of people want to hear. They would rather hear that running on a silly high speed treadmill or running with a parachute attached to you is the top secret tool for super speed. Being told you need to squat, deadlift and do glute ham raises isn’t quite as appealing. But that’s what works. (side note: I wont get into the high speed treadmill thing here because I have addressed it before but these places who put you on one and get you all excited that you ran 18-20 "miles per hour" just PLEASE understand that doesn't mean much unless you can do that on the sport track or field. Usain Bolt's world record 100 meter dash converts to 23 miles per hour average speed...so you probably werent really going that fast - http://www.elitefeet.com/how-fast-can-humans-run) To coin an old expression you shouldn’t “put the cart before the horse” and that’s definitely true with speed training. Teaching supposed “proper sprint mechanics” to kids who aren’t strong enough to get into and maintain those body positions is pretty much a waste of time and they won’t get much faster. The other thing where all the technique drills miss the boat is that athletes in most sports other than track and field never get the opportunity to run with “proper technique” anyway. It’s hard to run the right way while dribbling a basketball down the court or kicking a soccer ball. It’s even harder when you can’t run in a straight line and have the components of lateral and linear movements (cuts) mixed together and then throw on top of all of that a reactionary component as often your movements are based off reacting to an opposing player’s movements. And there is another gigantic X factor in speed training that involves the athletes directly. And this is CONSISTENCY. I always tell my athletes that CONSISTENCY trumps INTENSITY. Working out hard for two weeks and then not working out at all for another two weeks will not get you where you want to be. Regardless of how good the speed training or strength training program is, the real benefits and gains from a program will not come without consistency in your workouts. I realize athletes, especially the high school level as I deal with the most, have lots of things going on in their lives and it can be hard to balance everything out. But here’s the thing guys and girls…..you get out of it what you put in it. Don’t wonder why your squats not going up or why you aren’t getting faster when your training/workouts are inconsistent and scattered. So, train hard, train to get stronger, train consistently and the speed will come. Watch the video below and you will see some examples of how we get stronger AND faster at Hepler Strength: Comments04/14/2011 10:31
Amen...very well put Andy. Sometimes younger athletes watch too much television and don't realize the amount of work it takes to become faster. Leave a Reply |
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