Did you know that speed training can be beneficial for everyone? It doesn’t matter if you’re preparing for a 5k charity run, participating in recreational basketball, or simply trying to keep up with your children, speed workouts can improve your athletic performance and help you maintain your ability to engage in the activities you enjoy later in life.
What Is Speed Training?
Essentially, speed training maximizes your athletic ability and builds body awareness.
When it comes to speed training, what are the key areas to direct your attention towards? Speed involves various dimensions, including technical skills, power enhancement, neural drive, and strength. To delve deeper into speed training, we will examine three distinct facets.
Acceleration Mechanics
Your ability to generate initial speed is affected by mechanics of acceleration. When considering acceleration, there are certain aspects you should focus on improving:
By positioning your foot beneath your body rather than in front of it while running, you decrease the amount of time your foot is in contact with the ground and advance your forward propulsion.
To become more explosive, it is important to stabilize your upper body and transfer the forces generated by your arms through the ground. Additionally, it is crucial that your arms move in a straight line, rather than twisting, in order to maximize power production.
Power Development
Your speed depends on the amount of power you can generate. In the field of physics, power is defined as the rate at which energy is converted or transferred. If you want to increase your power for speed, you must generate significant muscular force in a brief period.
Strength
According to research, speed can be determined by relative strength. Achieving a relative strength of being able to squat 2-2.5 times one’s body weight is considered optimal.
The level of strength you possess empowers you to produce ample force to maintain an upright position during sprinting. Consequently, you can rapidly develop force.
Sprinting
It is crucial to note that in speed training, running at full speed is a must to improve the skill. Therefore, after acquiring the necessary skills, we should incorporate them into our speed training regimen by sprinting as fast as possible.
4 Progressive Drills for Acceleration
1. Bucket Hold
One of the fundamental speed training exercises is the bucket hold, which focuses on developing a comfortable and strong upright posture essential for maximum velocity.
Maintain an upright posture and activate your hip flexor to elevate your knee. Ensure that your foot is positioned directly beneath your knee instead of your buttocks (this influences your movement). Press the foot that is in contact with the ground and stretch your body upward as much as possible.
One way to advance is to keep your posture tall by holding a stick above your head. Furthermore, you can increase the difficulty by carrying a medicine ball, kettlebell, or aqua bag.
2. Switches
Once you have become proficient in holding the bucket, you can advance to performing switches. During this exercise, you rapidly alternate between your legs while ensuring proper form and balance.
To ensure correctness, concentrate on snapping the legs down instead of jumping to lift the knee up. Position your “up” leg to the ground and alternate with the other knee. For bucket holds, you can increase difficulty by holding a stick above your head or including some weight.
3. Wall Drill
Developing speed requires good acceleration mechanics, which can be enhanced by practicing the wall drill.
Place your hands onto the wall and incline forward with your ankles. Your incline must range from 45 to 60 degrees, with a preferable deeper incline. Then, in a regulated manner, bring a knee forward while maintaining square hips and a robustly grounded foot.
During this movement, it is optimal for your shoulders and hips to be aligned. Lift your knee to approximately a 90-degree angle, and then return it to the initial position. With practice, you can increase your pace until reaching maximum speed.
4. Dead Legs
Acceleration mechanics heavily rely on dead legs. While performing this exercise, stick to one side without alternating like in A-skips. Maintain a nice rhythm and explosively raise your knee to a 90-degree angle. Rapidly bring it back down once it hits 90 degrees.
Similar to switches, the crucial element is to push your leg down. Through repetition, you will improve your ability to exert force into the soil at a faster pace.
4 Speed Training Best Practices
1. Work-to-Rest Ratio
It is essential to provide your athletes with sufficient rest intervals between repetitions for all of these drills.
To increase velocity, we must focus on the Phosphagen (5-10 seconds) or Fast Glycolysis energy system. The NSCA video covers the fundamentals of human energy systems, which employ up to 30 seconds of exertion followed by three to 20 times that amount of rest.
At Raymer Strength, we ensure a minimum work to rest ratio of 1:6. This means that if an athlete performs a 5-second sprint, they will receive at least 30 seconds of rest. Our programming prioritizes providing athletes with ample rest. Research has shown that using various rest intervals can improve different types of sprint performance, including repeat sprints and distance. However, our focus in this article is solely on enhancing top-end speed.
You express your concern to the coach that the allocated rest seems excessive. It is understandable that you may feel unproductive, but it is crucial to maintain a suitable balance between work and rest to target the appropriate energy system and prevent the athlete from transforming their speed training into conditioning or endurance training. If this balance is disrupted, it can negatively impact the speed and potentially cause a deterioration in performance.
2. Strength Training
The most efficient approach to enhance speed involves combining speed work with a thorough strength training regimen; however, it is still better to engage in sprint work alone rather than doing nothing at all (and it is definitely less costly). With the assistance of a certified performance coach, athletes can focus on improving their ability to generate and handle force. Such improvement can contribute to acceleration and deceleration, and can significantly decrease the risk of injury.
3. Learn Sprint Technique
The potential for an athlete’s speed can be maximized by attaining technical proficiency, as speed is not merely determined by genetics but is also a learned skill.
4. Measure, measure, measure
In order to determine progress, it’s necessary to assess your athletes’ performance. Although our laser timing system provides 99.999% accuracy, consistent use of hand timing is still beneficial.
5 Speed Drills for Athletes
Mechanics Drills
Efficient and effective acceleration as well as maximum velocity highly rely on arm drive, leg drive, power, and posture. We don’t have the capacity to impart comprehensive learning and experience about these mechanics here. Nevertheless, starting with these 10 drills can be beneficial, and a coach specialized in performance can assist in perfecting individual techniques.
Drill focusing on arm movements while in a seated position.
Indeed, arms play a role in speed! Running requires not only the legs but also the upper body. This exercise concentrates on the upper body, prompting the player to strive to maintain an upright position. In addition to that, we are helping Tessa eliminate any instances of her elbows sticking out.
The exercise where one holds their arms outstretched and stationary is called the Standing Arm Drill.
This drill serves as a stepping stone from the seated arm drill to a more athletic position for sprinting.
Perform the Knee Drive Wall Drill.
Performing knee drives against a wall places your body in a perfect position for accelerating, making it an excellent exercise for correcting posture and ensuring optimal foot impact.
Drill for Starting with a Dive
This exercise improves the angle of your body for early acceleration and is an excellent step forward from the wall exercises.
The Drill for Measuring Stride Length
Keep in mind that speed is determined by the multiplication of Stride Length and Stride Frequency. This exercise concentrates on improving stride length and teaches athletes how to modify it during their acceleration stage. The cones are positioned closer to each other in the beginning and gradually spaced further apart towards the end.
