What is Speed Training?
Speed training is a special form of exercise. This includes drills, techniques, and workouts. They improve speed and agility. This training is not about running faster. It's also about building muscle, endurance, and efficient movement.
Benefits of Speed Training
The following are some benefits of speed training:
- Speed training develops muscles for rapid contractions, enabling explosive movements. Muscle mass changes with age, making this particularly useful at that time.
- Regular interval workouts increase your force. They also lengthen your strides, making every step powerful and even stronger.
- Intense speed workouts boost your body's fat-burning. They do so both during and after the exercise.
- Speed training lowers injury risk. It does this through increased flexibility and muscle development. They make movement more efficient.
Speed Training Modalities
Here are some training modalities:
1. Speed Development:
The strength movement uses heavy weights to build strength. The speed movement uses speed to get fast. Running a mile or more at an average pace will get you in better shape but never make you faster.
Your body will always adapt to the loads placed on it, but it can only adapt to so much simultaneously. Long-distance runs send a message to build lung capacity, strengthen the heart, and so on.
2. Lowering Your Sprint Times:
Many athletes, particularly football players, obsess over their 40-yard dash times. Baseball players do the same with the 60, but there's so much more to playing fast in sports than sprint times.
The hype is all about the top 40 times at the NFL Combine. But, they only test short-distance agility. The L Drill and Pro-I assess draft picks. That's one example in one sport. Athletes need agility to shift direction and explosive power to burst forward.
A good speed development program combines sprinting with cutting and reaction drills. This would be helped by many other areas. Athletes will need to work on balance, core strength, force absorption, and flexibility.
3. It Requires Attention to Detail
How about your toes? Where should they be facing when you're sprinting? On which leg should you put your weight when cutting? Where should you always take that first step to begin the sprint? For more information read ‘Best Top 6 Exercises of Strength Training for Athletes’.
All these seem like tiny details. But, they can be key areas that help you gain an edge of a step or two in speed. It's the finer points of running technique that you need to be focusing on while training. Adding enough power to drop 0.2 of a second on a test can take months. But, fixing a flaw in your technique will get you the same decrease, or better, in 10 minutes.
A trained coaching eye is a great resource for developing great form. Yet, athletes need to take responsibility for themselves. Once taught to do things right, you should have a good feel for when a cut, step, or other move is done right.
4. Start By Practicing At Less Than Full Speed
Think back to when you were first taught, long division. Students learned this in early education. It was likely rough to grasp then. There was so much happening at once that you had to combine all the concepts. Most of us had to take our time getting it right the first time. Later, when the process became more automatic, we could speed up the skill to get it done faster.
Start slow when learning new speed techniques. Get a feel for the movement first. Then speed up. Gradually gain speed. Like that division, with practice, you will make the new skill automatic. Then, you can speed up until you have mastered it.
5. Automatic Skills Development
Improving a movement skill in the gym will matter little during competition. Then, one has to think about what they are supposed to do. The next step in the process is to create a more random environment. This is after learning to move better with a new technique in training.
Here is an easy example. You have learned the proper first step. It is to move to the side. When your coach tells you to go left, they give you a few seconds to process. Then they say, "GO!" Now, on their movement, you have to react quickly either left or right. Will you still be able to do everything perfectly, and just as quickly, without thinking?
It's a sporadic sports environment. In it, you need to move efficiently left, right, back, front, and between. Once you have mastered all the details in your movement training. The last part is to work on unpredictable conditions.
6. Resisted and Assisted Training
In simple terms, in resisted training, there is more weight added to your frame while running. Generally, this goes hand in hand with it being done up a hill and/or using weight sledges, vests, and so on. Aid training will pull you faster using tubing. It will also pull you when running downhill. It helps teach you how to turn your arms and legs over faster.
Both are valuable for building straight-ahead speed. But, they are often misused to the point that they become harmful. For resisted drills, run at full speed. If you are using too much resistance it will cause you to move slower, and interfere with your technique.
For assisted drills, there can be no compromise with good form, either. Flapping arms during tubing runs won't build game-ready athletes. The burning building idea may come back to this, but I don't think that's what you're training for either. Moderation is the key here as well. Begin with light pulls, looking to keep quality form only as greater speeds are reached.
7. Getting Stronger Can Help Build Speed
Speed does seem to come from power. One-leg strength drills are generally underutilized, yet excellent for developing speed. You're always pushing off one leg when you run. You also have to support your body on one leg. This requires great strength and stability in many muscles. These muscles aren't hit by two-leg drills like squats and deadlifts. You can do staples like squats and lunges in many variations to build this one-leg strength. Read more ‘Lower Body Strength Exercises for Athletes’
But, not all two-leg drills are useless. Olympic-style lifts like cleans can build huge power. Plyometrics are also good to use when performed properly. Exercises like these help you absorb force. They will get you off the ground quicker with every step. Doing these drills on one leg can be hard at first. They can lead to overuse injuries (like tendonitis) easily.
Strength works in the weight room for the lower body to develop speed. Projects positive torso alignment via the strength of the core and upper body. They also create faster arm action. This makes the legs turn over more quickly to increase stride frequency.
8. It Is A Long-Term Process
Something they say you build year after year is speed. Among all other qualities, it requires a long-term mindset to be seen. Impatient athletes want to be faster at once. They quickly grow tired of the process. Unfortunately, many quit too soon. They don't stick around long enough to see the big benefits of proper movement training. If you are overweight and want to improve your speed along with fat burning read ‘Guide on How to Lose Fat with Strength Training’.