Have you ever stopped mid-set and wondered; why am I putting myself through this crap? Well, over the next couple days I plan on telling you exactly why we do this crap! Most sports involve speed, conditioning, agility/change of direction, requisite sports skills, awareness/decision making, poise and the need for injury reduction. There are different aspects of our time in the gym that directly impact each of these areas. Want to know where that heavy deadlift will help you on the field? Ever wonder why we have to perform exercises on 1 leg? Do you know why it’s so important that we improve flexibility and stability? Today, we begin with speed! 

Speed is a dominant quality in sports performance. 95% of the athletes I work with need to increase speed in some form or another. 

A typical speed session will include blocks of time dedicated to flexibility, heavy strength training, explosive exercises, single leg exercises, sprints, long bouts of recovery between sprints and video analysis. Each of these will have an impact on speed outputs during competition. Read on if you would like to know how each quality impacts speed!

1) Flexibility- your hips, legs and ankles need to be flexible enough to move through an adequate range of motion if you want to run faster. A lack of adequate flexibility leads to sprint mechanics that will, at best, not allow you to display your maximum speed or, at worst, lead to nagging pain or serious injury in the ankles, knees and hips.

2) Single leg training helps improve stability. Hip/ankle stability allows you to move efficiently.

3) Sprints.

4) Heavy Strength Training- to be fast, you need to be able to apply as much strength as possible, as quickly as possible into the ground. Heavy strength work teaches athletes how to apply force into the ground.

5) Jump Training teaches athletes how to apply strength into the ground at a rapid rate.

6) Video Breakdown- we take video of sprints to break down technique at a slow speed. Team sport athletes do not need the technical precision of an Olympic sprinter, but they need to develop a certain level of mechanics in order to sprint efficiently. Film breakdown is the only way to see what’s really happening stride by stride.

7) Long bouts of recovery between sprints- sprinting looks physical but it’s actually mostly about signals sent back and forth between the brain and the body. This leads to nervous system fatigue. We take up to a minute of rest in between sprints to ensure complete recovery of all systems involved. No athlete has ever gotten faster training in a fatigued state.

If you are still with me after all that crap, just know, I feel the love🤜🏻🤜🏻. Check back tomorrow!