The Ultimate
No-Bull
Speed
Development Manual
A step-by-step guide for transforming an
everyday Joe (or Jane), into a FREAKY FAST,
agile, and EXPLOSIVE athlete
For Athletes, Coaches, and Parents
No portion of this manual may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic of mechanical, including fax, photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system by anyone but the purchaser for their own personal use. This manual may not be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of Kelly Baggett, except in the case of a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages for the sake of a review written for inclusions in a magazine, newspaper, or journal – and these cases require written approval from Kelly Baggett prior to publication.
For more information, please contact:
Kelly Baggett
649 Fruit Farm Road
Hollister, MO 65672
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.higher-faster-sports.com
Disclaimer
The information in this book is offered for educational purposes only; the reader should be cautioned that there is an inherent risk assumed by the participant with any form of physical activity. With that in mind, those participating in strength and conditioning programs should check with their physician prior to initiating such activities. Anyone participating in these activities should understand that such training initiatives may be dangerous if performed incorrectly. The authorassumes no liability for injury; this is purely an educational manual to guide those already proficient with the demands of such programming.
Table of Contents
Introduction……….……….5
Part I- Linear Speed……….……5
Speed Is Simple!……….….6
How Trainable Is Running Speed Anyway?………...…….7
Gross Motor Skills Vs Fine Motor Skills………...…….8
Speed = Stride length Times Stride Frequency………...…………9
Stride Length is King!……….……….9
Factors Involved In Increasing Ground Reaction Force………...….11
Strength = The Backbone………..…………15
How Strong Is Strong Enough?……….………15
What Horsepower Looks Like………..……….16
What Can Strength Do For You?………...…………16
Building Strength……….…………..18
Muscle Mass Increases For a Speed Athlete? – Blah!………...………22
Strength and Its Relationship To Power………25
Best Exercises?………..27
"Slow" Strength Training Movements vs "Fast" Strength Training Movements……..…27
Strength Work and Fatigue………...……….29
Improving Stride Rate………...……….30
Top Speed vs Acceleration………...……….31
Sprinting Technique………...…………33
Technical cues………...………….34
The Stride Cycle………36
Getting Full Extension……….………..36
The Feet - Heel Running Vs Toe Running………...………38-39 Function Follows Form………..39
Hip Running vs Knee Running………..………43
Various Assessments To Ensure Proper Movement Efficiency………44
Glute Amnesia and Tight Hip Flexors……….………..44
Assessing the Balance Between the Glutes and Hams………..45
Is The Psoas Muscle Strong Enough?………..………..…………46
Evaluating Core Stability………..……….46
The Execution Of The 40-yard Dash………...………..47
Starting From Blocks……….………49
Troubleshooting Running Mechanics………...……….50
Setting up a routine – Volume………..……….51
Frequency………..………52
Maintaining Movement Proficiency vs Improving Movement Proficiency…….……….53
Rest Intervals……….…………53
Distances?……….……….57
Making Things Easy……….……….57
Year Around Training?………..59
Form Drills……….………64
Speed and Acceleration Drills……….………..64
Plyometric Training………..………….65
The Entire Athletic Development Process – Being a good diagnostician……….67
Detailed Sample 12 week programs for 40 yard dash improvement………...…………..74
12 week Program I – For the Strength Deficient Athlete………..…………75
12 week Program II – For The Speed Deficient Athlete………..……….82
A Simple Yet “Cutting Edge” Variant – Horizontal Loading………...…………84
Conditioning………..86
Conditioning and No Man’s Land………...………..87
Power vs Power Endurance………...………89
How To Implement Conditioning Without Interfering With Speed and Power…...…….91
Extensive Conditioning Options………..………..92
Part II- Getting in Game Shape, Improving Game Speed, Agility, and Quickness Intensive Conditioning – Getting in Game Shape……….97
Improving Game Speed……….99
Improving Quickness and Reaction Time……….………..…100
Improving Agility………101
Sample Off-season workouts for football………...………….103
12 Week Program I - For The Strength Dominant Athlete………..105
12 Week Program II - For The Speed Dominant Athlete………111
Training For Track………...………116
Conclusion………..……….122
Q&A and Special Topics 14 year old with strength and coordination issues……..……….123
Importance of the plantar flexors……….………123
Too much work during the off-season?………..……….124
The need for special exercises?………...……….125
Linear vs conjugate periodization………..………..126
Cleans and other Olympic lifts – Yah or Nay?………...……….128
Templates for combine preparation………...………..130
Sport specific training………..131
My 40 yard dash training……….133
How long does it take to see improvements?………...………134
Upper body contribution to running speed?………...………..134
Appendix A: The Simpleton's Guide To Speed Training………136
Appendix B: Training Templates For Various Athletes………..152
Introduction
Ahhhh…..Speed…a quality coveted by many yet had by a rare few. Few things can match the appeal of the fluidity, suppleness, grace, and power of the freaky fast athlete. Those possessing it become the recipients of instant respect and admiration - while those who don’t often develop a yearning for it rivaling that of man’s long search for the fountain of youth. What is the secret they ask? In the sports world they come by the hundreds of thousands searching for the magical speed elixir, wanting to drink from the Fountain of Speed. Countless training methods promising magic, yet each
representing but a small fraction of the complete picture: Plyometrics, medicine balls, ladder drills, active isolated stretching, olympic lifting, powerlifting, speed and agility centers, form drills, high speed treadmills, dynamic mobility, creatine, sprinting machines, rubber bands, sleds, shoes, russian secrets, soft tissue work, the list goes on and on and on. The result is a huge speed development industry - along with what is often a myriad of confusion for the speed-seeking athlete, parent, and coach.
With so many things to learn, so many training methods to choose from, and so many systems all promising to be the answer, what are you supposed to do to ensure you’re on the right path towards attaining your true athletic potential? For every speed development technique, exercise, method, system or elixir, you’ll find the praise of plenty, yet you will also find those ready to throw it in the grave. What to do? Can all the various elixirs be reduced down to a simple formula incorporating basic step-by-step principles? Is there a surefire duplicatable approach to increase speed that will work the same for everyone, or, like the elusive fountain of youth, is it like searching for fool’s gold?
Well, fortunately, building speed is easier than finding the fountain of youth. In this manual I'm gonna try my very best to answer and illustrate the question, "What simple basic principles can all the various speed training methods, techniques, gimmicks, and elixirs be reduced down to?” I’m also gonna try to give you a step-by-step, no B.S., surefire approach to get you on the right path towards applying those principles and transforming either yourself (or others) into smooth, fluid, agile, and freaky fast athletes.
Part I-
Linear Speed
So you want to get faster? Congratulations! Without a doubt improving your speed is one of the best things you can do to improve your performance as an athlete. One of the greatest concerns among today’s coaches and athletes in many sports is how to improve the elusive quality of speed. This is largely due to the influence of scouting tests like the 40-yard dash. Although tests such as the 40 and 60-yard dash could be considered over-rated when it comes to evaluating player ability (due to the fact that the most sports are just as much dependent on moves, agility and quickness), they’re also the
tests that most coaches rely on when determining if a player has what it takes. When it comes to the NFL draft, millions of dollars can be gained or lost for a player in the difference of a couple of tenths of a second in his 40. The same goes for baseball players and the 60-yard dash.
For those of you who have watched re-runs of the television series “Playmakers”,
it is obvious just how much emphasis is placed on speed in the 40-yard dash. In one episode, Leon Taylor, an aging 30-year old running back, dedicates himself to improving his performance in a variety of the same tests used at the NFL scouting combine. He does this to show that even at 30 years of age he’s still as good or better physically than he was at the beginning of his career. He actually improves in every single test except the 40-yard dash, where his time goes from 4.5 seconds as a rookie to 4.6 seconds as a 30-year old. He presents a video of his performance in the various drills to his coach who looks at all his numbers, zeroes in on the 40, and says, “You’ve slowed down.” “These young guys don’t have your strength or tenacity but they can get through the hole quicker.” The difference between a 4.5 and 4.6 is the difference between breaking into the clear and getting tackled at the line of scrimmage.” Just face it you ain’t got it no more!” Point Taken!!
Even though that example was made for television it’s still true that most team sport coaches do place a huge emphasis on sprint times such as 40’s or 60’s, often to the exclusion of everything else. If you as an athlete, coach, or parent want yourself, your kids, or your athletes to impress people and get noticed, speed is where it’s at! You probably already know this otherwise you wouldn’t have purchased this manual. Although being fast won’t automatically make a great player it can turn some heads and often get a foot in the door so that you can show scouts, coaches, and other talent evaluators what you can do on the field. Regardless of what level of sport referred to, it can also mean the difference between starting and sitting the bench.
Speed Is Simple!
The good thing is, although it is often very difficult for the average person to sort through all the often contrasting information in the athletic development industry, improving speed really isn’t all that complicated. Methods are many, but principles are few. Any improvement in your athletic ability is really just a matter of increasing two (count them, just two) foundational qualities. All of the aforementioned training methods I talked about earlier, as well as anything else that improves performance, will affect one or both of these. They are:
1. Movement efficiency- How you move. The ability to carry out a movement with
utmost efficiency. Think of the fluid grace of someone like a Reggie Bush moving straight ahead like he’s shot out of a cannon, stopping on a dime, changing direction, and doing a pirouette like a ballerina.
and speed that is exerted when you move (The difference between a ballerina sprinting down the sideline vs a Reggie Bush sprinting down the sideline)
Any training method, gimmick, recovery aid, diet, or anything else promoted to improve a physical quality like running speed will impact one of those factors. That’s the only way speed (or any other physical quality) can improve. Think about it. What
determines the speed at which your legs move in something like a kick or a sprint? The same thing that determines how fast a baseball flies through the air. How much force (horsepower) that it’s hit with - or, in the case of running, how much force is behind the leg. What determines the ability to run with perfect and fluid mechanics? The answer is, the efficiency of the movement.
If I lift weights, I improve my ability to exert force (horsepower). If I get a massage and the massage relaxes my tight muscles, that relaxation allows me to move more efficiently, and that in turn also allows me to exert more force, right? If I drink special blue green algae and lose weight I have less fat mass to carry around and that’ll improve my movement efficiency. If I take supplements that increase my energy I can then exert more force in my movements due to my greater energy levels. If I do some Yoga I might improve my ability to relax and this helps me move better. If I use a special high-speed treadmill that improves my power and allows me to move my legs faster when I run, I increase my movement efficiency and my horsepower. The list goes on and on.
Here is a question for you: What if, instead of haphazardly engaging in all sorts of training methods and then trying to determine what and how they work, we simply worked backwards from the end results of our training and found the most direct
approach to improve movement efficiency and horsepower? In other words, since speed improvements result from improvements in those qualities, what are the best and most direct ways to improve those 2 qualities? We could ask, “What is the most direct and straight line approach to improve the force I put behind my sprint movements??” After we answered that question we’d ask, “Ok, what is the most direct way to increase my movement efficiency?” What might happen if we took that approach?
Hmm…something to think about isn’t it? More on that in a minute, but right now let’s talk about a few other things related to speed development.
How Trainable Is Running Speed Anyway?
It used to be thought that it was virtually impossible to improve running speed and the predominant line of thinking in coaching circles was that fast athletes were born but not made. Yes, there is a genetic component involved in running fast but anyone can get faster if they train correctly. Not everyone can achieve world-class 100-meter
sprinter speed but, based on my experience, any relatively untrained individual can improve their speed in something like a 40-yard dash by around .5 seconds or more. More importantly, team sport speed, or game speed, is HIGHLY trainable.
If you’ve read some of my other material you probably already have a good understanding of the training methods required to increase running speed. If you’ve read
my vertical jump manual the same things you learned there can be applied here. Speed and acceleration over short distances tends to correlate quite well with performance in the vertical jump. In other words, the training methods that increase one tend to increase the other. When was the last time you saw a really fast guy who couldn’t jump? Running speed and leaping ability are both heavily dependent upon lower body relative power,
with the only real differences being technical. Relative Power is just a fancy term for how
explosive you are relative to your body weight.
If we wanted to get technical we could say power equals force times velocity
(P=F*V), with the force component primarily determined by your pound per pound strength and the velocity component determined by how quickly you can utilize that strength. Put all that together and you get explosiveness.
Explosiveness= pound per pound strength + how quickly you utilize that strength
With regard to technique, whether your focus is running or jumping, you need to spend enough time learning the technique to be proficient at either, but the performance characteristics and strength qualities tend to correlate quite well. An athlete with less than optimal technique can improve their speed by improving that technique and optimizing their economy
Gross Motor Skills Vs Fine Motor Skills
Running is a gross whole body motor skill, which basically means it doesn’t require much conscious effort to perfect. This also means that performance is largely determined by strength qualities and is not as reliant on technical skill. Gross motor skills are kind’ve like riding a bike. Once you learn them they don’t require much
conscious input. Once you learn how to ride a bike you don’t have to think about it much do you? Crawling, walking, running, jumping, and throwing a punch or kick can all be put into this gross motor skill category. I also call these primal movement patterns because they’re highly instinctual. Now, contrast those physical skills to something like threading a needle or executing a double twisting back-flip. These require much more skill, concentration, and focus.
Here’s an example of what I mean by instinctual: Imagine you’re walking through the woods and a bear comes out and jumps your butt. Are you gonna think to yourself, “Ok, in order to get away quickly I need to pull my right heel up 45 degrees and extend up onto my left toe and cycle my right ankle over my left knee.” Or are you just gonna run!? I would hope instead of overanalyzing things you just get up off your butt and run!
The reason I bring this up is because throughout this manual we’re gonna talk quite a bit about a multitude of factors involved in running fast, including many technical issues, but don’t lose sight of the fact that running is predominately a primal gross motor skill. If you’re constantly overanalyzing things the bear will catch you!
What is Speed?
Let me break running speed down into a very simple equation. Here it is. Speed over a given distance can be determined by:
Stride length X Stride frequency
.Stride length- is the distance you cover with each stride as you run. Stride frequency- is the number of strides you take in a given time
Thus, you can improve your speed by either covering more ground with each stride, by taking faster steps, or by both. If you increase your stride length while keeping stride frequency constant you will run faster and vice versa. If two individuals possessed the exact same technique, the individual who could move their legs faster (stride rate) and cover more ground in a single stride (stride length) would be the eventual winner.
Stride Length is King!
When it comes to your speed, stride frequency is important than
stride length. In other words, the speed at which your legs move is actually not all that important.
To illustrate this for yourself, try this drill: Lie on your back with your feet up in the air and cycle your legs mimicking a sprint stride. Next, get a stopwatch and either time yourself or get someone to time you and see if you can get 5 strides per second while lying on your back. Most of you will probably be able to do it. Realize an elite level sprinter will take around 5 strides per second in a sprint. Therefore, chances are you can already move your legs fast enough to be an elite level sprinter! But does that mean you can cycle your legs at 5 strides per second while striding down the track while using good mechanics? Probably not. Why not? Because in a real sprint, instead of just cycling your legs through the air, you also have to propel your bodyweight down the track with each stride. Yet, based on that example, it should be easy to see that the absolute speed at which you can move your legs is not the limiting factor in the sprint, - the limiting factor is the ability to overcome your bodyweight and move your body down the track or field.
From a speed improvement standpoint, this is also good because the absolute speed at which your legs move is under more genetic influence than the amount of ground you cover with each stride. For example, you can take a group of young athletes and have them do the above drill or have them run in place cycling their legs as fast as possible. Just count how fast they can move their legs and feet. Next, have them practice that same drill for 2 years and re-test them. Even with all the practice you’re unlikely to find a ton of improvement. You’ll probably only find an average improvement of around 10% or so.
Yet take the same beginning group of young athletes, time them over a given distance, count their steps and monitor how much ground they cover per stride. Next, train them properly for 2 years and re-evaluate them. Not only will you find they get a whole lot faster, but you’re also likely to find major improvements of 25 to 50% or more in their stride length.
Speed Improvements and Stride Length
Most come from increasing stride length and the fastest athletes
tend to have very good stride lengths relative to their size. Deion Sanders has the fastest recorded 40-yard dash ever at the NFL scouting combine and also had a stride length of 8ft 10 inches, which is very impressive. If you watch people run on a consistent basis what you’ll generally notice is that the fastest runners inherently cover more ground
making any deliberate intention to do so and intentionally over-striding.
Most sub 4.4 second 40 yard dash guys are under 20 steps for the entire 40. One extreme example is Matt Jones of the Jacksonville Jaguars. When he runs he looks like he’s in slow motion, until you see him blowing by everybody on the football field. That’s because he’s covering about 10 feet per stride.
Don’t Get Carried Away………
A word of caution: Don’t get too carried away with this and think that all you have to do to get faster is make a conscious effort to increase the length of your stride. That would actually be one of the worst things you could do. When you over-stride you reach and actually slow yourself down because you create a braking effect. Your legs have to remain under your center of gravity and your stride has to increase naturally.
Ideally, you want your stride length to increase naturally without detracting from your technique. You do that by increasing the amount of force you put into the ground while still maintaining sound mechanics. When you increase the amount of force you put into the ground, each time your foot “reacts” against the ground, you go further. This is
also called When you properly increase ground reaction force you’ll
never really be conscious of it and the technique won’t really “feel” any different then
normal. You’ll just feel and sort of feel like you’re .
So, the real key is to apply more force into the ground, which you do by increasing reaction force. How do you improve reaction force? Let’s start off with a more detailed discussion on how to do exactly that:
Factors Involved in Increasing Ground Reaction Force and
Stride Length
Increasing stride length is about getting more power into the ground with each stride. Several factors affect how much power gets into the ground, they include the following:
1. Strength- Besides the obvious influence on your ability to create and generate force,
strength is also important for absorbing force. With each foot-strike in the sprint an athlete must be able to support 3 to 7 times his bodyweight on each leg. That obviously requires a good degree of strength. If an athlete isn’t strong enough to absorb the reaction forces he creates, his legs will crumple under his bodyweight. If this occurs he obviously won’t be able to put out any force either. The ability to withstand force is just as, if not more important, than the ability to put out force.
2. “Stiffness” and Plyometric Ability- When I'm referring to stiffness I'm not referring
to flexibility, but rather the ability to efficiently stabilize and transfer force like a basketball rebounding off the ground. This largely involves the above capacity to withstand high forces without folding under the tension. Watch a weak or slow athlete run and you'll notice that various parts of their legs tend to do a lot of bending under pressure. There's a lot of give with each foot-strike - particularly right behind the knee, at the hips, and the heels. Watch a fast athlete run and there's little give. They stay on the balls of their feet and just kind of "bounce" over the ground with seemingly little effort – like a rock skipping across water. Therefore, stiffness in this sense is a positive thing.
What causes stiffness? Simple. It’s a combination of how much force the muscles can develop, how fast and proficiently they develop that force, and how proficiently the muscles and tendons work together to transfer force and create
movement. With each foot-strike in a sprint the muscles have to "lock up", or contract, to withstand the oncoming force that occurs at footstrike. The muscles themselves lock up and this allows the tendons to serve as movement generators. This entire process is also known as plyometric ability. To illustrate how simple this concept is try these 2 drills:
A: First, stand on 2 feet, lock your knees, and simply bounce up and down on the balls of your feet in a rhythmic manner. Each time you hit the ground I want you
to concentrate on LOCKING UP your calf muscles as fast and hard as you can so
that your heels drop as little as possible after impact. What happens? First, your calf muscles lock up and absorb the force created from the impact against the ground. Next, your achilles tendon stretches like a rubber band and then recoils. What happens next? You kind've rebound off the ground effortlessly. The quicker you can lock your muscles up, the less your heels give at impact, and the quicker you can rebound up. That entire sequence is also known as a plyometric movement.
B: Now, try something a bit more advanced. Stand on the ball of only one foot this time and bounce up and down on one leg at about the pace you'd be moving if you were swinging a jump rope. Stay on the ball of your foot and as soon as you hit the ground try to avoid letting your heel descend down any lower. Next, pick up the pace and do the same thing but in a more intense rhythmic fashion. Get a little higher with each hop. What happened? Well, providing you are strong enough to absorb the forces, you were probably able to bounce up and down in a rhythmic fashion with little to no effort and your heels probably didn't collapse much. If not, you probably collapsed at the ankle, didn't move worth a darn, and may have even noticed some pain. It should be noted that the forces generated in a sprint are more like that drill then they are the first. Improving stiffness and plyometric proficiency is an important part of getting faster. You can fail to be plyometrically proficient for one of 3 reasons:
1: Your muscles aren't able to produce enough force when they contract against oncoming force, so they give too much at impact. (You lack strength)
2: You aren’t able to lock your muscles up quickly enough (or produce force quickly) enough, so your muscles give too much at impact.
3: You are able to lock up and absorb force proficiently, yet are unable to efficiently spring out and use the tendons as movement generators. (You lack movement efficiency and coordination)
A flat basketball can’t bounce off the ground because it gives too much. What causes the give? Lack of stiffness (air pressure). The same thing happens with a weak athlete. The lack of strength makes his legs give at ground contact just like the flat basketball. He can’t absorb force. Now, think of what happens when you throw a softball against a slab of concrete. The softball is strong enough to absorb the force, yet doesn’t bounce back really well. Why not? Because it doesn’t have a whole lot of rebound to it. In human terms, the soft ball would be the guy who is really strong but who lacks spring. Now think of a golf ball. Not only is it stiff and resilient, yet also fairly springy. When it comes to plyometric ability, you want to be more like the golf ball. Resilient and springy.
3. Mobility- Mobility refers to range of motion. Obviously, before you can generate
extreme power and tension in a movement, you have to be able to get into an optimal position to carry out the movement to begin with. The sprint stride obviously doesn't require the mobility of a contortionist, yet there are certain muscle groups that can become tight which can cause certain movements to become inhibited. This can
negatively affect the fluidity of the sprinting stride cycle. This will be covered in detail in a later chapter.
4. Bodyweight to strength ratio- Imagine what would happen if you put a 20,000
pound weight and attached it to a funny car prior to the beginning of a race? Instead of seeing a drag race you’d be watching a tractor pull! Well, the same thing happens if you're hauling around a 10 to 50 pound tub of lard around your gut or your butt. Being fat simply ain't gonna cut it! If you want to be a fast and agile athlete, a certain level of leanness is desirable.
Having said that, bodyweight increases in the form of muscle mass increases aren’t necessarily a bad thing. How many really fast athletes do you see that don’t carry at least a decent amount of muscle? When a muscle increases in size, it also increases its strength potential. Let’s say you take your bodyweight from 150 to 175, while your squat and deadlift go from 200 to 400 pounds. Did your bodyweight to strength ratio go into the crapper? No, it improved! Therefore, one should strive to be lean, yet should not be deathly afraid of bodyweight increases.
Instead of focusing so much on bodyweight I believe it’s better for an athlete to focus on body-fat. I consider 6 to 12% body-fat ideal for a male and 12-20% ideal for a female. The following internet URL has a handy calculator you can use to identify with quite amazing accuracy what your body-fat level is. Simply take your waist
measurement, plug it into the space provided, and figure out where you are at:
http://members.nuvox.net/~on.jwclymer/bmi.html#waist
5. Body structure- Take a 12-inch bat and hit a baseball with it. Next, take a 32-inch bat
and hit the same baseball. Which one goes further? Probably the one hit with a 32-inch bat. This is because the longer bat gives you a longer lever, which gives you more leverage, which means you can generate more power at the moment of impact.
When sprinting think of a leg as being the same thing as a bat. A longer leg serves as a longer lever and, assuming the amount of force generated by the hips and legs is equal, the longer leg can generate more power at ground contact. So, with the amount of force generated by the hips being equal, a person with longer legs will tend to run faster. Is there anything a person with shorter legs can do to bridge the gap? Yes. They can produce more force. Let’s use a real life example: Imagine if you gave me a 32-inch baseball bat and gave Barry Bonds a 15-inch bat and asked us both to hit a baseball as far as we could. Who do you think would hit the ball further? Do you think the fact that I had a longer bat and more leverage would make up for Bonds superior strength and power? Hardly. He’d still blow me away. Heck, he’d probably even blow me away if he was using a 6 inch bat. He’s simply too strong and too powerful in his swing for me to compete, regardless of how much leverage I have with a longer bat. This is how a 600-pound squatting Pit Bull type sprinter like Ben Johnson was able to beat a weaker Greyhound type sprinter like Carl Lewis. Disadavantageous limb ratios can often be
The same process I described above with regard to leg length is also true when we refer to variability in the length of the tendons, particularly the length of the Achilles tendon. Take a look at the calf muscles of the average elite level sprinter or any high level athlete participating in a speed dominant sport and compare them to the calf muscles of an average person. Most fast sprinters have a short high calf muscle that forms just a tight little ball way up by the knee. Their Achilles tendons also tend to be longer than average. The longer the Achilles tendon, the greater the potential for speed.
Achilles Tendon
Why is a longer Achilles tendon advantageous for speed? Well, providing the muscles from the hip down can properly absorb force, with each foot-strike in the sprint the tendons stretch and recoil like rubber bands. Take a small rubber band, pull it back, and see how far you can shoot it across the room. Next, take a longer rubber band and do the same thing. Which one flew further? Probably the longer one. A person with longer Achilles tendons basically has a longer rubber band in his legs and that can offer an advantage when sprinting (or jumping). Is there anything a person cursed with a short Achilles can do to bridge that gap? Yep. The solution to the “Achilles” curse is the same solution as the “short-legged” curse. Disadvantageous tendon lengths can also be
overcome by disproportionate muscular strength. ** Which is again why pit bull type sprinters like Maurice Green, Ben Johnson, and Kelly White can often beat their gazelle like counterparts.
** The reverse is also true in that people with naturally good structural and muscular qualities can often perform while being weaker then their opposition. The weak athlete who can jump out of the gym is a perfect example.
6. Movement efficiency- Movement efficiency is simply the ability to carry out a
movement with optimum efficiency so as to generate the greatest amount of power with the least amount of effort. Before you can move with great speed and power at a high intensity, you have to be able to move well at a lower intensity. Before you can be light on your feet when moving at breakneck speed, you gotta be light and smooth on your feet at slow speeds. Movement efficiency can be impacted by a ton of things like mobility and muscle balance, but what I want to touch on here is technique. I will delve fairly heavily into technical topics in just a bit, but when running a lot of people tend to try too hard to run fast and thus actually limit how fast they run. A relaxed and smooth stride is always more powerful and efficient than a tight and forced stride.
Strength = The Backbone
Now, I’d like to spend a bit more time talking about strength. In essence, for an athlete, maximal strength is like the horsepower of the engine in a vehicle. The more strength we have the higher our other physical attributes can potentially go. A car with a 200-horsepower motor doesn’t necessarily always run twice as fast as one with a 100 horsepower motor, but it certainly has the POTENTIAL to run a heckuva faster if all
things are equal. Just like horsepower is the foundation for how fast a car can go, maximal strength is the foundation for our physical attributes. These attributes include power, strength endurance, and endurance (all of them) – all of which can be limited by insufficient strength.
When training for speed over short distances you need to realize how important it is to be STRONG! Not all athletes are built the same and not everyone displays their
strength in the same manner, yet I have yet to see a weak individual run a great 40-yard dash. For some reason this seems to be a difficult concept for many people to grasp. Think about this: You never see guys with 100 pound bench presses winning any shotput medals do you? It obviously takes a strong individual to be a good shotputter. Even a kindergardner can comprehend that. Yet when planting our feet and throwing our own bodyweight through the air (which is exactly what we do when we run), people don't seem to comprehend or appreciate the importance of raw horsepower. It’s kind’ve funny because when we run (or jump) our bodyweight actually offers more resistance than a shotput does for a thrower! It's a lot easier for someone to do a set of 100 bench presses with a shotput in each hand than it is a set of 100 bodyweight squats! What about doing 100 squats on one leg? Forget it! Now not all athletes in all sports need lots of weight room training to increase their speed. For example, a 1500-meter runner never uses maximal forces and momentum is responsible for much of their speed. Yet, in terms of the ability to accelerate to top speed when starting from a standstill, moving your
bodyweight from a dead stop requires a lot of explosive strength to get going. A funny
car with a 5 horsepower motor ain’t going anywhere in a hurry, and neither is an athlete with a 50 pound squat or deadlift!
This is why good sprinters are almost always very strong and powerful relative to their bodyweight. The stronger you are in the lower body the more force you can put into the ground with each stride, and, as you already know, the more force you put into the ground with each stride, the further and faster you go. This is why some Olympic weightlifters and throwing athletes are nearly as fast as sprinters out to 30 meters. They don’t get that fast from practicing sprinting, they get that fast by being very strong and having the ability to utilize that strength very quickly.
How Strong Is Strong Enough?
So how strong is strong enough? Well, some sprinters and other speedy athletes will routinely throw around 3 times their bodyweight in movements such as the squat, so chances are you don’t have to worry about becoming too strong. In my experience, if you aren’t squatting more than 3 times your body weight, your maximal strength isn’t
hurting you. That’s 450 pounds for a 150-pound athlete – not a common feat. Even then, the problems don’t really occur from excessive strength, they occur from the excessive size, muscular development, and the total investment of time required to build that strength – a time investment that takes away from the time available to focus on otherqualities. Most of you don’t have to worry about getting too strong, but you may need to worry about making better use of the strength you have.
Having said all that, assuming 10% body-fat, a level of strength would be
a 1.5 x bodyweight squat and a 2x bodyweight deadlift with proper form (eg. No back rounding). Any athlete can easily achieve those numbers with a modicum of proper training.
What Can Strength Do For You?
Realize that improvements in speed are related to 2 major factors that can be modified by getting stronger the weight room:
a) Force
b) Rate of force development
Increasing both of these factors will increase power, which is force x speed.
You improve anytime you increase your strength. You improve
when you learn to utilize that strength quickly.
Let’s talk about the importance of having both good force and good rate of force development.
WHAT FORCE AND HORSEPOWER REALLY LOOK LIKE
Bodyweight Maximum force orstrength without time constraint (squat)
Max force per sprint stride (.2 seconds) Athlete A 175 lbs. 400 lbs. 200 lbs. Athlete B 175 lbs. 300 lbs. 225 lbs.
Look at the chart for a moment and try to decide which athlete would have an advantage in the sprint. Assuming athlete A and B are both the same size, you
can see how they have very different strength patterns. Both of them weigh 175 lbs. Now look at the row that says “maximum force or strength without time
constraint”. All we’re describing here is how much force these athletes can put out regardless of how long it takes them to apply that force. A maximum squat is an example of this, since, during a squat, we have ample time to generate max force.
Power-lifting, arm wrestling, and tug-of-war are some sports that come pretty close to measuring maximum force. In practically every other athletic event, the
movements occur so quickly there isn’t enough time to allow true maximum force to be developed. In this case you see that athlete A reaches a higher peak force and squats more weight, 400 lbs versus 300 lbs, yet if you look at the 3rd row, the amount of force he can
put out in .2 seconds, (which is roughly the same amount of time it takes to complete a stride during the first 25 yards of a sprint stride), - athlete A’s force output is lower then that of athlete B. Thus, his rate of force development is lower. Therefore, athlete A is going to be able to squat more than athlete B, but athlete B is probably going to smoke athlete A in sprint.**
** In order to progress, athlete A would need to improve his ability to quickly express his strength in the sprints, which he could do by something as simple as engaging in more sprinting practice, which would be specific training for the task at hand.
So, how much force you can put out in a short period of time is going to
determine performance. Don’t get too carried away with this just yet though. Although being able to apply force rapidly is a very useful quality, you still need to have enough raw horsepower (or raw force), to tap into for anything significant to happen. The 6’3”, 200 lb guy with a max squat of 100 lbs is not going to be getting down the track quickly, even if he can apply all that force very rapidly.
Here is an example of what that very weak athlete might look like on paper when we break his strength qualities down like we did above:
Bodyweight Max force
(strength) in the Squat
Max force per sprint stride
Weak Athlete 150 lbs 100 lbs 95 lbs
Even though this athlete expresses the little bit of strength that he has very effectively and is able to utilize 95% of his force potential (95 lbs) in the sprint stride, he still doesn’t have enough baseline force to tap into for that awesome rate of force
development to do much good. He’s only capable of squatting 100 lbs and, even though he’s getting 95% of that into the track, he’s still only putting out 95 lbs of force which isn’t going to do a whole lot for him!
Now, here is an example of what an ideal athlete’s maximal force and rate of force development profile might look like:
Bodyweight Max force (strength) in the squat
Max force per sprint stride
Ideal
Athlete 175 lbs 400 lbs 325 lbs
This athlete is very strong and is also capable of utilizing a large percentage of his max force in a very short time-span, which is ideal. His max squat is 400 lbs. and he’s able to utilize over 75% of that, or 325 lbs., during a sprint stride.
Building Strength….
With that information the foundational role that strength plays in the speed development process should be evident. When it comes to building strength, it really doesn’t matter how you go about doing it. People really seem to get confused on this topic. You'll find recommendations touting countless schemes and exercises all supposed to be better than any other. Some people preach only uni-lateral exercises. Some people preach only squats while others say NEVER do squats. Some people preach deadlifts as the cure-all for everything. Some say a person shouldn’t lift weights and should instead do something like push trucks. The average person is often left so confused they don't have a clue where to start. To be honest, it really doesn't matter how you go about getting stronger as long as you do it somehow. At the end of the day, all that really matters is that you're improving your ability to bend your knees, extend your hips and apply force. You're strengthening the muscles of your hips, quads, hamstrings, and lower back. There are a myriad of ways to do that. The most common and some of the most effective exercises that will do that are basic squats, deadlifts etc. The general idea is you go in and lift a progressively heavier load. You rest a given amount of time, which might be one day, 2 days, 3 days, on up to a week. Then you come back and lift a heavier weight. If the bar weight you’re lifting on basic movements is increasing on a consistent basis, so is your strength.
What Strength Really Is…
Let’s talk for a moment about what strength really is. Strength is really just another name for the ability to produce tension, or force.
Strength=Tension or Force
Strength is made up of 2 parts: One aspect is determined by how efficient you and your nervous system are at firing and coordinating the muscles involved in a movement, which is called neural efficiency. The other main aspect is how big the muscles are that are fired, which determines how much force is generated when they fire.
Put those 2 things together and you have muscular strength. So, you can get stronger either by boosting neural efficiency, or by increasing the size of your muscles.
First let's talk about improving the neural aspect of strength. There are two primary ways the nervous system influences your muscular strength. The first process is called motor unit recruitment. Specifically, I'm referring to your nervous system's ability to turn on and fire more motor units. A motor unit is just a grouping of muscle cells or fibers. A given motor unit may contain a few muscle cells, or it may contain several hundred. When you decide to fire a muscle a message goes from your brain and down your spinal cord where it eventually reaches and signals individual muscle motor units to fire. When a motor unit fires so do all the muscle cells under its control. The more motor units (muscle fibers) you recruit, the more force you'll produce. Small force tasks recruit few motor units; large force and/or explosive tasks recruit many motor units. Full muscular recruitment occurs when maximal force output reaches around 80-85% of your maximum. So, if your 1 repetition maximal arm curl is 100 pounds and you perform a set with 80 pounds (80%), you'll be recruiting all of your muscle fibers in the biceps.
However, it's also safe to say that under normal circumstances few people are capable of utilizing all of their potential strength in a given movement. In fact, an
untrained person may only be able to utilize 50% of their strength potential. Why is that? Because there's another aspect of neural efficiency called rate coding. Rate coding
allows your muscles to develop more force by enhancing the speed and amplitude at which electrical neural signals get sent to your muscles telling them to contract. At very high intensities, a given motor unit will continuously fire and relax and repeat that process at a very high rate of speed. The repetitive firing of all available motor units occurs so quickly that there's a summation of force and the ability to produce tension is magnified. However, the body normally inhibits the full potential of this process as a protective mechanism to protect you from injuring yourself. If your body didn’t have this safeguard in place and you could easily call upon your full strength potential you’d definitely very strong and powerful, yet you'd probably also stand a good chance of ripping your tendons right off the bone!
A few examples where you see this protective mechanism naturally over-ridden are in extreme life or death type circumstances where the body produces tons of
adrenaline. If you’ve ever heard of small women lifting cars up off their children or PCP users busting out of handcuffs, what happens in these situations is the extra adrenaline boosts rate coding and over-rides various mechanisms that normally inhibit the display of full force potential. But what happens to people in these situations? They often end up injuring themselves. Some people have a natural propensity to have elevated adrenal related discharges from the CNS and naturally have better rate coding.*** Fortunately, with training, one can vastly improve this capacity naturally, which is how powerlifters and Olympic lifters in the lighter weight classes are able to get so strong.
Let's say you have a strength potential of 200 pounds in the leg curl. This means, based on the amount of muscle contained in your hamstrings and your body structure, if all of your available motor units were firing and you were utilizing 100% of your rate
coding capacity, you'd be able to lift 200 pounds. However, an untrained person might only be able to lift 100 pounds, or 50% of their potential. A highly trained and super motivated (a.k.a adrenalized) person might be able to lift 180 pounds, or 90% of his potential.**** So, basically, you can fail to capture a large portion of your force
potential due to either lack of training experience, or lack of time. As mentioned earlier, in a "fast" movement like a sprint, there's so little time that it's difficult to fully display your full force capacity.
*** This also explains why those who are naturally very fast, strong, explosive, or powerful often tend to share some common psychological characteristics (e.g. explosive temperament or the ability to easily become "adrenalized”)
**** This extra motor unit recruitment from adrenaline explains why people tend to be stronger, more powerful, and faster in competitive situations. For example, a powerlifter will tend to deadlift a lot more weight in a meet than in the gym. A basketball player will tend to jump higher prior to a big game then in training. A sprinter will tend to run faster at a meet than in training etc.
So, with training, you increase your ability to fire motor units and coordinate motor unit firing (rate coding). That's the major reason why when people first start strength training they gain a whole lot of strength even in the complete absence of any size improvements. Obviously, both motor unit recruitment and rate coding take place when you produce high levels of force with your muscles and they are both involved in a sprint. Why? Because you need to contract a lot of muscles, very quickly. Importantly, the neural gains in motor unit recruitment and rate coding that occur through traditional strength training have a global foundational transference and serve as a foundation for neural gains occurring in speed-strength activities like a sprint.
Next, let's talk about how the nervous system and muscular system work together to produce force. Obviously, before a muscle cell can contract, it has to be recruited, or turned on, by the nervous system. Once it is recruited, it always fires with all of its force. How much force a muscle cell generates when it fires is determined by how much protein is contained in it, or how big it is. Some muscle cells are bigger than others, but how much tension they generate will always be determined by how big they are. When you add muscle size, the amount of protein contained in your muscle cells increases and they (the individual muscle cells), get bigger. Thus, each individual muscle cell produces more force than before. Thus, the tension generated by a given muscle, such as your biceps, is determined by how many individual bicep muscle cells your nervous system can turn on and coordinate during a movement, along with the total amount of protein (size) contained in those muscle cells being recruited.
Strength = Muscle cell recruitment + Frequency of recruitment (rate coding) + total size of all the muscle cells being recruited
As an illustration, let’s say you have 2 athletes and you want to measure and compare their strength in the arm curl. Both of them have 100 total muscle cells in the bicep. Athlete B’s muscle cells are twice as big as Athlete A’s, yet athlete A is twice as efficient at firing and coordinating the muscle cells in his bicep:
Total Muscle Cells Size of the Muscle Cells Total Tension Generated if All Muscle Cells Were to Fire Optimally (potential strength)
Total Muscle Cells Athlete Can Coordinate and Recruit In the Arm Curl (actual strength) Amount of Tension Generated – (weight lifted) Athlete
A 100 Big 100 pounds 100 100 pounds
Athlete
B 100 Twice as big 200 pounds 50 100 pounds
You can see that they generate the same amount of tension but through very different means. Athlete A has to take full advantage of his muscular recruitment and rate coding capacity to generate 100 pounds of tension while athlete B, due to his bigger muscles, only has to use half of his neural capacity. Thus, athlete A has twice the neural efficiency of athlete B, but athlete B has twice the muscular size of athlete A. The result is a wash.
Most people are like Athlete B in that they’re not capable of utilizing all of their muscles in a given task. The more efficient you get at coordinating and firing your muscles, the better your neural efficiency gets. This is how weight lifters in the lighter weight classes and people like gymnasts are able to get so strong for their bodyweight.** They have extreme neural efficiency. Improvements in neural efficiency allow you to bridge the gap between your potential strength and actual strength,*** and enable you to utilize more of the muscle you have.
** From a speed perspective, there is definitely an advantage to having good neural efficiency.
*** The difference between your potential strength and actual strength is also called the strength deficit.
Fortunately, for the above athlete A, he is capable of utilizing all his strength potential in this task, but unfortunately for athlete B, he is not. If he was he’d be generating twice the tension of athlete A. In athlete B’s case, he could get significantly stronger simply by boosting his ability to coordinate and utilize the muscle he already has. He could do this without any increase in muscle size whatsoever. In contrast, the only way athlete A will get stronger is if he gets a bigger arm.
So, the point to take home is that strength can improve either through increased neural efficiency, increased muscle size, or both. When it comes to lifting, performing sets of 3 and below primarily train the neural efficiency aspect. Sets of 6 and more primarily boost the size aspect. Sets of 3-5 do both. There is a lot of crossover and you can’t totally restrict gains to either neural or muscular, but that’s the basic gist of it.
Muscle Mass Increases For a Speed Athlete? – Blah!
Although a lot of people preach that a speed athlete should never seek size increases, a cursory look around at the muscular development of fast athletes tells otherwise. Look at the lower body hamstring and glute development of a typical fast athlete in comparison to that of a normal person. Quite a difference isn’t there? Lots of people are born with lots of muscle cells, good muscular development, and lots of strength in certain areas of their body, such as the hamstrings and glutes. Others are gonna have to work to add muscle in the right areas so that they can generate more force from key muscle groups. In other words, if you naturally have an ass like a pancake and hamstrings resembling toothpicks, you’re probably gonna have a hard time generating much force by those muscle groups until you put some muscle on them, regardless of how neurally efficient you are.
This Type of Build Ain’t Gonna Cut It! This is more like it!
A Simple Way To Get Strength Up
Honestly, one of the easiest and simplest routines to get strength up to optimal levels is to embark on a twice-weekly squat or deadlift routine. Get in the gym on Monday and work up to a max set of 4-6 reps. Get back in the gym on Thursday or Friday and work up to another max set of 4-6 reps. Start at 4 reps with a given load. Once you get 6 reps with that load increase the weight by 5% the following workout and work back up to 6. Throw in an assistance exercise at the end (such as glute ham raises), and that’s it. Nothing complicated about it. People lacking strength can typically
progress for months on end on a routine that simple.
Here’s another very simple approach: An acquaintance of mine wanted to get stronger but admittedly told me he was too lazy to train consistently. All he did was put a loaded bar in the garage. Once every day or two he'd go in there and pick the bar up off the floor for a single or double. He progressively added weight over time. In 6 months he'd put over 100 pounds on his deadlift and really didn't even have a routine...just a loaded bar sitting in the garage that he'd make sure to lift occasionally. A simple set-up like that may not be optimal for everyone, but increasing strength need not be overly complicated.
Basic Strength Training Principles
Considering that a complete athletic development program would include work on mobility, recovery, strength, speed, plyometric, and conditioning work, there's obviously quite a bit of knowledge that goes in to putting together a complete program. Now, when you try to make sense of all the complicated and often conflicting information just on the strength aspect of a program alone, is it any wonder why the process can be so
confusing? Honestly, you could start reading everything there is to read about strength training and program design today, and 5 years from today you still might not feel totally confident about what you're doing, simply because there are SO many ways of doing things and none are really right or wrong. Methods are many but principles are few. All that really matters is that you're applying progressive resistance (tension) to your
musculature. The body really does not know whether you're doing a higher-faster-sports, westside, HIT, swiss ball, gymnastics, kettlebell, or any other system. It only knows tension! Most training schemes do provide some stimulation and no routine is perfect.
Exercises and routines are just tools to improve performance. No tool is more important then whether or not the tool gets the job done. If your car breaks down, it doesn't matter if you use a rock, a crescent wrench, bailing wire, or an entire set of snap on tools to fix it, the important thing is that it gets fixed. Raising performance or getting stronger is the same way. I like to tell people to imagine yourself out on a deserted island without any technology, tools, or anything. Strength stimulation for someone in this situation would consist of dealing with everyday life (chasing prey, running away from predators, lifting rocks to build a hut etc.) You could take an athlete today, put him on a deserted island, and he could stimulate performance improvements without a single modern day tool to work with or any specialized strength training knowledge - his life would depend on it.
Having said that I'd like to give you some general principles or guidelines to follow as far as frequency, volume, intensity, and content of strength work.
1. When it comes to lifting frequency, twice a week per muscle group or per lift works just as good as 3 times per week. You don’t make gains when you train, you make gains when you recover from the training that you do. Athletes engaged in lots of practice, games, or other work can even progress just fine with an exposure of once per week. 2. When it comes to how much weight to use (intensity), strength responds best to loads between 70 and 100% of your 1rm. That generally means you perform anywhere from 1 to 15 reps per set. The more advanced you become, the better you tend to respond to lower reps and weights of at least 80% 1rm.
3. When it comes to volume, there really aren't any strict minimal or maximal volume rules, but there are guidelines. The lower the reps, the more sets you'll want to perform. If you don’t feel like counting sets, one simple way to monitor volume is by the drop-off method. Work up to a hard maximal effort for a given number of reps. Let’s say you work up to 100 pounds for 5 reps on a given exercise. Keep performing sets with the
same weight until you can no longer get 5 reps. Simple but effective. This works particularly well for pure neural-related strength gains. For neural and muscular (a.k.a. size) related strength gains, which do require a fatigue component, you might work up to a hard effort and stop when your performance drops off by more than a couple of reps. So, using the above example of working up to a hard set of 100 pounds for 5 reps, you’d continue to perform sets until you could only perform 3 reps.
4. When it comes to content, compound multi-joint movements are superior to isolation movements. One exercise per major muscle group is generally sufficient.
5. When it comes to percentages, I generally recommend basing your loads on effort rather then percentages. In other words, if a scheme calls for you to do sets of 5, instead of worrying about what percentage to follow, simply work with a weight that allows you to complete about 5 reps in good form and increase weight when you can.
6. As far as periodization goes, people that have been training for a while tend to note slightly better gains by varying the sets and reps on a weekly basis in a step type loading approach. You slightly increase or cycle the load up and down for several weeks then take a step back to allow recovery to take place. Once every 3 to 6 weeks you'll generally want to have an "easy" or unloading week, where you reduce the volume by about 40 to 50%. I prefer a 4-week cycle for most athletes. Generally speaking, the set and rep scheme will vary depending on the level of athlete.
A weekly set and rep scheme for a beginner or intermediate might look like this: Week 1: 3x6
Week 2: 4x5 Week 3: 5x4 Week 4: 3x4
A stronger more advanced athlete might follow something like this: Week 1: 4x3
Week 2: 5x3 Week 3: 6x2 Week 4: 3x3 (easy)
There are countless ways to set things up based on this principal of step type loading, undulating periodization, or whatever you want to call it, but the general theme is a variance in sets and reps. I prefer to increase the weight and fluctuate the volume on a
weekly basis but there are hundreds of ways of approaching it. A simple cookie cutter whole body program for high school athletes might follow a scheme like this:
Monday - Back Squat, Bench Press, Pullup Wednesday – Power Clean, Trap Bar Deadlift Friday – Front Squat, Incline Bench, Pullup Week 1: 3 x 6
Week 2: 5 x 5
Week 3: 5 x 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Week 4: 3 x 3
Not perfect, but gets the job done. Just keep in mind, regardless of what you do or how you go about doing it, when it comes to building strength, you're increasing your ability to exert force. All that requires is some form of tension. There are plenty of tools at your disposal. As I will talk about later on, at times you can also benefit from fancy specialty exercises such as sled pulls, truck pushes, and the like.
Strength and Its Relationship To Power, Strength Expression,
and Rate of Force Development
You can use terms like strength expression and rate of force development interchangeably. In the big scheme of things they pretty much mean the same thing, which is the ability to quickly demonstrate strength. You can basically think of them as the speed aspect of power and explosiveness. Since explosiveness (power) is a function of force and speed (force x speed), and sprinting is a display of explosiveness, often just increasing the force potential, or strength, of the appropriate muscles, will provide a
world of improvement.
For example, if a strength score for an athlete was 2, and the athlete's speed score was also 2, his explosiveness rating would be 4:
2(speed) x 2(strength) = 4 (explosiveness)
Doubling the athlete’s strength would double his explosiveness:
2(speed) x 4(strength) = 8 (explosiveness)
Doubling the athlete’s speed without altering strength would also double his explosiveness: **
**This is really a pretty unrealistic example because the speed part of the equation is under a lot more genetic control than the strength part. This is why you never see someone double or triple the absolute speed they can move their hands or feet through the air, yet it’s not at all uncommon to see them double their strength on basic movements (bench press, squat etc.).
If the same athlete made a 50 percent gain in both speed and strength his explosiveness rating would be:
3(speed) x 3(strength) = 9 (explosiveness)
So, it should be obvious an increase in explosiveness (horsepower), and thus running speed, will result if you either increase the baseline levels of strength, the speed at which you demonstrate strength, or both.
**Relative to this example you increase strength anytime you increase the poundages of key exercises like deadlifts and squats. You increase speed anytime you increase the ability to express that strength.
So, basically there are 3 ways to improve explosiveness. You can:
1. Focus more on the speed side of the equation. Here you’re training the nervous system to ultimately produce faster contractions. You’re bridging the gap between the amount of total force you can exert regardless of speed, (or the amount of strength you have), and the amount of that force you can display at high speeds. ** Examples are: sprints, plyometric exercises, loadless (bodyweight) exercises, medicine ball tosses, sled sprints, Olympic lifts, and weight training using 60% of your max or less performed with great acceleration.
** The difference between the amount of strength you have and the amount of strength you can display at high speeds is also known as the explosive strength deficit.
2. You can also improve explosiveness through focusing on the strength side of the equation. Here you’re simply improving the raw strength you have. This could take the form of 2 general approaches. They are:
A: Using 80-90% of your max in a given exercise for multiple sets of low repetitions in an effort to improve neural efficiency. (E.g. 3-5 sets of 2-3 reps)
B: Using 60-80% of your max for higher reps in an effort to induce muscle growth. (E.g. 3-4 sets of 8-10 reps)
3. You can do both.
Now, with so many options to choose from, which approach would be optimal for you? It's really quite simple. The optimal approach requires either zeroing in on your weak area, whether it’s raw strength or the speed at which you display strength, while maintaining the other, or improving them both simultaneously.
Obviously, if both factors can be improved with a specific routine it would be more efficient than just improving one aspect.
So, how can you improve the speed at which you display strength while
simultaneously getting stronger? Well, the intent to contract explosively provides a high velocity specific effect and improves neural efficiency. When you lift heavy loads to improve your strength, the resistance may move fairly slowly, yet as long as some to move fairly explosively is there, the explosive nature of the contraction results in improvements in both maximal strength and rate of force development. Thus you get the best of both worlds.
Best Exercises?
When it comes to exercise choice, I prefer to keep it simple. Some of the best exercises for an athlete interested in speed development include general strengthening exercises such as squats, deadlifts, lunges, glute-ham raises, leg curls, romanian deadlifts, reverse hyperextensions, and split squats. More specific explosive strength exercises such as speed squats and jump squats can also be used. The above exercises should be performed with a controlled lowering phase and some emphasis on accelerating through the concentric phase of the movement.
Additionally, we can also utilize high velocity movements that allow us to zero in on the speed part of explosive strength. Plyometric drills along with sprinting itself fit the bill here.
“Slow” Strength Training Movements vs “Fast” Strength
Training Movements
One debate that often arises between coaches and athletes is whether basic heavy strength training movements such as squats and deadlifts with heavy (80% + loads) are superior or inferior to lighter weight, high speed strength training movements (also called power movements) such as olympic lifts, speed squats, jump squats etc. Really, there is no doubt that the heavy strength training movements are far superior when it comes to increasing strength. The only real way to increase baseline levels of strength is to lift a fairly heavy load (70-100% of 1 rep max). When lifting such a load, the weight does not move very fast, because it is obviously too heavy to move all that fast.
However, some say, “Well, since our objective is to move fast on the field, we must move fast when we train! This leads some to favor using loads with 20-60% of their 1 rep max on basic exercises such as squats and performing the lifts with great speed.**
