Most sports today involve some measure of speed. Whether it’s a run from third into home or breaking away from the defense to catch the pass in a game of football, speed matters. While strength training and endurance training are both important as well, focusing on speed training to build your performance on the field is something that’s incredibly important.
It can also be confusing. The big reason is that you have to work the right muscles in order to develop speed – and those muscles aren’t always the same ones you would work on to develop power. Often, the majority of muscles that influence speed during sprinting are underdeveloped by most general training programs.
Not sure where to start? Here at Core 1 Inc., we think that boosting speed begins by understanding a few basic points related to it. For instance:
• It’s not just the strength of your muscles that influence your speed. The speed at which they contract also plays a big part in it.
• Strength and endurance training work the same muscles in the same way every time. This means that you’re ignoring other parts of the muscles or the ways they work.
• Adding small amounts of speed training into an overall training schedule is the best way to boost speed over time.
• Increasing the ability of ‘fast twitch muscle fibers’ is the real key to boosting speed.
So just what exercises should you focus on? For starters, work on burst strength with strides. As you run, find a good, flat part of the track or road and kick into high gear. Accelerate your speed for about 20 seconds. Once you top out at your maximum speed, slowly reduce your speed back down to a steady jog. Do this in sets of 4 to 6.
That’s just one exercise, and it’s important that it’s not the only one you focus on for building speed. The key is integrating the right workouts at the right time in the right amounts. If you can do that, you’ll boost your speed in the right way and give yourself a big increase in performance on the court or field. At Core 1 Inc., we’ve been helping athletes boost their speed for years. Our team can help you as well, so don’t hesitate to contact us to set up a training regimen that helps increase your speed.