No-Bull Speed
The Ultimate 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 By: Kelly Baggett
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 author assumes no liability for injury; this is purely an educational manual to guide those already proficient with the demands of such programming.
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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 Mobility Training………………………………………………………….……………..60
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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 Appendix C: Various resources……………………………………………….………..161
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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 ILinear 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
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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. 2. Horsepower- How much force is behind a movement. The amount of force, power,
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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 7
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! 8
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.
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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 overcome by disproportionate strength.
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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.
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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 15
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 other qualities. 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 or strength 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
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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:
Weak Athlete
Bodyweight
Max force (strength) in the Squat
Max force per sprint stride
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: 17
Ideal Athlete
Bodyweight
Max force (strength) in the squat
Max force per sprint stride
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.
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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
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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:
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Athlete A Athlete B
Total Muscle Cells
Size of the Muscle Cells
100
Big
100
Twice as big
Total Tension Generated if All Muscle Cells Were to Fire Optimally (potential strength) 100 pounds
Total Muscle Cells Athlete Can Coordinate and Recruit In the Arm Curl (actual strength)
Amount of Tension Generated – (weight lifted)
100
100 pounds
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.
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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.
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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 23
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
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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: ** 4(speed) x 2(strength) = 8(explosiveness)
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**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.
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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.**
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This is otherwise known as power, or explosive strength training. This type of training can help an athlete learn to express his strength more quickly, yet before an athlete can express strength, he has to have some strength to express, which is one reason why one who hasn' t achieved a minimal level of strength should focus on the heavy basics in the weight room, and for the most part, stay away from the lighter weight high speed variations. ** The Olympic lifts such as the power clean and snatch are inherently high-speed power movements so one need not train with lighter percentages on these lifts to be in the “power- training” zone. Even an 80-90% snatch or clean, although heavy, still must be performed fast or it simply won’t go up!
Another way of looking at it is to think of basic strength as the size of an engine and explosive strength, power, rate of force development etc. as the modifications you can make to that engine to make it run faster, or express its horsepower better. You can make a smaller motor run faster by boring out the cylinders, inserting high tech spark plugs, running special fuel, and doing a ton of other high tech things. However, if you don' t have a big enough motor to start with in the first place, you can do all the modifications you want but it won' t do you any good! A weak athlete choosing lots of high speed lighter weight training movements over basic strength movements would be like someone trying to race a stock issue Honda Civic against F-1 race cars thinking he could get his Honda as fast as the F-1 cars by simply modifying the engine! There' s simply not enough basic horsepower to compete, regardless of what modifications are made. Therefore, it' s much more economical for an athlete to spend the time laying down a strength foundation before attempting to get overly "cute" in the weight room trying to better express strength that he doesn’t even have. What' s also debatable is whether or not performing lighter weight exercises such as olympic lifts, speed squats, and jump squats can offer an athlete any extra ability to express his strength that he wouldn' t get from simply participating in sport. Since sporting movements are already faster than any explosive movements that can be performed in the weight room and these activities by themselves will also develop the speed side of the explosive power equation, what' s the point of trying to work on learning to express strength better in the weight room? Why not just take the straight line approach and build the size and horsepower of the motor in the weight room and let the on-field activities such as sprinting, agility, plyometric work etc. take care of the conversion and modifications? Since movements like sprinting, jumping, agility work, and plyometrics are inherently performed very fast and already help us express strength quicker, is there any need for specific explosive work in the weight room if one is engaging in these activities? Some say yes and some say no. It' s an interesting argument.
So what Does Kelly Say? Although I often do recommend some explosive weight room training like jump squats, lighter box squats, and Olympic lifts, if I had to choose one or the other, I tend to lean more towards the camp that says the weight room should serve as a place to develop strength while the sport and other activities more closely resembling it (sprinting, 28
plyometrics, etc.) should be used as the place where the athlete teaches his system how to demonstrate that strength quicker. In other words, if you’re strong but have a hard time expressing your strength in the sprint in my opinion the best thing you can do to gain that ability is engage in sprinting type activities. If you need to learn to express your strength better in the jump the single best thing you can do is jump. If you’re a football player and you wanna be a hitting machine get very strong relative to your bodyweight and master the art of hitting. Nothing really complicated about it. Having said that, from a loading standpoint, there is some value in performing specific explosive variations in the weight room. One of the advantages is that the explosive variations are inherently less draining then heavier movements and offer an athlete a chance to stimulate the body without causing excessive drain. Heavy strength training induces a lot of neuromuscular fatigue and can take quite a bit of time to recover from. The stronger an individual is, the more fatigue he tends to induce from a heavy session. A very strong athlete might come in the gym on a Monday, perform a heavy squat or deadlift session, and might not be able to repeat and improve upon that session again until the following Monday. However, after that heavy Monday workout he could probably get back in the gym on Thursday or Friday and do a workout consisting of something like lighter speed squats with 50-60% of his 1 rep max. That would allow him to get some stimulation on his body while still allowing recovery to take place. The following Monday he' d be ready to tackle his heavy workout again. In addition, working with the power movements can allow us to get some speed and acceleration work in during times of the year when we might not be out on our feet much working on those things. For example, a sprinter who lives in the north might use movements like hang cleans and jump squats with a bit more regularity during the dead of the winter, because chances are he’s gonna be snowed in and not able to get out on his feet. These movements will allow him to stimulate his nervous system in a high-velocity manner and help him avoid any explosive type detraining that takes place.
Strength Work and Fatigue….. Additionally, when an athlete is really working to peak, or demonstrate, his explosiveness, he wants to be as fresh as possible. As mentioned, the heavier strength movements can cause a lot of neuromuscular fatigue and that fatigue can temporarily mask his fitness state. When an athlete really wants to focus on his speed and explosiveness he can replace some of the heavier strength movements with lighter more explosive variations so that he can remove some fatigue. That would allow him to really demonstrate his true explosiveness. If an athlete had an important upcoming testing or timing date somewhere between 1-4 weeks prior to the test date I' d taper the strength training down to a low maintenance level (a couple of heavy sets of 3 once per week) and replace that volume with either more explosive weight room work (speed squats, jump squats, o-lifts etc.) or more specific on-field activity (plyometrics, sprints, etc.). An athlete that is already strong but who really needs lots of work on speed and movement efficiency work could also benefit from less heavy weight training for the 29
same reason. By not creating excessive fatigue he' d be better able to direct his energy towards improving those qualities.
Those Squats Make Me Feel Slow…… The issue of fatigue is also one reason why people may not always feel as explosive or springy when they' re engaging in a lot of strength training, yet as soon as they reduce the volume of strength work they remove a lot of that fatigue and suddenly VOILA...they' re running on water and jumping out of the gym! They got a lot stronger and were getting more explosive from the strength training, they just weren’t able to properly display that explosiveness until they removed some of the fatigue. Fatigue masks fitness. They didn’t get faster by eliminating the squats, they got faster by removing the fatigue the squats were creating in their legs. Sometimes you have to temporarily take a step back in order to take a step forward. The take-home point is this: If you have to choose one or the other, when you’re in the weight room, always go with the basic heavy strength training movements for reps of 8 or less. You can' t fire a cannon out of a canoe and make sure you have a good foundation in place and a base of horsepower to display before you get too cute and worry about modifying that horsepower.
Improving Stride Rate I touched on stride rate earlier and noted that there is a strong genetic component regarding how fast your legs move. There is also an important quality involved in how much force you can produce per foot-strike when your legs are moving at a very rapid rate. Why is it that some people can accelerate very quickly and are very fast over short distances but don’t have great top speed? Why is it that some people have great top speed but don’t accelerate real well? Basically, some people are better at creating force at high speeds while others are better at creating force at slower speeds. One of the things we can do to help elucidate this concept is look at research that compares sprinting speeds to the vertical jump. Research has shown a strong correlation between maximal top sprinting speed and the ratio between vertical jump height and ground contact times during the execution of the vertical jump. You might want to read that line again because I know it sounds confusing. Basically what the research demonstrates is this: Athletes who could jump the highest with the shortest ground contact times during their amortization phase (switch from down to up at the plant), typically had greater top running speeds. Therefore, those who spend less time on the ground when they jump, also tend to run at peak higher velocities. Some athletes might have a great vertical jump, yet they develop their power from a deeper knee bend and longer amortization phase. These athletes may have great acceleration abilities, but not a great top speed when they run.
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How does this relate to what I said about some people being better at creating force at high speeds while others are better at applying force at slower speeds? Well, during the acceleration phase of a sprint, the feet stay in contact with the ground longer, which allows people more time to utilize their leg strength. For overall top speed, you must be able to train yourself to apply force quicker to enhance the other half of the speed equation - that being stride rate. Having good stride rate is obviously more important as one reaches tops speed. When running at top speed an athlete maintains speed by continually applying great forces with quick limb movements. So how do we improve stride rate? Well, as noted, the bad thing about improving stride rate is that it does have a significant genetic component. However, like anything else, genetics may be a big factor, but not the only factor. Stride rate can be improved to a good extent by the same process that improves stride length. Think about it. The harder you bounce a basketball against the court, the faster the basketball comes back at you during the rebound phase. The more force you put into the ground during a footstrike and the more proficient you are at absorbing that force, the faster and easier your foot rebounds off the ground. So not only can improving ground reaction force improve your stride length, it can also improve your stride rate. You can also engage in specific short response plyometric drills. Short response means that the time your feet spend on the ground in these drills is very quick, around 100-150 milliseconds. Probably the best short response plyometric drill is the act of sprinting itself. Accelerating to top speed and holding that top speed is likely the best plyometric drill there is for training short response time, which can lead to an improvement in stride rate. A flying 20-yard dash is an example of a good short response reactive drill. Here you accelerate to top speed and try to hold top speed for 20 yards. Over-speed training, which calls for using devices such as treadmills, decline running, and elastic tubing to move you at speeds exceeding your normal maximum speed is often advertised as an excellent method to increase stride rate, yet it also may cause a deterioration in running technique. Therefore, I don’t recommend it. The world’s best sprinters don’t use these techniques and I wouldn’t recommend you use them either. Now, having said all that, as it turns out, having a great stride rate a great top speed are not all that important for improving something like a 40-yard dash anyway. To understand why, let’s take a look at the differences between top speed and acceleration.
Top Speed vs Acceleration In a sprint, force can either be primarily generated by the muscles, or it can be generated primarily by the tendons. When force is generated by the muscles, we call this . When the force is primarily generated by the tendons, we call this . **
Voluntary explosive force=force generated by the muscles 31
Involuntary reactive force=force generated by the tendons **We also call involuntary force, plyometric force or reactive strength
The difference between the 2 is fairly easy to comprehend. One is voluntary, which basically means we have to work for it. The other is involuntary, which basically means it comes for free. Crouch down into a quarter squat, pause for 3 seconds, and jump as high as you can. Next, jump like you normally would (stand tall and execute a quick countermovement and jump). Why is it harder to jump from the pause position? Because all the force you generate is pure voluntary muscular force. Why can you get higher by using a quick countermovement? Because when you perform your quick countermovement you stretch the tendons and they act like rubber bands giving you extra involuntary reactive force. Did you have to try any harder to generate that extra force? No, it came entirely for free. Now, say you take a big running start and jump. You get even higher don’t you? That’s because by moving into your jump at a good rate of speed you gain even more involuntary reactive force then normal. Simple concept. Let’s talk about how this relates to sprinting: The greater the movement speed and the less time your feet spend on the ground the more involuntary reactive force tends to dominate. Therefore, the start of a sprint is nearly all voluntary explosive strength while sprinting at top speed is nearly all involuntary reactive force. At the start of a race, when you’re accelerating, you’re not gonna be moving as fast as you are when you reach top speed. Not exactly an observation worthy of a nobel prize but true nonetheless. Your feet are gonna be on the ground longer. Thus, you have more time to plant your feet, push, and generate voluntary force. Nothing too complicated about that. For this reason, your pound per pound strength (relative strength) is much more important at the start of the race than it is once top speed is reached. With the shorter ground contact times inherent to top speed sprinting, most of the force generated is involuntary reactive force generated by the tendons. As you accelerate and go faster the length of time you spend on the ground naturally diminishes so your window, or time you have to apply force, decreases. At the beginning of a race your feet might be on the ground .2 seconds. At top speed the foot might be on the ground .1 seconds (1 tenth of a second). Any decent athlete will spend very, very, little time on the ground when they hit top speed. A good 100-meter sprinter will typically reach top speed at around 50-60 meters. An average athlete might reach top speed at 30-40 meters. Now pay attention here: Individual ability for an athlete to to their top speed, what their is once it is reached, and their ability to that top speed, can vary quite a bit between athletes. This can be exemplified by looking at a shot putter or Olympic lifter. These athletes can develop great power, typically jump high, accelerate very quickly, and they are very fast over short distances. However, they may not have a high top sprinting speed or ability to hold that speed over distances. This can also work the other way. An athlete may have a very good top speed yet not be able to accelerate to
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that top speed very quickly. Generally speaking, the stronger an athlete is relative to his bodyweight, the faster he will be over short distances. The more gifted an athlete is in the ideal sprinting structure department, the more potential he has for a great top speed. In the case of something like a 40-yard dash, it is definitely an event of short distance and acceleration, so your ability to be extremely efficient applying force with very short ground contact times and having a great top speed is not nearly as important as it is if you were running a distance of 60-100 meters. Because of this, relative body strength, voluntary explosive strength, and acceleration ability** are more important in a 40 yard dash then they might be in a 100 meter dash, where the ability to have a high top speed and generate lots of involuntary reactive force becomes more important! Again, this is also why many athletes can be competitive in short distances but not long. They lack the quick natural reflexive ability demanded by that short ground contact times that are inherent when speed increases – a lot of that is also dependent upon body structure (limb lengths and tendon lengths). **All of these are highly trainable qualities
In conclusion, greater acceleration and speed can be accomplished by improving relative strength and rate of force development. Relative and explosive strength can be developed in the weight room by lifting heavy weights with intense effort. You can get significantly faster by becoming stronger. High-speed strength adaptations can be achieved with the intent to contract explosively. In other words, the muscle can become more powerful (force x speed) even if the limbs move fairly slowly due to the inertia of a heavy weight. Obviously, you must always take your training improvements out to the track or field and refine the co-ordination needed to move as efficiently as possible. Once a foundation of strength, explosiveness, and acceleration is in place, stride rate can be improved by decreasing contact time by engaging in specific practice running at top speed.
Sprinting Technique No two athletes run exactly the same way however, sprinting mechanics should remain relatively the same for all athletes. Running is instinctive so if you try to make big changes to your technique, or run like a robot, your performance will probably be less than optimal. As an athlete, you must be aware of what is natural and what is unnatural. If you are unaware of this difference your voluntary effort to dramatically change technique can slow you down. Often athletes feel that they have to bear down and stay low and pull in order to run fast. The scientific analysis of running suggests just the opposite. Reaching maximum speed depends greatly upon how relaxed you can keep your body in a naturally upright position. The human body is much better at pushing than pulling, therefore, the suggestion to stay low and pull prevents maximum speed.
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If you want to run faster, remember that sprinting is primarily a reflexive action against the ground. When your foot makes contact with the ground, it must be directly under your body’s center of gravity. Therefore, you shouldn’t reach or pull excessively. When the foot makes contact with the ground, it will be moving slightly backward yet the feel should be of pushing nearly straight down. If you increase your natural reaction forces against the ground you will inherently drive the body’s center of mass further forward which lengthens the stride naturally. If you were to think to yourself, “Ok I’m really gonna try to apply a lot of force and I’m gonna try to cover as much ground as possible”, your hips will lower and your lead foot will just end up landing too far out in front of your body ahead of your center of gravity. At the same time, your trail leg will flail way behind you. This is known as over-striding and it will cause a braking effect resulting in a loss of speed. Along these same lines, trying to force a greater stride frequency by consciously taking quicker steps will only produce a shorter stride length and result in a loss of speed. You need to learn to stay relaxed and run and let your body take its natural course.
Relax and Let It Happen…….. According to world famous sprint coach Charlie Francis, sprinting is a primitive hindbrain reflexive activity. Remember what I was saying about primal movements. You can’t try to turn the sprint stride into a calculus equation. You can anticipate the ground contact phase and prepare your body ahead of time, yet if you try to voluntarily do anything during the ground contact phase itself, you will just mess everything up. This becomes more important the further into a sprint you go. You can often get away with bad mechanics during the initial acceleration phase which is one reason why a lot of athletes who don' t do any sprinting can still be fast out of the gate. Yet get past 20-30 yards out and you' ll run into problems. Let me give you an example that coach Francis uses to describe what I see happening with a lot of people. Have you ever ridden a scooter? Imagine taking off on a scooter. As you accelerate you reach ahead with your foot, bend the knee of your plant leg, dig in, and pull. However, what happens if you try to do this once you get going at a really good clip? Once you reach a certain speed you just slow yourself down by trying to grab and "dig in". Once you’re going at a decent clip on the scooter the only way to go faster is by applying very short and quick strokes down and back into the pavement. Sprinting is the same way. The faster you try to go, and the more you try to reach and push, the worse your mechanics get.
A Few Simple Cues After giving this much thought and observation, I now use just a few very simple cues. They are smooth, up, over, and down.
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A: Smooth stands for smooth on the feet. In order to be smooth you can' t be back on your heels. Get someone to watch or record you sprinting normally. Make sure you' re striking the ground with the front half or the balls of your feet and not the heels. If you’re heel-striking, you’ll hear it. This will also help to cure problems with overstriding. B: Up and over- When your plant foot comes off the ground (recovers), pull your knee through and allow the foot of your off leg to come up and over your support leg at a height just below the knee of the support leg. When your foot comes off the ground, the foot itself should be point down, but the big toe should be pulled up. C: Is Down. When you go to strike the ground, simply push down directly under your center of gravity at the same angle as the upper body lean. Instead of trying to do something overly dramatic like reaching out, pulling back, or bearing down, just focus on standing tall and pushing down into the ground with each stride. There is obviously some horizontal backward force that occurs in the sprint. If the force was only vertical you would only go up. However, the backward forces will be there naturally without any deliberate attempt to emphasize them. The proper backward action happens over such a short period of time that it can barely be sensed, any attempt to emphasize the backward motion will result in a breakdown of form.
Up and Over If a person just does those simple things everything else will pretty much take care of itself and the stride will resemble a nice and tight circle. Staying on the balls of the feet inherently will keep the hips elevated and eliminate over-striding and heel striking. Pushing down directly under the center of gravity will do the same. Allowing the off foot to come up towards the support knee will cure an assortment of other common mechanical problems. One drill I like to use to help drive home basic technique is known as the wall slide. Simply get on the balls of the feet and take natural strides up and down like a piston.
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The Stride Cycle Now that I’ve given you the cues, let’s talk a minute about the specifics of what those cues are designed to address. During your running stride, your leg cycles through three different phases: the drive phase, when the foot is in contact with the ground; the recovery phase, when the leg swings from the hip while the foot clears the ground; and the support phase, when your weight is on the entire foot. During the drive phase, the power comes from a pushing action off the ball of the foot. Recall that stride length is the result of ground reaction forces. The goal of the drive phase is to create the maximum reaction force off the ground. The ball of the foot is the only part of the foot capable of creating an efficient and powerful push. Some people believe the pushing action should come from the toes. However, pushing from the toes reduces both power and stability and slows the runner.
Getting Full Extension As you drive off the ball of your foot, your plant leg should extend fully with each stride so that you don’t chop your stride short. ** Full extension should happen automatically. Although the movement is more of a push than a pull, it’s actually more of a natural plant rather than a push. Your focus should only be on absorbing the ground reaction force. If you intentionally try and/or think about pushing, you’ll just end up lowering your center of gravity and bending your plant leg excessively so that you can create more momentum to push with. This is a big mistake and is something that many athletes do. It tends to eliminate the posterior chain from the movement and kills involuntary ground “reaction” forces and turns them into voluntary “push” forces. Or in other words, it means you’re muscling the movement. ** Getting full extension is something many young athletes may not be able to do initially because they’re not strong enough in key muscle groups.
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Trying to muscle a sprint will cut down on your stride length and royally screw up your technique. Watch how people run. Watch how straight the plant leg is at ground contact and watch if it extends fully with each stride. If there is a lack of full extension, the athlete is either too weak or he’s under utilizing the hamstrings and over utilizing the quadriceps. By relaxing and getting full extension, the involuntary muscle activation in the hamstrings is 120-140% of what it is with regular voluntary effort. (Wiemann, Tidow, 1995) If you try to push or pull too much, your hips will lower and this makes it about impossible to naturally react against the ground - Instead of reacting you' ll be pushing. This is why struggling to go faster doesn' t do any good and will in fact slow you down! Stand straight up with your feet shoulder width apart. Lift one knee up, keep your chest high, keep your plant leg completely straight, and rise up on the ball of your plant foot. Do you feel your hamstring contract? Now do the same thing but bend the knee of your plant leg. Do you feel your quadriceps and glutes? Ideally, you want to emphasize the first position. Keep your hips high and get that full extension of the plant leg with each stride. During the acceleration phase of a race you don’t want to try to rise up into the tall position too quickly, but even at the very start you want to get a full extension. What follows are some illustrations of full and partial extension:
minor lack of full extension (weak hamstrings)
good extension of the plant leg
Hips too low, plant leg bent excessively, collapsing heels- too much “voluntary pushing”
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Good hip height – good “reaction” against the ground – good engagement of the posterior chain
Recovery Phase During the recovery phase the knee joint closes and the swing foot cycles through as it comes close to the body. As the knee joint opens and the swing leg begins to straighten, the foot comes closer to the ground in preparation for the support phase. An important point to remember about the recovery phase is that you should not reach for the ground or try to force a stamping action. The leg should remain relaxed and you should allow the foot to naturally strike the ground. You shouldn’t focus on thrusting the knees high or any other exaggerated movement. Just swing the ankle of the swing leg up towards the knee of the support leg, step over, and down.
Arm Action Arm action in sprinting is important when trying to develop an efficient stride. The arms work in opposition to the legs, with the right arm and left leg coming forward as the left arm and right leg go backward and vice versa. You should pump the arms with the emphasis on the down stroke. The shoulders should be as relaxed as possible with the swing coming from the shoulder joint. The shoulders should stay square to the direction of the run. The swing should be strong but relaxed. The hands should also be relaxed. The elbows should stay close to the body. Attempts to keep the elbows away from the body will prevent relaxation of the shoulders and limit efficient running mechanics. The arm action in sprinting is never forced or tense. If you have problems relaxing one thing you can do is hold a potato chip in each hand as you run. If you smash the chips you know you’re tightening up too much.
The Feet During the support phase the foot makes the initial contact with the ground on the ball of the foot. The weight of the body is then supported at a point that varies according to how fast you’re going. The faster the speed, the higher the contact point on the ball of the foot. Striking the ground first with this part of the foot serves to maximize speed but takes great energy. At a slower speed, jogging for example, the contact point moves toward the rear of the foot between the arch and heel. At all running speeds, the support phase begins with a slight load on the support foot that then rides onto the full sole. 38
When running at full speed, the feeling should be that of running up on the balls of the feet, but the heel can and often does make a brief contact with the ground. It is difficult if not impossible to reach maximum speed by consciously running way up on your toes.
Heel Running Vs Toe Running Now, having said that, I would like to introduce the concept of what I call heel running vs that of toe running. When I talk about some of the aforementioned problems like lack of extension, this is a big part of that. Watch fast people run and watch slow people run and note the differences. One thing you' ll probably notice is that slow people have a tendency to run back on their heels and they make a lot of noise when they run. Slap, slap, slap. Fast people appear as if they’re running more up on the balls of their feet and are typically as smooth and quiet as a butterfly. They naturally get full extension and react off the ground with each footstrike - like a rock skipping across water.
Function Follows Form One of the major things that causes the differences is muscle balance. With sprinting, function largely tends to follow form. In other words, sprinting technique is largely dependent upon what muscles are strong and what muscles are weak. A lot of people have strength but they don' t have balanced strength. They' re strong in the wrong muscle groups, weak in the wrong muscle groups, and their running technique tends to reflect that. The main contributors to the sprint stride are the muscles of the quadriceps, glutes, and hamstrings. For technique and function to be optimal, the sprint stride should be posterior chain dominant. This means the prime movers should be the muscles of the glutes and hamstrings. A lot of people think the feet and calves are really important for all athletes, but the hips are what produce force. When the hips and hamstrings are the prime movers, the stride tends to be characterized by the sprinter being nice and smooth up on the balls of his feet with little knee bend at impact and without the appearance of lots of bending and pushing. His feet will tend to strike the ground right under his center of gravity. In contrast, when the quadriceps are excessively dominant or when the posterior chain is weak, the stride tends to be characterized by being back on the heels with lots of knee bend, lots of noise, and lots of pushing. People will bend their knees and get back on their heels in an effort to utilize their stronger quadriceps. They’ll also tend to reach out in front of their body with their plant leg and strike on their heels. Take a group of athletes, get behind them, and simply watch them take off in a sprint. You can immediately tell which ones are which. A quadricep dominant sprint stride makes it difficult to sprint effectively particularly at top speeds. Therefore, in my opinion one should seek a posterior chain dominant sprint cycle. Although it' s difficult to get really accurate measures when assessing the balance between the quadriceps vs the posterior chain, it' s probably safe to assume the average trainee has a ratio of about 70% quadricep to 30% hamstring strength ratio. This means the quadriceps are twice as strong as the hamstrings. Contrast this to elite sprinters, who 39
may lean towards a 60:40 hamstring to quadricep ratio. One simple way you can help assess your balance in this department is to compare your standing broad jump to a single leg triple jump. First measure your normal standing broad jump. Next, stand on one leg and execute 3 consecutive single leg jumps. The total distance of the 3 jumps should be approaching 2.5 to 3 times the distance of your standing broad jump. Another assessment you can do is check the mobility of the quadriceps and rectus femoris. I have noticed one with excessively dominant quadriceps will tend to be very tight in these areas.** The rectus femoris is the muscle that attaches to your hip and runs straight down the middle of your thigh.
Rectus femoris One simple way you can check mobility in this area is just reach back, grab your heel and pull it up to the butt. If the quads or rectus femoris are overly tight, pulling the heel up to the glute will often be difficult. Good quadriceps/rectus femoris flexibility
Tight Quadriceps/rectus femoris (over-dominant quads)
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Someone with this problem will really need to stretch the quads and rectus femoris at least twice a day for 20 seconds, utilize plenty of dynamic stretches, and get away from any quadricep dominant activity. *** **A recent study also indicated that having excessively tight quadriceps and rectus femoris was the best predictor of knee pain. *** Dynamic stretching will be covered further along in this manual.
Quad/RF stretch
How do we get a dominant posterior chain and how does a person become excessively quad dominant in the first place? Well, the quadriceps can NEVER be too strong, they can only be too strong for the other muscle groups. The quadriceps are important, particularly for the start of a sprint. However, if a person is either born with dominant quadriceps or does lots of squatting to the exclusion of all else they will often tend to develop some of these problems. One with excessively strong and tight quadriceps, along with weak hamstrings, should, in my opinion, avoid most squat variations and use either deadlift variations or wide stance box squats as foundational strength training movements. ***
Box Squat *** The box squat is much more of a glute and hamstring dominant movement.
What about people who don’t have tight quadriceps but do appear to have a weak posterior chain? That’s a group that will actually include the large majority of young athletes. Fortunately, that problem will remedy itself with time and proper training as I lay out in this manual. What about everyone else? Just make sure you ALWAYS prioritize hamstrings and glutes in your training. The best exercise for the glutes is the basic barbell squat, yet it' s also the best exercise for the quadriceps. There' s nothing wrong with developing strong quadriceps, you just gotta make sure the hamstrings stay in balance and mobility is maintained in the quads and rectus femoris. Glute ham raises, leg 41
curls, pull throughs, reverse hyper-extensions, good mornings, and sled drags, are all effective hamstring exercises and should be utilized.
“Heavy” Feet If a person has good muscle balance and flexibility and they’re still heavy on their feet they might just have problems with their footwork and may need to spend some time performing drills specifically designed to get them more coordinated and fluid on their feet. You can have a car with the most powerful motor in the world, yet if it’s got flat tires it’s not going anywhere! The same thing goes with an athlete and his feet. You can be a PERFECT athlete from the ankles up but your feet are what get power into the ground. One thing that can cause this problem is today’s popular footwear. Many athletes wear shoes that are too heavy, too big, and too supportive for them ever to learn to move efficiently on their feet. Although shoe companies probably mean well, science has determined that highly supportive footwear actually hinders performance. Additionally, there is actually more stress absorbed into the foot with shoes then without. The quietest and smoothest athlete I ever saw on his feet was a guy who grew up one of 15 children in a poor rural area in Louisiana. He was so smooth and quiet on his feet he could run full speed across nails and you wouldn’t hear a thing. I asked him how he got so light on his feet and he replied, “Oh, when I was growing up I never had shoes so I just learned to live without them. In fact I still don’t like wearing them.” Point taken. ** Some shoe companies have now caught on to this problem and are now offering “functional” footwear that come fairly close to mimicking bare feet. The Nike “Free” is an example of such a shoe.
One other thing that can contribute to heavy feet is lack of mobility in the calf region. Put your hands straight out in front of you with your feet shoulder width apart and squat. If your heels come up off the ground your calves are tight. If that’s the case I recommend, at the very least, you stretch your calves morning and night for 20 seconds. A sample Calf Stretch
Of course, the most obvious thing that can cause heavy feet is lack of simple movement efficiency and coordination. In today’s day and age kids and athletes tend to spend too much time sitting around on the computer and playing Madden instead of being outside moving around playing games. There are no longer any physical education
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classes in most elementary schools. The result is a world chock full of heavy-footed athletes who have never learned how to carry out basic movement patterns on their feet. Activities like hopscotch and jump rope that were commonplace in every elementary school 15 years ago are now almost instinct. If you think you need specific work on getting lighter on your feet it’s really simple to fix. Work on getting more proficient up on the balls of your feet!! Here’s a sample drill: Simply draw a line on the ground or take a piece of rope about 12 inches long. Stand on one foot and bounce back and forth over the line for 10 seconds while trying to keep your plant leg straight and your hips high. Then go front to back. Repeat with the other leg. Do that drill every day and you’ll be well on your way towards getting more efficient on your feet. From basic drills like those that establish proper coordination of the feet while in a basic posture, you could move into hops done up on the balls of your feet while maintaining a squat position, which develops the ability to coordinate your feet with your hips. From there you could move towards lower altitude drop and depth jump variations, which help develop the ability to deal with high forces. An example of an altitude drop is dropping off a box while landing nice and quiet up on the balls of your feet. ** Cueing an athlete to get in the habit of moving up on the balls of the feet can also be useful
Hip Running vs Knee Running Yet another concept that ties in nicely with the above differentiation between “toe runners” versus “heel runners” is that of running through the hips vs running through the knees. Some people run through their hips and some people run through their knees. The observations and differences between hip runners and knee runners are exactly the same as toe runners and heel runners. Knee runners tend to run on their heels with a lot of knee bend, lots of quadriceps activation, and lots of noise. Hip runners run through their glutes and hamstrings, are much smoother and quieter, and appear as if they’re more up on the balls of their feet. The glutes are the strongest muscles in the body and an efficient athlete will always primarily move through the hips. The thighs, calves, and feet simply serve to transfer force from the hips down into the ground. Problems that can prevent a person from utilizing the hips effectively can occur for the following reasons: A: One is weak in the posterior chain and simply does not utilize the glutes effectively as prime movers. B: One is overly tight in the quadriceps and hip flexors. C: One is weak in the hamstrings and thus the leg buckles behind the knee at impact and does not transfer force into the ground effectively. D: One lacks proper coordination with their feet. (AKA – heavy footed)
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One drill I like to use to teach people the concept of running through the hips, is the above mentioned wall slide drill. Lean up against a wall, rise up on the balls of your feet, and elevate your hips as high as you can. From this position, simply take strides trying not to bend your knees much at impact, and look to feel the movement coming from your glutes and hamstrings.
Other Assessments A couple of other assessments you’ll want to check that can influence the above mentioned problems are the mobility of the major hip flexors as well as the ability to activate the glutes.** When the hip flexors are tight the glutes will be inhibited and won’t activate optimally, which means you won’t be able to get as much power out of them as you could. Many people have what some have termed glute amnesia, or inability to properly activate and utilize the glutes. Since the glutes are the strongest muscle group in the lower body we definitely want to optimize their function. Here is how you can check for tight hip flexors: Lie on your back with both legs extended. Keep a neutral spine and bring one knee all the way up to your chest while you keep the other leg straight and the foot of the off leg planted on the floor. If the knee of the down leg rotates out or if the foot of that leg comes off the ground, your hip flexors are tight.
Mobile Hip Flexors
Hip Flexor Stretch
**The aforementioned rectus femoris also functions as a hip flexor.
Next, you’ll want to assess your ability to activate your glutes. Lie on your stomach with your legs extended. Lift one leg up off the ground. Get someone to keep an eye on your glutes, your lower back, and your leg as you do this drill. As soon as the leg starts to move up the person watching should be able to observe the glute tightening up. Faulty glute activation can be identified by either delayed or absent activation of the glute, or excessive arching of the lower back.
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Glute Activation Drill One simple thing everyone can do to help improve their ability to get the most out of their glutes is to get in the habit of contracting the glutes at heel strike when walking around periodically throughout the day. It’s a very simple habit that can go a long way.
What About The Balance Between The Hamstrings and Glutes? I talked about the balance between the posterior chain and the quadriceps, but what about the balance between the muscles of the hamstrings and glutes? It is fairly common to see athletes with glutes that are too strong for their hamstrings. The way you can identify this characteristic is to watch the feet. An athlete whose glutes are dominating the hamstrings will also run back on the heels, but the key characteristic is their feet will often turn out when they run (and often when they walk).
Feet turned out Athletes who fit this description will also almost ALWAYS have overly dominant quadriceps as well. The solution for this problem would typically be to get away from glute and quadriceps activity, mobilize those muscles, and strengthen the hamstrings. That means exercises like glute ham raises with the feet in a neutral position would form the bulk of strength work for this type of athlete. Supplemental drills like straight leg sprints and bounds could also be utilized. Also pay attention to the flexibility of the quadriceps, hip flexors, and glutes.
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Glute Stretch
Glute-Ham Raise**
**Although touted as a glute-ham-gastrocnemius movement, the glute-ham raise is primarily a hamstring movement.
Testing The Psoas The next thing you' ll want to test is the strength of the psoas muscle, which is one of the major hip flexors. The psoas is the hip flexor muscle responsible for moving the hip past 90 degrees, or bringing the knee up to the chest. If the psoas is weak you will tend to substitute hip flexion with lumbar flexion. In other words, you' ll tend to round your back a lot when you move or when you run. You will also be more succeptible to strains of the rectus femoris muscle when sprinting, which is fairly common and is also known as a quad pull. Anyone who has suffered one of these knows how annoying they can be. A strained quad once cost yours truly a starting spot in jr. high football. Here is how you test the psoas: Stand with your back flat against a wall. Be careful not to let your back round. Lift one knee up towards your chest and release. Inability to keep the knee above 90 degrees for at least 10 seconds indicates a weak psoas. Cramps, forward or backward leaning, and large shifts of the hip to one side or the other also indicate a failed test. Fortunately, one can strengthen the psoas by engaging in the actual testing protocol itself for a couple of sets a few days per week.
Psoas Strength Test
Evaluating Core Stability In my opinion, the majority of isolated core training for various parts of the “abs” is over-rated and often unnecessary due to the fact that the abdominals will tend to get as strong as they need to simply by virtue of one training with basic whole body movements such as squats, deadlifts, split squats and the like. Having said that, in order to engage in those exercises safely as well as help ensure proper movement, one thing many people could use more of is a baseline level of core stability. The body’s ‘core’ includes the 46
trunk, pelvis, hips, abdominal muscles and small muscles along the spinal column. Core stability is the interaction of strength and coordination of these muscles during activity. Core stability adapts posture and muscle activity to ensure the spine is stabilized and provides a firm base to support both powerful and very basic movement of the extremities. If there is lack of stability not only is movement faulty but injury can result. To evaluate core stability use a bridge, a side bridge, and a back extension.
Bridge
Side Bridge
Back Extension
You should be able to hold a normal bridge with a neutral spine for about 2 minutes. You should be able to hold a side bridge for 65% of the time you can hold a back extension. If you fail the tests, simply engage in the actual tests a couple of days per week for a couple of sets until you can complete as required.
The Execution Of The 40-yard Dash As you well know, many sporting coaches and professionals use the 40-yard dash to evaluate an athlete’s speed. However, most athletes do not understand how to start or race the 40-yard dash. Team sport athletes rarely take the time to work on an effective start and the proper way to run it. The 40 is an extremely short test that doesn’t allow much margin for error. A simple mistake can cost you dearly in terms of speed. A fast time in the 40 can easily be made or lost with a good or poor start. Thus, for an improved 40, you must look to master your start. The first phase to examine is the start stance. 1. Step up to the start line, aligning the toes of both feet on the edge of the line. 2. Have your stronger leg, usually the leg you jump off of, in front. For most athletes, if you are right-handed, your left leg will be your stronger leg. I’ll describe the start assuming you’re right handed. 3. To begin the setup, place your left foot a few inches directly behind your right foot. The front of your left foot will be about 16 inches behind the start line. 4. Kneel down, placing your right knee directly next to the ball of your left foot. Keep your right knee and your left foot roughly 6 to 8 inches apart. 47
5. Place your right hand on the start line, spreading your fingers wide and arching your palm so as to keep it off the ground. Keep your left arm back. 6. Your weight should be balanced with the majority being supported by your legs but some being supported by your left foot. The power at the start comes from your legs, not your arm. Don’t lean too far forward so that too much weight is on your arm. 7. Your left leg should be bent at a 90-degree angle. 8. Your right leg should be bent at a 135-degree angle. 9. Your right hand should be on the ground and extended up on the fingertips with the fingers far apart. Spreading your fingers will give you more stability. The left arm should rest on the thigh of the right leg or in a position behind the body as if in a running position. Assume a relaxed position with most of your bodyweight on the legs and a small amount of your weight on the extended front arm. 10. Relax your body and visualize a successful start. Explode forward off your lead leg and don’t raise your head too quickly. Keep your head in line with your torso.
The most important thing you can do for your start is practice it. It takes time to develop an effective start and it’s probably not something you’re gonna learn overnight. The most important thing you want to do is get in the habit of really extending and exploding out of the gate so that it becomes 2nd nature. Ideally, you wanna be covering a lot of ground over your first 5-7 steps. Some people say the first 5-10 yards should be covered in a given number of steps, such as three steps for the first 5 yards and 5 steps over 10 yards. This is a good general recommendation for a typical high level athlete like a D1 football player, however, when considering the differences in power, leg length and structural characteristics between different people, this recommendation obviously can’t serve everyone and can actually lead to bad habits for those who try to follow it and don’t have the structure or the power to do it. Over-striding is a common problem during the start and occurs when people try to cover too much ground. If you over-stride your heels will be contacting the ground first and your torso will rise too soon. Your steps should fall where they may based on your explosiveness and your structural characteristics. It’s best not to try and force anything unnaturally. A couple of good drills that will help develop good starting mechanics are sprints starting from a pushup position and forward dives onto a mat out of a sprinting stance.
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These drills inherently help develop proper starting mechanics and don’t require any conscious input. **Another good way to grasp correct mechanics for the start is to simply sprint up short hills from a standing position.
The Race When you run the 40 you should accelerate steadily from the initial drive off the line all the way through to the finish. Aim to relax as much as possible throughout the entire race. It is important to accelerate smoothly from start to finish. Analysis of sprinting has shown that you can’t run at your very top speed for much more than one second. When you watch the world' s great 100-meter sprinters it always appears that they hit another gear in the last 20 meters and blow everyone else away. Not so. What they are actually doing is maintaining their top speed longer. Maintaining top speed is strictly a function of relaxing and using smooth, fluid sprinting mechanics. When running a 40 many athletes think they have to run at maximum speed over the entire distance. They come out of the gate and immediately raise their head and look straight up. They hit top speed 20 yards out, tighten up, and start to slow down 25 yards in. The more efficient approach is to accelerate smoothly over the entire distance in order to reach the top speed towards the end of the race. Your fastest times will tend be recorded when you feel yourself accelerating through the finish line. Drive out from the start position, keep your head in line with your body, and gradually and smoothly relax and come up into full running position. You must learn to stay relaxed.
Starting From Blocks The start I described above assumes you are starting without the aid of blocks. If you compete in track and have the benefit of using blocks, the technique is a bit different. Here are some general recommendations for a block start: Foot placement and block settings: The standard placement is to have the front block two foot lengths back from the line and the back foot three foot lengths back. The front block should always be 1 notch lower than the back. The upper body: When you drive out, the leading hand should be the same as the forward leg. Hand width is determined by strength. A wider spread requires more strength. A good place to start is to place the hands under the shoulders and work from there. The shoulders should be slightly forward of hands on the “take your mark” command. On the “set” command simply lift your butt straight up. Technique: The eyes should look down so that the spine, neck, and back of head all form a straight line. On the “go” command, the only cue you really need is to think of clearing the lead hand out. If you pump the arms correctly, the legs will follow. To clear the lead hand, just flick the hand up at eye level. Don' t think power, just make like a cat trying to catch a fly.
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Troubleshooting Running Mechanics The Start: Other than over-striding and raising the head up too soon, the most common problem that occurs in the start is lack of hip extension (a.k.a. - Posterior chain activation). When you lack hip extension power, you will cover little ground per stride and it will look like your feet are on the ground at almost the same time. When an athlete shows good hip extension they cover a lot of ground and their push off leg will form a straight line from the ground to the head.
Lack of hip extension is typically caused by lack of power in the posterior chain (glutes and hams). To cure a hip extension problem, anything that increases power in these muscle groups can be utilized. This includes strength movements like deadlifts, reverse hypers, and split squats, as well as explosive strength movements like sled pulling. Supplementary plyometric exercises like single leg bounding and dives onto a mat out of a sprint stance can be utilized. Specific movements like starts from a pushup position, falling starts, and hill starts are also of value. Arm Action. If you run with tense arms practice loose, swinging movements from a standing position. Swing from the shoulder and keep the arms relaxed. Body Lean. Your body should have a slight lean in the direction that you are running but this lean comes from the ground and not from the waist. The lean is a result of displacing the center of gravity in the direction you are running. Trying to lean too far forward by bending at the waist interferes with the correct mechanics of sprinting. Collapsing Heels: Running back on the heels often indicates lack of basic movement efficiency and/or quadriceps dominance. This can often be cured by emphasizing basic movements like single leg line hops as well as power movements such as depth drops off a box. Running With The Feet Turned Out: Running with the feet turned out indicates overly dominant glutes and quadriceps and/or weak hamstrings. Over-Striding. Don’t reach and over-stride to try to increase stride-length. Keep your hips high and keep your strides under you. Plant against the ground naturally and let the foot land under your center of gravity. Any excessive placement of your foot in front of your center of gravity will cause you to slow down.
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Under-Striding. Trying to move you feet too fast will cause you to practically run fast in place and you won’t cover much ground. Someone who naturally under-strides will often lack relative lower body power - particularly in the posterior chain. The solution to this problem is the same solution that cures a faulty start - build hip extension power. Relaxation. Don’t try to power your way through a race. To run fast, you must stay relaxed.
Setting up a routine Alright, now I am going to talk a little bit about setting up a routine. First of all, let' s talk about volume.
Volume How much speed training is enough per session or per week? How much is too much? There is quite a bit of variance in the recommendations you’ll find in this area. I’ve seen sprint routines calling for enough sprint volume to kill an elephant and I’ve also seen routines calling for 5 minutes of sprints per week. I get a lot of questions like "Ok, how many sprints do I need to run for session and how often?" It' s really very simple. To understand my volume recommendations it helps to understand how improvements in speed occur. Gains in running speed can occur in 2 ways. These are: 1. Gains in inter-muscular coordination- This is otherwise known as simple coordination and is highly relevant to improvements in movement efficiency. With gains in inter-muscular coordination, the various muscle groups involved in the sprint cycle become more proficient at carrying out the movement. Think of a youngster first learning to walk or run. Initially, their arms and legs are flailing all over the place and they have a hard time coordinating their movements. With practice they become more proficient until one day they just get it. If the coordination is lacking, one will initially get faster just from the improvements in coordination that occur as they practice running fast. It should be noted that one can only gain so much from increased coordination. This is particularly true of gross primal movement patterns like sprinting, jumping, punching and the like, which really don' t require a whole lot of technique in the first place. Once a person develops a certain level of coordination in a movement they don' t need to focus near as much on it. It’s kind’ve like riding a bike. Once you learn how to do it you don’t forget. I haven’t been on a bike in over 3 years but I’m sure I could get on one tomorrow and be just fine. Muscle memory is very real. As an example of how this relates to running fast I’ve known several people who have gotten totally away from any sprinting activity for periods as long as 6 months or more at a time. When they do get back on the track they' ll initially feel a little discombobulated, yet within a couple of weeks their technique and coordination will be right back where it was before. More on that in a minute. 2. Gains in intramuscular coordination – The 2nd way gains in running speed can improve is through gains in intra-muscular coordination. This is what I often refer to as 51
horsepower. With gains in intra-muscular coordination, each muscle group involved in the movement becomes more proficient at generating force in the movement. Activities like weight training work by boosting this aspect. So, like I mentioned earlier, you can get faster by improving your ability to carry out and coordinate a movement pattern, or you can get faster by putting more force behind that movement pattern. It should be noted that gains in coordination generally always occur prior to gains in horsepower. One first learns to carry out the movement pattern effectively and then learns to put more force behind the same movement pattern.
Frequency As far as frequency goes, gains in respond better to increased frequency. This is why when a baby is first learning to walk he or she doesn’t get up and try to do it just once every few days. No - he practices constantly. Running is the same way and so is any other type of movement or skill. A sprinting frequency of 3-7 times per week is optimal for gains in coordination . The more quality exposures you get when learning a movement pattern, the faster you pick up the technique required to efficiently carry out the movement pattern. In contrast, gains in horsepower respond well to lower frequency with much more intensity per session. In this respect, gains in intramuscular coordination for a sprinter are much like gains in strength for an advanced lifter. Think about that. A very strong powerlifter will often only train a lift once every 7 to 10 days. His technique for the lift is well developed and he doesn' t need endless repetition practicing the various lifts. Rather, his time is spent stimulating and strengthening the muscles involved in the powerlift. After a hardcore workout it' ll often take his muscles and nervous system a week or more to recover. Because he' s already spent years perfecting his technique, he need not worry about losing any technical prowess not hitting his lifts every other day. He can simply focus on getting stronger in the various muscle groups overall and then apply that increased strength to his powerlifts. The same sort' ve thing can also be observed in sprinting. This is why you can take an active group of young athletes off the track and throw them in the weight room for 3 months and get them really strong. Providing they maintain their mobility and leanness you can take them back out on the track and within 3 sessions most of them will be setting PRs in the sprints. They didn' t lose much technique from not sprinting because it’s something they’ve probably been doing since they were kids. However, they did gain a lot of strength, which they were then able to transfer to the sprints. This is one good reason why one need not spend endless hours all year around out on the track sprinting, providing they’ve reached a baseline level of proficiency in their ability to move efficiently when they run. Sprinting is a simple gross movement pattern and, providing one has at some point learned how to perform it with some proficiency, ** they can often get away from it and focus on the strength qualities that will make them run fast and then transfer that increased strength to the track. So, you use frequency to learn. You use intensity to enhance what’s learned. 52
** In this day and age, it isn’t a given that young athletes have ever learned how to move and run correctly. Kids often do so much sitting around they never learn how to run. Watch a group of teenagers engaged in a sports practice and it’s not uncommon to see arms and legs flailing all over the place, heels stomping, and an assortment of other indicators that tell that a person has never learned how to move with a whole lot of proficiency. This type of athlete would need to spend some time focusing more on movement skills.
Maintaining Movement Proficiency vs Improving Movement Proficiency It takes a lot less volume to maintain a skill, movement pattern, or strength quality then it does to improve a quality. In general, it only takes 1/3 the volume to maintain a given movement pattern as it does to improve that quality. In other words, you might become more coordinated by sprinting 3 times per week, but once you' ve made those improvements, you can maintain the majority of them sprinting one time per week. ** Activities like football and soccer practice or games, or anything else involving sprinting at a high intensity, can count
as training.
Rest Intervals Regardless of whether you' re training for increased coordination or increased horsepower, gains will occur much more readily if each and every sprint or movement you do is performed in a fresh state. This means you should take a full recovery between sprints so that fatigue does not interfere with muscular recruitment. Many people think the way to get faster and more explosive is to perform multiple sprints with short rests to the point where they’re huffing and puffing and the muscles are really burning. This type of training definitely hurts, requires a lot of mental toughness, and may improve conditioning, or the number of sprints you can run in a fatigued state, yet it won’t do a thing for the speed of your fresh sprints. Think about it. If a powerlifter wants to increase his maximum bench press how does he do it? Does he train with light weights and very short rest intervals to the point where his muscles are burning and cramping? Or does he lift really heavy weights for low reps with long rest intervals so that he can be as fresh as possible for each lift? The way to increase your speed is to train exactly like you would if you were training for maximum strength. Sprint over fairly short distances (10 to 60 yards) and use long rest intervals. Trying to train for maximum speed by running in a state of fatigue is like trying to increase your bench press by training with foo-foo weights and short rest intervals. It simply doesn’t work! As a general recommendation, you should rest 1 minute for every 10 yards you sprint. So, if you sprint 10 yards, you' d rest 1 minute. If you sprint 40 yards you' d rest 4 minutes. To avoid fatigue interfering with quality work, this also means that a speed session should be stopped prior to, or as soon as, you start to slow down on your sprint times in the workout. That generally means a speed workout will not exceed 500 yards per session and will often be as short as 100 yards. Personally,
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when I made my best gains in the 40 yard dash, each workout consisted of 3 to 5 all out sprints and that' s it. Nothing complicated about it!
More On Volume and Training Frequency So, when training to improve running speed and not just training to improve conditioning, you should terminate a sprint session prior to, or as soon as, your performance starts do decline during a workout. The same goes for any other movement skill or explosive movement you' re trying to improve. Wanna improve your agility? Your jumping? Your footwork? Your martial arts kicks? Your gymnastics ability? Then treat all those just like you would sprints. Perform a lot of quality reps with good recovery and stop a session as soon as fatigue begins to interfere with performance. It will work for the acquistion and improvement of any movement or skill you’re trying to improve. That' s the simplest way to monitor volume you' ll ever hear and it' s also highly effective. The reason it’s so effective is because these gains are mostly all neurological in nature and making neural improvements requires fresh exposures. Now, as mentioned above, when training for increased coordination, movement proficiency, and skill, you can and should train more often. A frequency of 3-5 days per week or even every day works very well for coordination and movement acquisition for something like a sprint. The more fresh exposures you give yourself to a given skill or movement, the more proficient you' re gonna get at carrying out that movement. As long as fatigue is not accumulating on a day-to-day basis and as long as your performance is not deteriorating on a day-to-day basis, you can train as often as possible.
Frequency When Training For Horsepower When I refer to horsepower I' m referring to things like weight training and any plyometric training other than very basic low intensity movement efficiency drills like jump rope. In these higher intensity tasks, you' re trying to improve the amount of “oomph” that you put behind your movements. In other words, squats and depth jumps don’t improve the coordination of your sprint stride, they improve the amount of force you put behind each stride. Prescribing frequency when training for horsepower is a little more difficult. Why is this? Well, the main reason is because most of the things associated with boosting horsepower tend to be highly intense activities that tend to causes a significant amount of whole body central nervous system fatigue or muscular micro-trauma. Either of these will require recovery time. How do you tell if something is causing whole body fatigue and/or micro-trauma? Very simple: If you perform a task today and can't come back the very next day and repeat the task at the same level, your body is not recovered. I went in the gym yesterday and did a fairly heavy squat session. I could not come back and repeat that same session tomorrow with the same weights. In fact, I' d probably have to wait 4-5 days before I could repeat that same squat session. If I were to do some depth jumps tomorrow those depth jumps would induce enough fatigue that I probably wouldn' t be able to come back the next day and jump as well either. I wouldn't have to 54
rest 4-5 days like I would with the squats, but I probably would have to rest 48 hours or so. The more micro-trauma (muscular damage) that you induce in any given workout the longer it' s going to take to recover. This is why weight training tends to require the most recovery time. However, nervous system fatigue can be induced even without microtrauma. The depth jumps don' t induce much micro-trauma yet still drain the system enough that they require some recovery time. One other very important point: Things like basic sprinting and jumping, when performed at a high level, can also require significant recovery time. An elite level sprinter may only be able to sprint maximally 2-3 days per week. If he tried to sprint at full speed every day he’d most likely find his times from one day to the next would get slower and slower as he builds up fatigue. But allow him a day of rest between maximum sprints and he’s fine. However, a grade schooler can sprint every day with no day to day deterioration in performance. Why is this? Since the elite sprinter is much more advanced shouldn' t he be able to sprint more often? You would think so. So what' s going on? Well, the body can double, triple, or quadruple the capacity to generate stress (increase performance), yet the capacity to recover from that stress does not improve nearly as much from baseline. The elite level sprinter is putting out a TON of force when he sprints and, in comparison to the lower level athlete, puts a lot more stress on his body and nervous system. Have you ever wondered why pro athletes or sprinters tear and strain hamstrings left and right yet you never see a single person in a class full of kindergardners have any such problems? They' re simply not able to create enough stress to challenge their bodies. It’s like the difference between a thoroughbred and a camel or a funny car and a Honda civic. The thoroughbred and funny car are so strong and powerful they’ll blow out if you try to run them full bore all the time. The camel and Honda Civic don’t operate such a high intensity and thus can be ridden further and more often. You see the same thing in lifting. A very strong powerlifter with an 800-pound deadlift might only be ABLE to deadlift once every 7 to 10 days without any performance deterioration yet when he was a beginning lifter only deadlifting 200 he could probably lift maximal weights every other day. The bigger weights he' s lifting simply require more recovery time because over time he’s turned himself into more of a thoroughbred. An explosive athlete is the same way. The point to take home is this: If you perform a task today and can' t come back the very next day and repeat the exact same task, you need some recovery time. Activities such as heavy weight training may require 2-7 days recovery while activities such as intense plyometric and speed will typically require 48 hours recovery. It’s generally best to allow 48-hours rest between any highly intense activities for a given muscle group. So, if I did a heavy squat session today I wouldn’t wanna come back tomorrow and perform depth jumps or sprints. I’d wanna give my legs and my nervous system at least 48 hours rest. For that reason, for those athletes who have advanced past the coordination stage, it’s often best to put any activities that require significant recovery time all on the same training day. So, instead of performing weight training one day, high intensity plyometrics the next day, and sprinting the next day, you’d do them all on
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the same day with 48 hours rest in between workouts. On the days in between your higher intensity workouts you could either rest or engage in lower intensity activities. Activities that could generally be considered “High-Intensity” activities would be the following: 1. Strength work (anything above 80% of 1rm for lower body and "whole body"movements such as deadlifts, cleans etc.) 2. Maximum effort lower body bodybuilding work (8-12 reps to failure) 3. Maximum effort speed work with full recovery between reps 4. Maximum effort plyometric work (depth jumps) 5. Maximum effort agility and deceleration work will full recovery between reps 6. Maximum effort conditioning work (ie. Timed max effort intervals) 7. Martial arts or boxing sparring and heavy bag 9. Any activity performed with heightened and competitive emotional intensity (competitions) 10. Any activity performed under the influence of artificial stimulants (ephedrine, various energizing supplements) 11. For advanced athletes only - any activity involving PR type performances Activities that could generally be considered “Low-Intensity” activities would be the following: 1. Aerobic work 2. Sub-maximal conditioning work 3. Dynamic warm-ups and form running drills 4. Sub-maximal bodybuilding or upper body isolation bodybuilding work 5. Sub-maximal speed work (runs less than 80% top speed) 6. Easy plyometric work (basic uni-lateral and bi-lateral hops etc.) 7. Footwork drills (agility ladders and dot drills) 8. Jump rope 9. Martial arts kata, mitt work, or shadowboxing These activities that don' t induce much if any fatigue and can be repeated on a daily basis if desired. A sample weekly split encompassing these principles might look something like this: Mon: Lower body weight training, sprints, high intensity plyometrics Tues: Upper body weight training, low intensity movement work (jump rope, agility ladders, basic movement efficiency drills) Wed: off Thurs: Lower body weight training, sprints, high-intensity plyometrics
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Fri: Low intensity movement work Sat: Upper Body weight training, sprints, high intensity plyometrics With that set-up you’re allowing your lower body 48-hours rest between high-intensity bouts of activity.
Distances? What about distances? This can vary depending upon your unique needs but generally speaking an athlete should spend the majority of their time sprinting distances that will actually enhance their speed and acceleration abilities. For most athletes I consider distances of 0 to 30 yards acceleration, 30 to 50 yards max speed, and distances over 50 yards speed endurance. That means the large majority of individual reps should be made up of distances from 10 to 50 yards. If you’re a team sport athlete there’s little reason to sprint further than 40 yards unless you’re sprinting as a form of conditioning work. Additionally, for optimum gains, I always recommend a short to long approach to speed development. In other words, develop your speed and acceleration first over shorter distances and then extend that speed out over longer distances. If you were interested in improving your 40-yard dash you’d ideally start off with the majority of your focus spent improving your 10 and 20 yard sprints and work your way out towards 40 yards.
Making Things Easy I will give some highly detailed examples of sprint workouts later, but a speed workout need not require a masters degree in advanced calculus to be effective. Simpler is often better. A sprint workout can be something as simple as going out to the track or field twice per week and, after an easy warm-up, running repeat 30 yard sprints one day and repeat flying 20 yard sprints a few days later. Rest fully between each repetition, time each repetition, and stop the workout as soon as the times start to decline. It' s as simple as that. A sample template that has been used with good success for off-season youth speed and athletic development programs might look something like this: Frequency: Alternate Between Workout A & Workout B on an every other day basis 3 times per week.
Workout A: Dynamic mobility: (see mobility section) Speed drills: high knees, skips, straight leg sprints etc.
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Short linear sprints or sled sprints: 10' s, 20' s, and 30' s Plyometric work: hops, jumps, box jumps, knees to chest tuck jumps, etc. Speed lift: Jump squat variation, snatch, or clean Lower body lift: Squat, deadlift, Front squat, split squat, lunge Upper Body push: Bench press, push press, incline press Upper body pull: pullup, row Core movement: plank, medicine ball circuit, woodchop, side bend, swiss ball crunch, etc. Conditioning: intervals, shuttle runs
Workout B: Dynamic mobility: See mobility section Speed drills: High knees, skips, straight leg sprints, etc. Lateral movement work: Shuffle, crossover, various agility drills Lateral plyometric work: Various hops and jumps moving side to side Speed Lift: Jump squat variation, snatch, or clean Lower body lift: Squat, Deadlift, front squat, split squat, lunge Upper body push: Bench press, push press, incline press Upper body pull: Pullup, row Core: Plank, medicine ball circuit, woodchop, side bend, swiss ball crunch, etc. Conditioning: intervals or shuttle runs Static Stretching: Stretches for quadriceps, hip flexors, hamstrings, glutes, calves, lats, pecs Simply pick one exercise from each category and have at it. All in all you' re looking at about 2 hours of total work including warm-ups, stretching, and conditioning. In an
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optimal environment, you' d be able to split things up a bit more, yet with large groups this can work very effectively. A sample daily workout might look like this: 1. Dynamic mobility (see mobility section) 2. High knees, skips, straight leg sprints - 25 yards x 3 3. Sled sprints- (using light load) - 3-4 x 25 yards 4. Sled marching- (using bodyweight)- 2-3 x 25 yards 5. Single leg linear hops onto a low box- 2-3 x 10-15 seconds per set 6. Hang Snatch- 4 x 3 7. Squat- 3 x 5 8. Incline press- 4 x 5 9. Pullup- 2 x max reps per set 10. Hi to low cable woodchop - 2 x 12-15 11. 100-yard shuttle runs at 70% max effort- 8 sets with 45 seconds rest between each. Keep in mind this type of template would be ideal for youth who could benefit more from boosting the inter-muscular coordination aspects of their performance. They might need quite a bit of basic coordination and movement efficiency work, therefore the total volume of speed, lateral movement, and plyometric work would be rather high.
Year Around Training? When discussing training, assuming you’re a team sport athlete, the volume and frequency of specific sprint work will vary depending upon the time of year. In the preseason and during the season itself, there is often no need or time for specific sprint work as simply participating in practices and the sport itself will give plenty of exposure to speed and acceleration work. As a general recommendation, during the off-season, unless an athlete is significantly deficient in them, both speed work and lateral movement work (agility), sessions should be performed only once or twice per week. Here is an example of what a yearly plan might look like for a football player. January – Mid-May (focus: Strength and muscle mass accumulation) Mon: Lower body lifting Tues: Upper body lifting Thurs: Low volume speed and movement work (speed, agility), lower body lifting Fri: Upper body lifting Late May – Late June (focus: Continue strength and power development – begin conditioning) Mon: Speed training, Upper body lifting Wed: Speed training, lower body lifting Fri: Upper body lifting
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Sat: Conditioning (using football agility drills with short rest intervals) July – Mid-August (focus: Improve conditioning – Maintain strength, speed, and explosiveness) Mon: Upper body lifting, anaerobic conditioning using sprint intervals Tues: Lower body lifting Wed: Anaerobic conditioning using football agility drills Thurs: Upper Body lifting Friday: Anaerobic conditioning Mid-August – November (focus: maintain strength) Wed: Full body lifting Sun: Full body lifting
Mobility Training… Now it' s time to talk a little more about specific mobility training. Sporting movements are obviously dynamic, or performed with movement. If you don’t have the mobility necessary to carry out some of these movements you risk faulty movement efficiency and perhaps even strained and/or torn muscles. Ever seen what happens when you take a strong so called muscle-bound bodybuilder type and throw him out in a flag football game? Strained hip flexors and a host of other injuries are the norm. What most people call a muscle-bound state isn’t caused from excessive muscle, it’s caused by lack of mobility. I like to think of mobility training as lubrication for the moving parts of an athlete - similar to the oil in the motor of a car or the grease that lubricates various working parts. If you run a car without oil or run a wheel without grease you get all sorts of clanking, squeaking, and other annoying problems. It' s the same way for an athlete without mobility. Lack of mobility causes movement to be restricted and you get all sorts of squeaks, clanks and other assorted problems, often involving injury. Mobility training is like grease or oil that helps parts run smoother. There are 2 types of stretching that I recommend. Dynamic and static. In a dynamic stretch, you' re simply carrying out some of the movements that occur in sport over a greater range of motion. You' re integrating mobility into the actual movements that occur when you move. To maintain and/or gain the mobility necessary to move and run correctly, I recommend each workout can be preceeded by a dynamic warm-up that includes exercises for the hip flexors, calves, glutes, hams, quadriceps, and lower back. The purpose of the warm-up is to make gains in active range of motion, provide a proper neural stimulus, and obviously get your muscles warmed up and ready to go for the more intense work to come. Go through each movement for 1-2 sets of 8-10 reps per move. There are countless dynamic mobility exercises but what follows are some that I prefer:
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Deep twisting lunge
Calf stretch
Cross under lunge
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Pullback butt-kick walking forward
Straight leg kick moving forward (keep leg straight)
Sumo squat
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Walk forward elbow to foot
Hurdle duck under (use real or imaginary hurdle)
What About Static Stretching? Static stretching is the traditional type of stretching where you take a muscle into a stretched position and hold the stretch without movement. Static stretching is useful to help relax tight muscles and may help to reform tight tissue, yet does little to integrate the acquired range of motion into the desired movements, which is why I recommend both static and dynamic stretching. I generally recommend you perform static stretching if you need to further address certain mobility problems you' ve identified. These include the aforementioned tight hip flexors, tight quadriceps/rectus femoris, tight glutes, or tight calves. Those are gonna be the common problems that might need some extra mobility work. One thing you generally don’t want to do is static stretch prior to your workout or it might interfere with your strength by relaxing muscles that you don’t want relaxed. In my opinion, the best time to engage in static stretching is right after your workout, first thing in the morning, and right after you get out of a warm shower. If you have the time or inclination, you can also perform static stretching periodically throughout the day. It need not be overly complicated. Simply stretch the muscle to a point where you feel a stretch and hold the stretch for 2 sets of 20 seconds.
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Sprinting Form Drills Form running drills help to establish correct movement patterns and also serve as good general warm-ups. One needn’t participate in endless amounts of drills, yet establishing mistake free movement patterns may help to eliminate wasted energy that does not contribute to forward movement. High knees. Run while lifting your knees up to your hip joints and then drive them down in a fast and constant pace. Butt-kicks. While moving forward in a slow jog, kick your heels up to your buttocks. Your upper leg should not move much. Try to place emphasis on allowing your heel to come up to your butt. Skips. Skip with your lead knee coming up and down with a rhythmic cadence. The emphasis is on decreasing your ground contact time by hitting the ground with the ball of the foot and getting off as quickly as possible. In turn, the effort on the ground should bounce your leg up into the high knee position. Strides. A stride is just an easy run at a speed in between a jog and a sprint. They are used as a warm-up drill and the idea is to focus on running form while preparing the body for the more intense work to come in the workout. Buildups. Start from a standing start into a slow run, concentrating on good running form. Gradually build up speed until you at nearly full speed at 40 yards. Once full speed is achieved, gradually slow down over the final 20 yards.
Speed and Acceleration Drills Starts. In the following programs I give, you’ll see a variety of starts: Starts from a push-up position, falling starts, starts from a 2-point start, and starts from a 3-point start. Most are self-explanatory. A 2-point start is done from a standard wide receiver stance (2 limbs on the ground). A 3-point start is done with one hand on the ground. A start from a pushup position is done with you starting from a push-up position. A falling start is done out of a 2-pt. stance with you falling forward. Simply let yourself fall forward. As you lose your balance you accelerate out. The idea is to develop explosive running starts and work on your initial acceleration coming out of the hole from a variety of positions. Flying 10’s 20’s and 30’s. Set up a course with the 30-yard point marked. Start off slow and gradually pick up speed over 30 yards. By the time you reach the 30-yard mark you should be running at nearly full speed (flying). Continue this full speed sprinting for 10,20, or 30 more yards. Do not accelerate too fast or too slow; it’s like a buildup except you should be running full speed at 30 yards.
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Accelerations. From a jog gradually stride in smoothly and approach a predetermined acceleration point 10-20 yards away. Once you hit the predetermined spot, accelerate as fast as possible over the required distance.
Plyometric Training The main purpose of plyometric drills is to enhance the ability to better express strength, develop reactive rebound type strength**, and improve your capacity to use your tendons as movement generators. As described earlier, the foundation for great plyometric efficiency is a base of strength, so that the muscles can lock up and absorb force. Plyometric drills enhance the absorption, stabilization, and release of force that occurs with movement. They enable you to express your strength in a high-velocity specific manner. Sprinting itself is very plyometric in nature. For this reason, anyone doing more than a modicum of sprinting doesn’t typically need to utilize a ton of plyometric drills. **Plyometric strength is also termed elastic strength, reactive strength, reversal strength, and rebound strength. Don’t let the terminology confuse you! They all mean the same thing.
When engaging in a bout of plyometric training, it’s not necessary to use a ton of various plyo drills in order to have an effective workout. People tend to overcomplicate plyometric work to the point where many think they need to have a master’s degree in Russian training secrets to undestand it! I' ve probably been guilty of overcomplicating the subject myself, but the reality is plyometric work is really quite simple. All lower body plyometric drills do basically the same thing. They all involve some type of hopping, bouncing, jumping, or running variation. There is no real magic in any exercise. The only magic is in the intensity of exercise. There are low intensity movements like the single legged line hops I mentioned earlier, which work best to train movement efficiency and basic coordination on the feet. There are very high intensity movements like depth jumps, which build max power. If possible you should try to choose exercises that most closely hone in on your specific needs and you should always choose exercises that correspond to your level of development. For example, someone with good strength yet poor power in his posterior chain, might utilize an exercise of 3 consecutive single leg hops for max distance. Someone with bad feet and collapsing heels might utilize depth drops off a box equivalent to the height of his best vertical jump, landing up on the balls of his feet. Someone with lack of power in his hips might utilize low squat hops or alternating lunge jumps.
Alternating Lunge Jumps Remember to choose exercises based on your developmental level. A depth jump would be too intense for a beginner or someone who lacks strength. Youngsters should 65
spend the majority of time working with basic low intensity hops, skips, and jumps until they have a modicum of strength in place. ** The general recommendation is that an athlete should be capable of a 1.5 x BW squat before participating in high intensity
plyometrics.
If in doubt, realize that specific sporting movements can also serve as excellent plyometric exercises. In other words, if you wanted to jump higher and determined you needed to focus on expressing your strength better, a simple running jump for maximum height is an excellent plyometric movement itself and it’s also 100% specific to the goal of jumping higher. Sprinting itself is also a specific plyometric exercise. You’re not gonna lose out on anything by not performing a ton of plyometric drills yet they can provide some variety and sometimes they can help you hone in on a specific weakness. A sample workout might have 1 to 3 exercises. The movements and the workouts themselves don' t need to be complicated. Keep each set less than 10 seconds in duration and always stop any plyometric workout following the same guidelines as you would for volume of sprint work. Stop the workout before or as soon as your performance in the movements begins to decline. Get creative with the exercises. Here are some ideas. Low Intensity Plyo Exercises Draw a line on the ground and jump side to side over it with 2 legs - 1 leg Do the above front to back Draw 4 imaginary stars on the ground forming a box with each star separated by 12-18 inches. Hop around the box on one leg Get in a squat position up on the balls of your feet and bounce in place Put a low box in front of you - jump up on it and step off. Do the same with one leg. From the side…..from the other side. Medium Intensity Plyo Exercises Get underneath a basketball goal and rhythmically jump up and try to touch as high as you can Get in a lunge position and jump up as high as possible landing in the same position as you started. Switch legs in midair Jump side to side over a cone, bench, or other knee-high object Jump high and bring your knees to your chest Put a medium to high box (18 to 40 inches) in front of you and jump up on it
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Put a low box (6-12 inches high) and bounce rhythmically up and down off and on it with one leg...repeat from the side, repeat from the other side Skip for max distance Skip for max height Stand on a box about 18 to 24 inches high, step off the box, and land softly up on the balls of your feet in a motionless position (depth drops) Perform a standing broad jump High Intensity Plyo Exercises Hop forward on one leg Hop sideways on one leg Sprint with exaggerated strides trying to get up as high as possible and cover as much ground as possible with each stride (bounding) Stand on a box, step off, hit the ground, and jump as high as possible...repeat to the left, to the right (depth jump) Plyometrics really don’t need to be complicated. That' s all there is to it!!
The Entire Athletic Development Process Now, what I' d like to do is go through a simple man' s approach to the entire process of building an efficient and speedy athlete. It should be obvious by now that a cookie cutter approach isn’t optimal, yet you’re probably wondering how to determine where to focus your efforts and what type of training will be best for you. Now I’m gonna try to answer those questions. Hopefully, this will give you an idea on my thought process when it comes to evaluating an athlete. This should read sort of like a checklist: 1. Are you trying to run on flat tires? The first thing you’ll want to do is make sure you' ve established proper movement efficiency, coordination, and movement patterns. Take a look at your ability to move efficiently at a low intensity. Before you can move well at a high intensity (jumping, cutting, sprinting, changing direction, etc.), you have to be able to move properly at a low intensity (bouncing and moving around with quick and light feet). Think of a game like hopscotch or jump rope or the myriad of mostly useless type drills that a football player would go through in training camp such as agility ladders, cone drills, dot drills and other related drills. How efficiently can you move? Are you somewhat light on your feet or are you heavy footed and find drills like these a real challenge for 67
you? Answer honestly. You shouldn' t really have to think too hard about this. One easy little test you can use to test basic movement efficiency is draw a line or place a piece of tape on the ground. Stand on both legs and hop forward and back over the line for 10 seconds. Repeat with one leg. You oughta be able to get around 60 total hops with both legs and 30-40 on one leg within those 10 seconds. If you find it difficult to count fast enough just count the forward hops. Aim for 30 on both legs and 15-20 on one. You don' t need to be like Allen Iverson or Ladanian Tomlinson but ask yourself these questions: A: Do people call you quick and agile or slow and heavy-footed? B: Can you carry out the movements in your sport properly or are coaches constantly telling you that you need to work on your footwork? C: Do you sound like an elephant when you run or are you as smooth and quiet as a butterfly? Remember, you don’t have to be superb in this department, you just need to make sure you have a little air in your tires. A race car with flat tires ain' t going nowhere in a hurry and neither are you! If you aren' t satisfied with your score here the next step is to figure out what the problem is. If you score less than satisfactory here, take a look at 1a through 1d to determine what problems you might need to correct. If you pass, go on to number two. 1a.You're too fat!? What' s your body-fat like? Remember, if you have to haul around a 50 pound tub of lard it’s gonna slow you down! If you’re overweight look at your diet and activity levels. Cut down on sugars and increase the consumption of things you can actually shoot or grow. If you’re overweight, you also probably lack basic fitness, or GPP. The solution is to get up off your butt and get involved in more activity. Have fun and PLAY your way into shape. 1b. You lack coordination or you're just heavy footed? This probably means you just never learned to move efficiently as a youngster and you need to spend time doing that. This means you should probably spend quite a bit of time developing the capacity to move lighter on your feet. Break out the jump rope, agility ladder, SAQ (speed, agility and quickness) type drills, and other basic lower intensity plyometric and agility type drills. You have a couple of options. You can either PLAY and get involved in as many activities as you can, or you can make an effort to spend at least 20-minutes 3 days per week working on various drills designed to get you more coordinated on your feet - or you can do both. 1c. You lack mobility? Go through the mobility tests I described earlier. Can you perform a squat without your heels rising up? Can you bring your heel up to
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your butt without much effort? Can you lie on your back and bring one knee to your chest without tearing a hip flexor? Are you supple and mobile or are you tighter than a drum? If you have mobility problems the best way to fix them is to spend 20 seconds twice a day with specific static stretches and perform plenty of dynamic stretches prior to your workout. If your calves are tight simply stretch your calves. If your hip flexors are tight stretch your hip flexors. If your quads are tight stretch your quads. 2. Assuming you' ve met all the basic requirements for #1, now it' s time to assess your relative strength. Are you strong enough to be an explosive athlete? A modicum of strength is necessary. What are your lifting numbers like? Do you squat and deadlift at least 1.5 to 2 x your bodyweight? If yes you can go on to number 3. If not you need to get stronger overall. That shouldn' t be too difficult. Take a look at the first workout in the next session and take a look at some of the templates in appendix B. 3. Assuming you' ve met all the basic requirements for #1 and #2, now it' s time to dig a little deeper to see how to continue building your athleticism. Once you' ve reached this level, improving your performance is a matter of either A, putting a bigger engine in your car (getting stronger), or B, modifying your engine to better express it’s horsepower (working on explosiveness to better express your strength): A: Putting a bigger engine in your car Putting a bigger engine in your car just means that you' d continue to build your strength and size so that you have more oomph behind your movements. You can only modify the engine in a race-car so much. Eventually, the only way you’re gonna make the car any faster is to put a bigger engine in the SOB. It’s the same with athletes. You can work on various explosive drills, run sprints every day, work on mobility, nutrition, and a host of other things, but eventually you reach a point where you’re not gonna get any faster or more explosive until you put a bigger engine underneath your hood. You do that by getting bigger and stronger overall. To drive this point home think of this: Why can' t a 14 year elite athlete run as fast as a 25 year old elite athlete no matter how well they move or how much power training they do? Why can’t an average girl throw as far as an average guy, hit as hard as a guy, run as fast as a guy, or jump as high a guy? Because they' re not as big and strong!! I’ve actually worked with a lot of athletes in this category who enhanced their speed and vertical jumps by a significant amount with doing any specific speed, jump, or movement training WHATSOEVER; they just got stronger overall! or B: Modifying the engine in your car so that you get more horsepower out of your existing motor
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Modifying the motor in your car just means that you' d train yourself to get more oomph out of the muscle and strength you already have. You do this by working on better expressing your strength, or building up your explosiveness, so that you apply more force in less time, which you' d do by engaging in more explosive, plyometric, and speed oriented work. Ok. Now, the way we determine whether you need a bigger engine or a modified engine is to take a close look at your performance in various tasks. We have to determine whether you’re stronger then you are fast, or whether you’re faster then you are strong. Look at the following evaluations: A: First off, take a look at your lifting numbers in relationship to athletic measures such as vertical jump, 40-yard dash, and agility drills. Are you one of those guys who is stronger than an ox in the weight room - a guy who squats and bench presses a ton yet whose speed and vertical jumping ability pales in comparison? Or are you one of those guys who is weaker than a kitten yet fairly explosive and fast? Are you one of those people who gets off the line like a raging bull the first 10 yards of a sprint but is slower than molasses after 20 yards yards? If so, you' re stronger then you are fast. Or are you one of those guys whose initial acceleration is slow but your top speed is impressive? If so, you' re faster then you are strong. If you perform the Olympic lifts and if you have really good technique with them, you can look at the ratio between the various lifts to get an idea where you stand in this department. An athlete that is faster than strong will tend to have a clean that is more than 70% of his back squat and a snatch that is more than 65% of his front squat. When making these observations and determinations there really aren’t any hard and fast guidelines here and there' s not really a chart you can look at to see where you stack up. You have to use some common sense. If you' re the guy who is stronger then you are fast, you probably should focus on improving your explosiveness, which you' d do by following a routine such as the 2nd workout in the next section. If you' re the type of guy who is faster then you are strong, you could benefit from driving up your strength. What about everyone else? What if you' re not sure where you fit in? Then you’ll have to take a closer look. One of the things I do is take a close look at several various jumping related tests. Here are the tests: 1. First, record your normal standing vertical jump. Next, stand on a box 12-18 inches high and execute a depth jump for maximum height. Simply step off the box, hit the ground, and rebound up as high as possible. Record the results of those 2 tests. If your jump from the ground is higher than your bounce jump, you
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most likely need more work on explosiveness. If your bounce jump is higher than your jump from the ground, you could probably benefit from more strength and raw horsepower. 2. Next, compare your best bilateral (2-legged) running vertical jump and compare it to your best unilateral (single leg) running jump. Simply take a running start and jump as high as you can. Record the results of those 2 tests. If your bilateral jump is significantly (20% +) higher then your unilateral jump, you probably could benefit from focusing more on explosiveness. (You could also probably benefit from focusing more on hamstring and glute strength). If your uni-lateral jump is higher then your bilateral jump, you could probably benefit from more basic strength and hypertrophy work. Those observations will tell you a lot, but you can even take things a step further: 4. How does your game speed rank in relationship to your linear speed?***
***This will be covered in detail in a later chapter
Are you as agile as you are fast? One thing you can do to help make this evaluation is compare your straight ahead linear speed to a test of speed that requires change of direction. Record your best 40-yard dash and compare it to your best 20-yard shuttle. If you don' t know how to do a 20-yard shuttle here' s how. Take 3 cones and place them 5 yards apart so that they look like this A-------B--------C ----10 yards Start at B and face the direction of B with one hand on the ground. Whenever you’re ready, start by running to A and touching the line, then run to C and touch the line, then run back the other direction through B. Stop the clock as soon as you run through B the 2nd time. Next, compare the results of that 20-yard shuttle to your best 40-yard dash. The 20-yard shuttle should be at least .4 seconds faster than the 40. If it’s not, you could probably stand to work a bit more on your lateral movement and agility. 5. Next, you basically take all that material and mull it over and determine the best course of action for yourself as an athlete, or for your athletes if you’re a coach. It' s probably not something you' ll ever feel that you' ve completely mastered. It' s an ongoing process and the things you learn as an athlete or as a coach are always improving as you learn more and find better ways of assessing things, but this will get the job done. Additionally, make sure you use some common sense when reading in to the testing. If you lack explosiveness in relationship to your strength, is it really because of your motor abilities or is their some other problem? In other words, could it be that you carry too much excess weight? Do you play a sport like 71
basketball or track and have to work under a coach that believes that waking up at 5 am and hitting the pavement for 5 miles every day (and burning up your fast twitch muscle), is the way to get you in shape? Are you over-trained in general? Or do you have a build that is good for strength but not really conducive to displaying great speed (very thick joints with ultra short legs) Any of those things can kind' ve masks the results of those evaluations. There' s not always a clear-cut answer but most of the time there is. 6. Assuming you' ve met the requirements for #1, #2, and #3, meaning that you' ve established proper movement efficiency, you' re not fat, you' re mobile, you' re strong enough, and you still can' t determine exactly what type of training you should do, I' d recommend you start off focusing on more of an explosive oriented routine to start. Keep in mind, when training to better display your strength (display explosiveness), a general reduction in volume is necessary as these gains occur most readily when the body is in a fairly well rested state. In general it only takes about 60% of the volume to generate explosive gains as it does to generate gains in strength. In fact, a lot of times just reducing volume overall will generate gains in speed and explosiveness as many people are over-reached or slightly over-trained and don’t even know it. If someone is not making gains I’ve often found it's because they’re training with too much junk volume and throwing too many conflicting signals at the body. By simply optimizing their recovery, they allow a lot of fatigue to dissipate and start to progress. Examples: A sample of an off-season explosive oriented workout might look something like this. The goal here is to maintain strength while focusing on better displaying that strength. This workout would be for someone who is stronger than they are fast. Monday Dynamic warm-up **Depth Drops- 6 x 3 (stand on a box equivalent to your best vertical jump, drop off the box, and freeze up on the balls of your feet at impact) 20-yard sprint- repeat until times begin to decline Wednesday Dynamic warm-up 40-yard sprints - repeat until time declines
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Jump squat- 6 x 5 at 20-30% of max squat Deadlift - 3 x 3 @ 80-85% *** Friday or Saturday Dynamic warmup Depth jumps- 6-8 x 3 Glute Ham raise- 4 x 6-8 Follow that format for 4 weeks and eliminate the Wednesday workout the last week. Note: An explosive oriented phase is also a great time to implement horizontal loading (towing), as I will talk about later. ** Depth drops can be performed a variety of ways. Moving forward off the box, moving sideways off the box, landing in a lunge off the box, single-legged etc. ** Strength can be maintained with 1/3 the volume it took to build that strength, providing the intensity (load) is maintained. For someone looking to maintain strength, I would typically prescribe 2-3 sets of 2-3 reps with an 85 to 90% load once per week.
A sample of an off-season strength oriented workout might look like this. The goal here is to push up strength, and perhaps even hypertrophy, while maintaining the ability to display that strength: Monday Short Sprints (10’s, 20’s or 40’s) - ~4-6 reps each. Stop prior to any noticeable drop-off in performance. Squat- 5 x 5 @85% (try to increase the weight or reps each week- work up to a set of 5 using several warm-up sets and then maintain the same weight for all 5 sets. You might only get 2 or 3 reps on your last 2 sets. When you get all 5 sets of 5, increase the load the next workout - make sure you' re doing a true deep back squat) Leg curl, glute ham, or romanian deadlift - 4 x 6-8 Thursday or Friday Jump Squat with pause 4 x 3 @ 30% of max squat, (perform these by lowering into a full squat position, pausing for 3-5 seconds, and exploding up into a jump) Deadlift- 4 x 3 @85-90% (try to increase the weight or reps each week- work up to a heavy set of 3 using several warm-up sets and then maintain the same weight for all the remaining sets. You might only get 1 or 2 reps on your last 2 sets. When you get all 4 sets of 3 reps increase the load the following workout)
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Bulgarian split squat or lunge- 2 x 6-8 per leg
Detailed Programs For 40-yard Dash In this segment I’m going to write out a couple of more detailed sprint programs designed to improve the 40-yard dash. The programs are 8 weeks long and the goal is to maximize running speed. You will find the listed programs have 2 lower body workouts per week and 2 upper body workouts per week. Although you could consider the upper body workouts optional, I realize most of you will want to train upper body as well, if nothing more then the vanity effect! Exercises include both those designed to develop your maximum strength and those designed to improve your ability to develop force quickly. Exercises such as heavy squats and deadlifts are used for maximum strength while exercises such as jump squats and other high-speed movements are used for rate of force development. A surefire method to raising your performance is by paying attention to your progress in the various exercises. If your heavy lifts such as deadlifts and squats are getting heavier, your higher speed lifts such as speed squats are getting faster and more explosive, and your jumps are getting higher, your sprints should be getting faster as well.
Program Flow You will notice the actual sprinting portion of the programs flows from short to long over the 8 weeks. That is, speed is first developed over shorter distances through shorter sprints and that speed is then carried out over further distances. This is the same method used by most top sprint coaches today, which allows one to work high quality speed with short sprints and then work on extending that speed over longer distances. This method has proven more fruitful then programs that build speed over longer distances that then try to apply that speed endurance to short distances. That system is inferior, because the longer distances don’t recruit the same quality of muscle fibers or reflect the training specificity of the shorter distances. The general order of progression is to emphasize acceleration, speed, then speed endurance. Since athletes in team sports rarely sprint more than 40 yards, there is no need to train for speed endurance.
Sample Programs Keep in mind these programs are just examples that are designed for intermediate level athletes. A cookie-cutter set-up is never optimal and in a perfect world any training you do would be completely individualized just for you, but these examples should serve well for the majority of athletes. To avoid placing everybody on the same cookie cutter set-up, I have 2 different programs. Some people will have solid coordination and movement efficiency already in place and will benefit more from strength training. These
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people will be faster than they are strong. They should perform program I. Others will need to work more on movement efficiency and plyometric training. They will be stronger than they are fast. These people should perform program II. Perform program I if you fit most of the following characteristics: A: Your strength is not dramatically ahead of your speed (e.g. –You don’t squat 2 x or more your bodyweight and only run a 5.0 fourty yard dash) B: You squat 1.5 x your bodyweight or less C: Your start (first 20 yards) is not dramatically faster then your top speed. D: Your best bilateral (2-legs) vertical jump from either a run-up or a depth jump is about 20% or more higher then your best jump from a standstill. E: You are fairly well coordinated and move fluidly (e.g. people don’t tell you that you’re “heavy” on your feet). Perform program II if you fit any of the following characteristics: Perform this program if you’re obviously much stronger then you are fast, which can be identified by a majority of the following characteristics: A: You will tend to be much faster at the start than the finish of a race B: You will tend to have a thicker build with large ankles, short legs, and long torso. C: Your running vertical jump will be nearly the same as your standing vertical jump. D: Your strength will be ahead of your speed and movement efficiency (you have good weight room numbers but not so impressive speed and vertical jump numbers).
Program I – For the Strength Deficient Athlete Day and Exercise Sun: Off Monday: Lower Body Warm-up: Dynamic warmup as written
Week #1
Week #2
Twisting lunge, calf stretch, sumo squat, hurdle duck under, straight leg kick, pullback buttkick walking forward, elbow to foot walking
Week #3
Week #4
Comments
Warm-up stays constant for all speed workouts
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foward 3 x 25 yards
Same
Same
Same
3
3
3
3
4x10 yard starts from pushup position stance 4x 20yard falling starts
4 x 10 yd starts from pushup position 4 x 20 yd falling starts 2x30 yards from 2 pt stance
3 x 10 yd starts from 3 pt stance 3 x 20 yd falling starts 2x 30 yd starts from 2 pt stance 2 x 40 yd sprints from 3 pt stance
3 x 10 yd starts from 3 pt stance 2x20 yd falling starts 2x40 yd sprints from 3 pt stance
2 x 20 yards per leg
Same
Same
Same
Snatch Grip Deadlift
3x5
4x3
4x2
DB Split squat Leg curl or Glute Ham raise Tues: Off Wed: Plyometric/Upper Body Lateral cone jump-
2 x 6-8/leg 4x5
Same Same
Same Same
2x2 (fairly light) Same Same
3 x 10
3 x 10
3 x 10
Eliminate
High knees, butt kicks, skips 50 yard buildups Acceleration work
Plyometrics Single leg hops forward
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Walk back to the start Separate the speed work from the rest of the workout if desired. Ex: perform sprints and plyos in the a.m and lift in the p.m. Do these on grass. Focus on “absorbing” with the plant leg, with the hips held high, and let the “rebound” action take care of itself
Use a medium sized object about knee level in height. Hop
back and forth over it. Each ground contact = 1 rep Box Squat jump-
4x6
Same
Same
eliminate
Bench press-
4x5
5x4
5x3,3,2,2,1 (3 minute rest intervals) minute rest intervals)
3 x3 (easy)
One arm dumbell row Front raise
3x8
Same
Same
Same
2x8
Same
Same
same
20-yard accelerations x 3 (use 10 yard stride in
20-yard accelerations x3 Flying 20’s
30-yard accelerations x3 Flying 20’s
Timed 40’s x 35 (or stop when
Optional Beach work (10 min biceps/triceps etc.) Thursday: Off Friday: Speed Work and Lower Body work Speed and Acceleration
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Sit back on a chair or boxes –pause and jump up as high as possible for 2 sets and out as far as possible for 2 sets. You can also use objects to jump on or over to make the exercise more challenging
Separate the speed work from the rest of the
and accelerate for 20 yards) Flying 20’s x 2
x3
x3
time starts to drop-off)
Single leg on box jump
2 x 5/leg
2 x 5/leg
2 x 5/leg
eliminate
Speed Squats
4 x 3 at 3040%
Same
Same
eliminate
Drop and catch leg curls or Reactive Glute Ham Raise-
4x5
4x5
4x5
eliminate
2 x 10-15
Same
Same
Same
Saturday – Upper Body Dumbell Bench Press-
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workout if desired. Ex: perform sprints and plyos in the a.m and lift in the p.m. Use box about 12-18 inches high. Stand on one leg and jump up on the box. (Drop down into a squat and explode up – drop down into the hole at good speed) (If using the leg curl, raise the weight with 2 legs – relax and let the weight fall and catch it with one leg midway down attempting to “hold” the weight in place)
Chinup- Max reps 2 sets with bodyweight
2 sets
2 sets
2sets
Weighted swiss ball crunch Decline leg raise
2 x 15-20
2 x 15-20
2 x 15-20
2 x as many reps as possible
2 x as many reps as possible
2 x as many reps as possible
2 x 1520 2 x as many reps as possible
Beach Work – 10 minutes (optional) work on pecs, biceps, triceps, etc. Phase II Day and Exercise Sun: Off Mon: Speed Work/ Lower Body Dynamic Warmup as per above – Normal warm-up Acceleration and speed work
Week #1
Week #2
High knee, Same butt kick, skip 25 yds x 3 3x30 yd from 2 pt. Stance 2x40 yd from 3 pt. Stance 1 x60 yards from 3 pt stance
Barbell Back 4 x 5 Squat
Week #3
Week #4
Same
Same
3x30 yds from 3 pt stance 2x40 yds from 3 pt stance 1 x60 yards from 3 pt stance
3x30 yds from 2 pt stance 3x40 yds from 2 pt stance 1 x 60 yards from 3 pt stance
5 x 3, 3, 2, 2, 1
Eliminate
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Test 40
Eliminate
Comments
Separate the speed work from the rest of the workout if desired. Ex: perform sprints in the a.m and lift in the p.m.
Step-up
n/a
n/a
2 x 6-8 reps
2 x 6-8
Romanian Deadlift-
2 x 6-8
2 x 6-8
eliminate
eliminate
Glute ham raise, leg curl, or reverse hyper
3 x 6-8
3 x 6-8
3 x 6-8
Eliminate
V-sit
2 x max reps
2 x max reps
2 x max reps
2 x max reps
4x8
4x8
4x8
2x8
On-box jump
2x4
2x4
2x4
2x4
Incline Bench Press
4x5
5x5
5x5,4,3,2,1
3x3 (easy)
Seated Row-
4x6
4x6
4x6
3x6 (easy)
Tues: Off Wed: Plyo Work/ Upper Body Work Side to Side box depth jump
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(Stand on box and step off to one side, rebound back up, step off to the other side, rebound back up. Use a box approximately 12-18 inches high – each ground contact equals 1 Simply stand in place and jump up onto a box and step off. Use a box high enough to be somewhat challenging
Weighted Dip- 4x6-8 Optional Beach work10-15 min arms Thurs: Off Fri: Speed Work / Lower body Warm-up: As per usual Speed Work
2 x6-8
2 x 6-8
2 x 6-8
2 x 6-8
30 yd accelerations x3 50 yd x 2 (2 pt start)
30 yd accelerations x3 50 yd x 2 (2 pt start
40 yd 40 yd test accelerations x4 50 yd x 2 (3pt start)
Depth jump
4x4
4x4
4x 4
Jump Squat with pause
4 x 3 at 30% of max squat
4 x 3 at 30%
4 x 3 at 30%
Drop and 3 x 5, 3 x 10 3 x 10 3 x 5, 3 x 10 catch leg seconds, or 3 seconds, or 3 seconds, or 3 x5 x5 curl, reactive x 5 glute ham, or reverse hyper Saturday: Upper Body Push press Pull-upsmax reps in 10 seconds Side dumbell lateral
4x4
4x3
5x2
3x3
2 sets
3 sets
3 sets
2 sets
2 x 12
2 x 12
2 x 12
2 x 12
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Separate the speed work from the rest of the workout if desired. Ex: perform sprints and plyos in the a.m and lift in the p.m. Use about an 18 inch box Use 3 second pause at parallel and explode up
Arm curl(any variation) 3x12
2 x 10
2 x 10
2 x 10
2 x 10
Tricep pushdown-
2 x 10
2 x 10
2 x 10
2 x 10
Kneeling cable crunch
2 x 12-15
Same
Same
Same
Program II – For The Speed Deficient Athlete Keep the warm-ups, the upper body workouts, as well as the lower body plyometric work that you use in workout B the same. Replace workouts A & C with the following: Phase I (Weeks 1-4) Exercise Week#1 Workout A: 30 yard 4 sprints
Week#2
Week#3 Week#4 Comments
5
5
3
Single leg hops left, right and forward
2 x 5 per leg to each side
Same
same
same
Jump squat with barbell
2x12 (10% of max squat) 2x6 (70%) 2x6 (75%)
3x10 (15%)
3x8 (20%)
2x6 (25%)
3x5 (75%) 3x5 (80%)
3x4 (80%) 4x4 (80%)
2x3 (85%) 3x3 (85%)
4
5
5
3
Romanian Deadlift Full Squat Workout B: Flying 20 yard sprints
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Separate the speed work from the rest of the workout if desired. Ex: perform sprints in the a.m and lift in the p.m. Stand on one leg and take 5 big hops to your left then 5 big hops back to your right, then 5 hops forward. Take a brief rest in between each set of 5. Perform rhythmically and continuously – The percentage given is the % of max squat The percentages listed are guidelines
Accelerate smoothly over 30 yards then hold top speed for 20 yards. Separate the speed work from the rest of the
Single leg triple jump Depth Jumps Jump Squat with Barbell Glute ham or leg curl
3 sets/side 2x5
Same
Same
Same
2x5
2x5
2x5
2x12 (10%) 3x5
3x10 (15%) 3x5
3x8 (20%) 4x4
2x6 (25%) 3x5
workout if desired. Ex: perform sprints in the a.m and lift in the p.m. Focus more on the “absorbing” then the pushoff. 2 minutes rest – use box about 18 inches high Perform continuously – 2 minutes rest
Phase II (weeks 5-8) Exercise Workout A: Single leg box jumps front, medial, and lateral
Week#1
Week#2
3 x 5 front, left, right
Week#4
Remarks
3x5 3x5 front, front, left, left, right right
2x 3 front, left right
Depth jumps 3x5
4x5
4x5
2x5
Jump squat with barbell Reverse hyper, Leg curl or glute ham Full squat
3x12 (15%) 3x6
3x10 (20%) 3x6
4x8 (25%) 3x6
2x5 (30%) 3x6
Use a low box, step, or stair about 6-12 inches high. Stand on one leg, face the box, jump on the box, pause, and then step off the box. Do 5 reps facing the box, 5 reps with the box directly to your right, and 5 reps with the box directly to your left Use moderately high box around 18 inches
2x6 (75%)
3x5 (80%)
Eliminate
eliminate
Same
Same
Same
3x10
3x8
2x5
Workout B: 40 yard dash Perform reps until time declines Jump squat
3x12
Week#3
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Separate the speed work from the rest of the workout if desired. Ex: perform sprints in the a.m and lift in the p.m.
with barbell Speed box Squat
(15%) 4x3 (60%)
(20%) 4x3 (55%)
(25%) 4x 3 (50%)
(30%) 3x3 (60%)
Drop and catch leg curl, reverse hyper or explosive glute-ham raise
3 x 5 (leg curl) or 3 x 10 seconds (reverse hyper or glute ham)
3 x 5 or 3 x 10 seconds
3 x 5 or 3 x 10 seconds
3 x 5 or 3 x 10 seconds
Sit back on the box, pause, and explode out as fast as possible From the top of a leg curl, drop the weight, let it fall, “catch” past the mid-point, and explode back up
A Simple Yet “Cutting Edge” Variant – Horizontal Loading Yet another variation to use in a training split would be to use a form of horizontal loading as a form of strength training. When I refer to horizontal loading I' m referring to exercises like sled pulls and similar movements where the resistance comes in a horizontal plane rather than a vertical plane. Even a loaded shopping cart can offer an effective means of horizontal loading.** Think about this for a second. Almost all the popular primary strength-training movements available to us in the weight room offer resistance in a vertical plane. In other words, the resistance is coming "down". However, sprinting occurs in a horizontal plane. Vertical loading is still effective because the objective of general strength training is to stimulate and strengthen the muscles involved in the movement and stimulate the magnitude of muscular recruitment - not necessarily mimick the exact movement pattern involved. Movements such as squats, lunges, and split squats are staples for speed development because they recruit and strengthen the glutes, quadriceps, and hamstrings effectively. Having said that, horizontal loading may offer some advantages as a form of special and specific strength training. Before explaining why, I’d like to briefly discuss general to specific training methods. General strength training exercises strengthen and stimulate the muscles involved in a movement pattern and do not attempt to duplicate the sports movement. These exercises are necessary to develop the force component of power. Examples are deadlifts, squats, etc. Special strength training exercises attempt to convert general strength to explosiveness. Examples are jump squats, speed lifts, and olympic lifts. Specific strength exercises are utilized to develop the velocity component of power and attempt to provide power improvement in a way that is specific to the required technique of an athlete. Examples of such exercises would include bounding, jumping, hopping, and various sprint variations. Towing exercises can really fit in all 3 categories, depending upon how much resistance is used. The ability to get force into the ground and create forward movement occurs when the foot is placed under the center of gravity and pushed back. A weighted sled offers resistance that must be propelled horizontally. I would consider horizontal loading for the sprints as a special type of reverse leg press or a reverse hyperextension with your 84
feet on the ground. Pulling a heavy sled or using some other form of horizontal resistance can also offer some advantages for strengthening the specific muscles involved in the sprint, primarily the hamstrings and glutes. ** A device called a power-runner can also be used for this purpose
The current most popular line of thinking when using sleds and other forms of towing is that the resistance should not be so great so as to interfere with sprinting mechanics. Therefore, various coaches have often recommended sprinters and other speed seeking athletes sprint 10-40 yards towing a very lightly loaded sled using a resistance that causes no more than a 10% reduction in sprint times. Their reasoning is that if the sled is too heavy the runners technique is excessively compromised. So, if you were going to use loaded sprints as a form of specific resistance training over 40 yards, and your best 40 was 5.0, you wouldn’t want to use so much resistance that you couldn’t at least run a 5.5 second 40. (5.0 + 10%). However, rather than use towing as a form of specific sprint loading to provide a bit of resistance to a normal sprint, I also recommend using heavier sled pulls more as a form of special or general strength training. In other words, sack up to a heavy sled strong man style and pull or march with all your might for 5-15 seconds per set and really try to pound the lower body. One need not use a ton of resistance but enough resistance to make pulling the sled a bit of a challenge. Try pulling your bodyweight. Keep in mind your technique really doesn’t have to resemble a perfect sprint. You’re using this more as a form of strength training then you are sprint training. You can perform them both linearly (straight ahead), and laterally (sideways). Based on results I' ve seen, athletes can benefit from using heavier sled pulls as a form of strength training and greatly enhance the acceleration phase of a sprint without interfering with sprint mechanics. For optimal results, you can even use both heavier and lighter towing in a given training cycle. Use heavier towing for strength in one workout and lighter more specific sprint-oriented towing in another workout. A sample split I' ve used with some athletes that I' ve seen great results out of looks like this: Day 1A1.dynamic warmup B1.short sprints- 10' s and 20' s- 4-6 reps each C1.Heavier sled pulls (linearly and lateral)- 6-8 total sets x 10-20 seconds each Day 2off- dynamic warmup Day 3dynamic warmup lightly loaded sprints- x 30-40 yards (use enough resistance to cause a ~10% reduction in normal sprint times) bodyweight sprints- x 30-40 yards Alternate 1 set of lightly loaded sprints with 1 set of bodyweight sprints. Repeat until the
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times of the unloaded sprints begin to decline. Day 4- off dynamic warmup Day 5- repeat workout #1
Conditioning I’m going to spend quite a bit of time talking about conditioning because it’s a topic that many people seem to screw up in one form or another. Obviously, a certain amount of conditioning is necessary. You can’t train unless you’re in shape and if doing something as simple as getting your butt of the couch causes you to huff and puff, you’re obviously not in shape to train. However, when training to develop speed and power we must be careful that we send our body the right messages. Think of the difference between a marathon and a 50-yard sprint. They both involve running but that’s where the similarities end. As far as energy systems go, they’re at 2 entirely ends of the spectrum. One requires your body to make use of the aerobic (oxygen) system to supply 90% of the energy. One is pure anaerobic (without oxygen). The adaptations that make you extremely aerobically efficient are in nearly complete opposition to those required that make you extremely anaerobically efficient and vice versa. Which means the adaptations that allow you to run marathons as efficiently as possible inhibit the adaptations that allow you to sprint 50 yards as fast as possible. The adaptations that allow you to sprint 50 yards as fast as possible inhibit the adaptations that allow you to run marathons. Which is primarily why sprinters and marathon runners look and perform nothing alike whatsoever. Not exactly scientific but true nonetheless. One is muscular, strong, powerful, and fast over very short distances. The other is weak, lacks power, and is usually quite slow, but can run slow for a very long time. *** Along those same lines, we could also compare sprinters to milers, powerlifters to rowers, throwers to 800-meter sprinters, Olympic lifters to cross country skiers, or football players to soccer players. *** A typical marathon runner often has a vertical jump no higher than 12 inches.
The Spectrum Think of 2 ends of a spectrum. One represents speed, strength, and power. The other represents endurance: speed, strength,power-------------------------------------------------------------- endurance A sprinter, powerlifter, Olympic lifter, thrower, gymnast, and football player operate at one end of the spectrum, that being the strength/speed/power end. The 86
distance runner, cross-country skier, rower, or swimmer reside at the other end of the spectrum, that being the endurance end. The 800 meter runner, basketball player, boxer, soccer player, etc. reside somewhere in the middle. Those on the speed, strength, and power end are characterized by being very fast, very strong, and very powerful. Those on the endurance end are characterized by being like an energizer bunny. They ain’t gonna turn any heads with their speed, but they’ll keep going and going and going. Those in the middle are a mix of both. They don’t have the power, speed, or strength of the sprinters, throwers, gymnasts, or football players; and they don’t have the endurance of the marathon runner, cyclist, or cross country skiers, but they have a good mix of both.
Conditioning and No Man’s Land The point of all this is the effect conditioning has on your speed, strength, and power gains. You can do EVERYTHING 100% correct when training for increased speed, explosiveness, and strength, yet if you expose your body to too much endurance oriented training you end up in what I call No Man’s Land, which means you end up in the land of the boxer, 800 meter runner, or soccer player whose speed, strength, and power are limited by the amount of conditioning work they must endure. There’s a mentality in this world that more is always better and you’re a lazy bum unless you have the endurance of a NAVY SEAL. But if you try to train for an iron man triathlon and a sprint race at the same time, you’re sending a message that says, “Ok muscles – you need LOADS of endurance”. That’s all well and good if that’s your goal, but as noted, the same adaptations that lead to great endurance (increased mitochondrial density) also severely adaptations towards speed and power. Try to train for both simultaneously and your body will develop the endurance you need but you’ll severely limit your gains in speed and explosiveness. This is particularly true when you’re trying to make strength and power gains. strength and power while building endurance is one thing. Improving strength and power while dramatically improving endurance is another thing altogether. When most people think of high flying athletes with great vertical jumps they probably think of basketball players. Yet realize this: The average professional basketball player is doing good to vertical jump 30 inches while many NFL football players (excluding offensive lineman), regularly approach 40 inch verticals. Why is this? Well, for one thing basketball play itself is fairly aerobic. Basketball players have to engage in a lot of running and conditioning just playing their sport. The average football play lasts 4-6 seconds and is followed by a 30 second pause. Basketball guys are essentially running intervals for 30-48 minutes. This has a negative affect on maximal strength and power production. We also have to consider how a typical basketball player would train. The popular approach is for basketball players to spend their entire off-season playing 2 hours 87
of street-ball 3-5 days per week and 1 or 2 AAU games for almost the entire summer. It’s basketball and more basketball – playing and conditioning but no real training. Basketball players and coaches also don’t tend to appreciate strength training as much as football players. The average football player has no problem getting in the weight room and getting after it but the average basketball player in the weight room is a lot like many girls when it comes to the iron. Many girls are afraid they’re gonna “get too big”, or “bulk up”** Many basketball players are afraid those weights are gonna make them slow or muscle-bound. As a result, if the basketball player does any extraneous training at all, it’s more likely to be a ton of plyometric work, which is the last thing he needs. The result is the average basketball player spins his wheels in the off-season while football players tend to come back faster and stronger year-after-year simply because, if nothing else, they’re continually boosting up their core motor abilities like strength. Football players don’t play in the off-season; they hit the weights. **I realize this doesn’t describe all basketball players but I’m really not joking when I say this. I actually know several coaches who won’t train basketball players for this exact reason.
Now, what happens when we do run across the rare basketball player who actually does value the weight room and decides to take a no-holds barred attitude towards getting his strength up in the off-season? Well, chances are pretty good he’s also gonna wanna play about 12 hours of basketball per week. What do you think is gonna happen? Not a whole lot! He’ll probably end up running himself right into the ground due to all that volume and conditioning. His conditioning is always there yet little ever happens to his maximal strength. In reality, a much better way to approach the off-season for the basketball player would be to reduce on-court time by a significant margin, maintain his skill work, and focus more on foundational qualities such as maximal strength.
My Own Experience With “No Man’s Land” A couple of years ago at the age of 30 I decided I wanted to box competitively. At the time my training more closely resembled that of a sprinter. For the most part I trained according to the principles outlined in this manual. Even though I had some minor injuries I had a vertical jump of 35 inches or better and could knock off a 4.4 second 40 yard dash. My endurance left a lot to be desired though. If you' d asked me to run repeat 40-yard dashes with 1 minutes rest I' d probably only be able to run 5 or 6 below 5 seconds before I' d just gas out. My best mile run was probably above 7 minutes. I' d get in the boxing ring and was quicker and stronger then most of my opponents but I’d be on the floor sucking wind inside of 2 rounds. My fitness state was pretty good compared to the average person but left a lot to be desired when it came to the conditioning needed to box at a high level. Obviously, my training had to change. That meant instead of lots of speed and explosive training I had to start engaging in lots of endurance oriented training. That meant tons of long intervals consisting of workouts like 3-minute agility drills out in the hot sun with only 1 minute breaks, 3 mile runs, and plenty of general boxing training including: Jump rope, heavy bag work, and lots of sparring. After 2 months of that 88
torture I' d definitely built up a significant amount of endurance. I could go out and easily run ten 100 yard sprints under 15 seconds with about 45 seconds rest. I could go 6 threeminute rounds in the ring with 30 seconds rest with no problem. However, in order to build that endurance I had to trade some of my explosiveness. Even though I lost weight, no longer could I vertical jump 35 inches and no longer could I hit a 4.4 second 40. My best vertical jump declined to around 32 inches and my best 40 was around 4.65. Oh, my power endurance was very good - I could run repeat 4.9 second 40' s with 45 seconds rest all day long and I could probably hit a 30 inch vertical jump for 100 consecutive jumps without declining. But in order to build that kind' ve power endurance I had to trade off a bit of my top end. Now, if you' re a football player, basketball player, or even a soccer player, that' s kind' ve an extreme example because boxing requires an EXTREME amount of conditioning. You' re not gonna need that type of conditioning. If you’re an athlete in one of those sports, providing you approach it properly, you can build all the endurance you need without having to trade off anything if you approach things correctly, as I will describe in just a minute. The point of all this is that you gotta remember, you’re training for speed over very short distances, not for marathons! You don’t wanna put yourself in NO MAN’S LAND where you sacrifice power for power endurance at an inappropriate time.
Power vs Power Endurance Regardless of what measure of performance you’re talking about (running, jumping, throwing a fastball etc.), you have to develop the level of your freshest peak effort before you develop the ability to extend that effort, otherwise, you won’t be preparing for maximal performance, you’ll just be conditioning yourself for prolonged sub-maximal performance. Here’s an example to illustrate my point: Let' s say you have 2 basketball players and both of them play guard. Player A takes his off-season and really works on becoming faster and more explosive overall. He reduces his on-court time and really devotes himself to strength and power training. The result is he comes out of the off-season running a 2.5 second 20-yard dash with a 40-inch vertical jump. However, player B really takes a hardcore no-holds barred approach to conditioning for his entire off-season and, in addition to playing several full-court games per week, also devotes himself to getting up at 5am and running 5 miles per day, running up long hills in the mountains, and all kinds of other hardcore metabolic conditioning stuff so that he can be the “go-to” guy and be just as fresh in the 4th quarter as he was in the first quarter. He (Player B) ends up running a 3.0 second 20-yard dash and he has a 30-inch vertical jump. Just based on this information we know that Player A will be able to get up and down the court faster than player B and jump quite a bit better too. However, let’s assume player B’s efforts paid off so his endurance is twice as good. In other words, throughout a game his initial starting performance only declines
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half as much as player A. Player A drops off at 5% per quarter while player B only drops off at 2.5% per quarter. So, if we measured the performance of these 2 athletes in the 20-yard sprint and vertical jump from quarter to quarter it might look something like this:
Quarter Player A 1 2 3 4 OT
20 yard dash - Vertical Jump 2.5 seconds 40 inches 2.62 seconds 38 inches 2.75 seconds 36.1 inches 2.88seconds 34.2 inches 3.00 seconds 32.4 inches
Player B
20 yard dash-Vertical Jump 3.0 seconds 30 inches 3.07 seconds 29 inches 3.14 seconds 27.5 inches 3.22 seconds 26.8 inches 3.30 seconds 26.1 inches
Even though player A’s starting sprint times and vertical jump declined more than 25% over the course of the game his sprint time after 4 full quarters and an overtime was still just as fast as Player B' s freshest sprint and his vertical jump was still better than player B’s was at the very beginning! Anybody can build endurance and it responds quickly. But building the foundational qualities necessary for great speed and explosiveness takes time and is more difficult. Put it this way. I can go to any major American city and probably find at least 1000 people on any given day that are capable of running a marathon. Conversely, in those same cities, if I' m lucky I might be able to find 50 people that can run 4.4 seconds over 40 yards or vertical jump 40 inches....if that many. Now, just imagine what would happen if you took Player A and "appropriately" conditioned him with the right stuff at the right time of the year so that he could sustain his performance at a level close to player B? He' d be running circles around everyone and jumping over everyone throughout all 4 quarters.
Don’t Go Overboard…… Now, all this doesn' t mean you should sit on your butt and turn into a fat out of shape slob during the off-season because you' re totally paranoid about any conditioning work interfering with your gains. A modicum of conditioning should be maintained year around and you can develop a level of conditioning that’ll make you like an energizer bunny in your sport, you just have to approach it the right way. You have to build the power first and add the intensive conditioning at the right time. As I mentioned earlier, there' s a big difference between maintaining a decent level of conditioning while improving power and strength, versus trying to vastly improve conditioning while also trying to simultaneously improve power and strength. In the first case your gains will be good. In the second case they’ll likely be non-existent. The correct approach to improving your game conditioning is to lay down your strength, power, and speed first, then work on maintaining those qualities while you take 90
a short time to bring up your conditioning. Since this manual is about IMPROVING your speed, I' m mainly gonna talk about the type of conditioning you can do that won' t interfere with that. Additionally, I' ll also give a few examples of how to go about really boosting your conditioning when it' s time to get in game shape for your sport.
How To Implement Conditioning Without Interfering With Speed, Strength and Power? During the off-season when your focus is on strength, power, and speed it’s ok to add in some extra conditioning work, you just have to make sure you don’t go overboard to the point where it interferes with your gains. If implemented correctly and at optimal volumes, the addition of lower intensity work can serve to maintain your conditioning, keep you lean, and even improve recovery. So how do we get the benefits of extra conditioning work without stimulating negative endurance adaptations? Well, we do the following things: A: We have to make sure we give our fast twitch muscles and our nervous system time to recover between bouts of intense exercise. High intensity speed training can be considered any speed training activity where you run at 80% or more of maximum effort or speed. Other intense forms of training include weight training, moderate to highintensity plyometric work, and intense agility training. Putting out this level of effort is not only demanding on muscular system, but more importantly, it is very demanding on the central nervous system. The central nervous system requires about 48 hours for recovery after high intensity activity! Therefore, if you try to train at high intensity for 2 days in a row you’ll be apt to run into problems with recovery. In order to avoid burnout while still being in a position to incorporate extra training on your off days, you must make sure the extra conditioning work you do is performed at a lower level of effort otherwise it will interfere with your recovery. B: The primary stress that causes fast explosive oriented muscle fibers to transfer into slower endurance oriented muscle fibers is bathing the fast twitch muscles in lactic acid. This occurs with intensive intervals like traditional gassers and other intense aerobic work, where the level of effort is high and the level of muscular recruitment is fairly high, yet so is the fatigue level and burn. This type of work not only recruits a lot of fast twitch muscle fiber but also stimulates a lot of lactic acid accumulation. Lactic acid is what gives you the “burn” whenever you run intense intervals. Intensive means the workout gets progressively harder because of pace and/or volume and you leave the workout feeling dead tired. Therefore, when our focus is on increasing neuromuscular qualities like strength, power, speed, and explosiveness, we want to avoid this type of intensive conditioning work and make sure we engage in extensive conditioning work, which doesn’t recruit the fast twitch fibers and doesn’t bathe them in lactic acid. Our fast twitch muscle fibers get recruited plenty from our speed, power, and strength training work. Recruiting them even more through conditioning work just tells them, “Ok boys you need to trade some of your explosiveness for some endurance.” That’s not what you want. 91
C: To avoid unnecessary negative adaptations, you’ll want to emphasize intensive (a.k.a. – puke inducing) type conditioning only at certain times of the year such as the late offseason and preseason. The rest of the time you’ll want to emphasize extensive conditioning work. Extensive conditioning work- also called tempo work, is any fairly low to moderate effort work that stimulates recovery, work capacity development, and elevates or maintains your fitness state without detracting from your specific training goals. Extensive tempo can be viewed in many different ways and achieved in many different ways. The two ways I view it: 1) A way to increase fitness and work capacity 2) A regeneration tool from harder work Extensive means the workout can be finished and you can leave feeling refreshed. During the off-season if you choose to engage in extensive conditioning work it should be performed at an intensity and volume low enough that you feel better afterwards and don’t wear yourself out to the point that you leave the workout not being able to perform as good as you did at the beginning of the workout. An extensive tempo day should not have you throwing up or feeling dead. Ideally, we want to stimulate the cardiovascular system, improve blood flow to the muscles, and stay active - but we want to do so in a manner that is speed specific without being too demanding on either the muscular or the central nervous system. This type of work also has other benefits as well. It serves as a form of active recovery, enhancing blood flow and increasing capillary density in the musculature. It stimulates the metabolism, and promotes a lean body composition.
Extensive Conditioning Options You have several options at your disposal. One of them is to simply engage in your sport at a lower level of effort. A football player might go out a couple of days per week and run some pass routes. A basketball player might go out and work on his ball handling or engage in some shooting skill work. Not exactly hardcore, but better than nothing. Another obvious option is running. You can run over fairly short distances (100400 yards/meters) at a lower level of effort (60-70% of max speed) with fairly short rest intervals between runs (30-45 seconds).
Guidelines For Speed of Extensive Conditioning Session
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The speed at which you perform these runs is important. If you perform them too fast (over 80% of max effort), you recruit the fast twitch muscle fibers and that will hamper your ability to recover from your main training session. Regular interval training methods do exactly this. The speed is too fast and too demanding to fully allow recovery to take place, but too slow to improve speed. If you run at 65-75% of maximum speed, the speed is fast enough to stay sprint specific, and slow enough as to not be too draining on the muscular or nervous system. The pace should be done so that you’re running smoothly and effortlessly - going faster then a jog but not an all out sprint. The last run should be just as easy as the first. If not, you’re probably creating excessive fatigue and need to cut down on speed. Because we want to emphasize recovery and not speed it’s also a good idea to do this training on a soft surface such as grass or sand, so that you can avoid excessive wear and tear on the feet.
Guidelines For Rest Intervals With extensive tempo work, you can stimulate the cardiovascular system by using fairly short rest intervals. The rest intervals should be set up so that they are short enough that you place some strain on your cardiovascular system, but long enough so that your muscular system stays relatively fresh. If you’re generating a lot of lactic acid in your legs, or getting a burn, you need to rest longer between runs. You should be breathing fairly hard yet your muscles should not be trashed.
Guidelines For Volume The volume should be set so that you stay sprint specific and get a workout in without generating a lot of excessive fatigue. For a 100-meter sprinter, total volumes generally run 1000-3000 meters total over a session. I recommend most people stick to volumes around 1000-2000 yards total. Examples of workouts Here are some sample extensive running workouts you can use: Option 1: 3 sets of 5x110 yard runs at 60-70% max speed rest :30 seconds between each sprint After each set of 5 sprints walk 110 yards Option 2: 8 sets of 220-yard runs at 60-70% :45 seconds rest between runs Option 3: + denotes 50 yard walk set #1 100+100+100 set #2 100+200+100 93
set #3 200+100+200 set#4 100+200+100 set#5 100+100+100 rest 1:30 between each set. Option 4: 150-yard shuttle runs at 70% max effort. (change directions every 25 yards) 4-8 total sets with 1:00 rests between each one. The main focus during tempo runs is on running but we can also get creative and throw in various other activities such as calisthenics or any type of activity that is stimulating yet not too demanding. Here are some ideas: Treadmill walking - Any cardiovascular activity that you do at 75% or less of your maximum heart rate and DOESN'T put a lot of pounding on your feet or create a lot of lactic acid (burn) is OK. Walking on the treadmill, stairclimbing etc. are all fine to use as "tempo" variations for 20-30 minutes. What you want to avoid is this type of long duration cardio performed at a rapid pace. Treadmill Intervals – You can also do interval sprints on the treadmill. Sprint 20-30 seconds at 10 mph followed by a 1-minute walk. Go for 20-30 minutes total Rowing - Hey try the rowing machine at your gym every once in a while. You might enjoy it. Heavy Bag Work - Not only is this fun but it will also give you a great workout and is a heckuva lot funner than moving along aimlessly on a treadmill. Work on your jabs, right crosses, and hooks. When you become proficient at these start adding in other combinations. Go anywhere from 1-3 minutes with about 1 minute rest intervals each round. Go for about 20-30 minutes total Sledgehammer Work - Get a sledgehammer and beat the heck out of an old tire with it. You can either go for time or number of strikes. I recommend either an 8-12 lb sledgehammer to start off with. Focus on 2 different strikes - a diagonal strike and vertical strike. Swing left handed and right handed. The form is natural for most people and is basically like swinging an axe. I like to use rounds of 1-3 minutes just like with the heavy bag work. A good pace is about 30-40 strikes per minute. Rest for 1 minute in between sets and repeat for 3-6 total sets. Swimming - Use the stroke of your choice and either go for time or for intervals. The more proficient at your stroke you are, the longer you can go. I recommend beginners tart off with intervals. Swim a couple of laps, rest a minute, and repeat. Gradually build up your capacity. If you' re quite proficient you can also vary your strokes every couple of laps.
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Sandbag Lifting - This is definitely an old school way of getting a conditioning workout in. You' ll need a bag and a table. A Fifty to 70 pound sandbag oughta be about right for most people. Remember we' re not trying to set any records here and we don' t want to get injured, we just want to get a decent workout in. So don' t try to use a bag so heavy that it' s gonna fry your lower back. The tailgate of a truck works fine as a table. Simply take a sandbag off the ground, pick it up and set it on a table, then pick it back up and set it down. Start off with about 30-50 repetitions per set and increase as your capacity grows. Medicine Ball Complexes - If you have a wall or a partner and a 5 to 15 pound medicine ball you can put together a great workout. Here’s an example: Perform 10 reps of each exercise. Perform the entire circuit non-stop or with very shorts rest intervals (10-30 seconds) between exercises. After completion of the circuit, rest 1 minute and repeat for 3-5 circuits. Med ball chest pass feet stationary Chest pass stepping left leg forward Chest pass stepping right leg forward Overhead pass stationary Overhead pass stepping left leg forward Overhead pass stepping right leg forward Scoop toss - (throw straight up in the air and catch) Twisting toss left Twisting toss right Slam toss (slam into the ground) You can also mix medicine ball complexes with light running. For example, a great tempo workout for a football team is to perform a med ball exercise, jog 55 yards across the field, perform another med. ball exercise, and continue in that fashion for 10 or so circuits.
Calisthenic or mobility circuits Put together a series of calisthenic or mobility movements in combination and perform them one right after another. I recommend you go for 3-4 minutes total per set with 30 seconds to 1 minute per movement. After each round, take a 1-minute break and repeat. Some possible exercises you can throw together include: Jumping jacks, bodyweight squats, alternate lunges, straight leg front kicks, burpees, run in place, run in place with high knees, mountain climbers, situps, slalom jump, shuffle splits, roundhouse kick, good morning, skip in place, pushup, v-up, twisting lunge, duck back and forth under imaginary hurdle, slalom jumps. Jump rope- This is a great activity but due to the impact forces this is an activity that big guys might want to reconsider. I recommend you build towards doing 3-minute rounds with 1-minute breaks in between rounds. Repeat for 6 rounds total. 95
With all these variations you should have plenty of options to choose from and shouldn’t ever get bored. In addition to the options already mentioned you also have plenty of other options available such as: Slideboards, kettlebell swings, and tennis. Don' t be afraid to get creative and throw things together. Often what I like to have people do is take a few of the above variations, put them together in stations, and go from station to station with 1-minute rest intervals. We might start off with heavy bag boxing for 3 minutes, jump rope for 3 minutes, med-ball tosses for 3-minutes, agility ladder for 3 minutes, sledgehammer strike for 3 minutes, calisthenics for 3 minutes, and repeat the entire circuit for 20-30 minutes total with 1 minutes rest between each station. Don’t be afraid to get creative.
Guidelines for Frequency of Extensive “Tempo” Workouts These workouts are optional and when your is on building your speed they should be done depending upon how motivated you are to train. If you are tired and don’t feel like training then don’t!! However, if you’re on an off day and feel like doing something a low intensity session is a good way to get some training in without running yourself into the ground and interfering with your next major speed or strength workout. The maximum volume I recommend for these extra workouts is 3 times per week. I generally feel more comfortable prescribing them once or twice per week. On the programs laid out earlier in this manual, conditioning can be implemented on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday. You don’t have to necessarily stick with the tempo workouts I’ve laid out, these are just examples. The combinations are endless but the guidelines should stay the same. Remember the goal is to get some blood flowing without getting overly intensive.
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Part II- Getting in Game Shape, Improving Game Speed, Agility, and Quickness Intensive Conditioning – Getting in Game Shape If you' ve followed my guidelines thus far, you know you should focus on building your speed, power, and strength during the off-season while you maintain some basic fitness with extensive conditioning or "tempo" work. A few months prior to your season you’d begin introducing some specific conditioning work. This is the intensive type of conditioning I was referring to earlier specifically designed to get you in game shape. The focus on intensive conditioning is getting you ready to play. This is where you’d introduce more traditional high effort, puke inducing, conditioning methods such as gassers and such. In an ideal situation you' d have spent the bulk of your off-season dramatically improving your strength, speed, power, and explosiveness. Thus, entering your preseason you' d have those qualities in place and would only need to maintain them. Depending on the sport, I' d begin introducing intensive conditioning 2-3 months prior to preseason workouts. The more aerobic the sport and the more out of shape you are, the sooner you' d need to start specific conditioning. For a football player who needed to report to preseason in awesome game shape I' d introduce them 6-8 weeks prior to camp. For another football player who could use the preseason as a means to get in game shape we might just introduce them a few weeks ahead of time. What about basketball players? Well, the basketball player in all likelihood could simply play more basketball and play himself into shape. :) So, how do we go about introducing intensive conditioning? Does that mean we’d break out the boot camp mentality and engage in lots of intense 3-mile runs and the like? Absolutely not! In fact, for sports like football, volleyball, soccer, and even basketball, you can improve both the aerobic and anaerobic system through anaerobic work. There is NO need for concentrated low intensity work such as the age old popular long duration jogging. Therefore, for a football player, that would generally mean sometime between mid-May and June we' d add in one day per week of intensive anaerobic conditioning, such as sprints or agility drills, performed with short rest intervals. During this time, we' d still be training to improve our general speed, explosiveness and strength. Thus, the focus of our workout would stay the same. In July, however, we' d increase the volume of weekly conditioning to 2-3 sessions and we' d then look to maintain our strength, speed, and power via reductions in volume, while our focus shifts towards improving game type conditioning. What follows is an example of a weekly set-up for a football player during the last month of off-season:
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July – Mid-August (focus: explosiveness)
Improve conditioning – Maintain strength, speed, and
Mon: Upper body lifting, anaerobic conditioning using sprint intervals Tues: Lower body lifting Wed: Anaerobic conditioning using football agility drills Thurs: Upper Body lifting Friday: Off Sat: Anaerobic conditioning
** For more information on the entire process of addressing off-season training needs with appropriate conditioning, I recommend Eric Cressey’s Ultimate Offseason Training Manual.
Examples of anaerobic conditioning methods include: Agility drills:
Perform maximum effort agility drills with short rest intervals. An example might be a simple 40-yard shuttle drill where you sprint 10 yards, shuffle 10 yards, backpedal 10 yards, and sprint forward 10. Perform 6-10 sets per workout. Start off with 40-second rest intervals and progress down to 15-20 second rest intervals. Subtract 5 seconds rest per week. Any type of agility drill can easily be used as a conditioning method. Others include a 10 yard backpedal into a 5-10-5 sprint.
Sprints: Option A: Run 40-yard repeats at max (or near max) speed with short rest intervals of
30 seconds. Stop when you drop more than .5 seconds off your best time. Rest 3 minutes and repeat.
Option B: Use the same examples I gave for extensive intervals but increase the speed and reduce the rest interval: Example: + denotes 25 yard walk
set #1 100+100+100 set #2 100+200+100 set #3 200+100+200 set #4 100+200+100 set #5 100+100+100
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Run each sprint at a fairly high effort. Rest 1:30 between each set subtracting 15 seconds per workout until you' re down to 45 seconds.
Improving Game Speed I know I' ve spent this entire manual telling you how to get faster and boost your sprinting speed, but now I wanna talk about using what you' ve learned to improve your game speed. Game speed consists of physical qualities like linear speed, lateral speed, agility, quickness, reaction time and overall athleticism. These physical attributes will then be magnified by mental qualities like knowledge and attitude. Unfortunately, I can' t do a whole lot for your knowledge or attitude in your chosen sport - that' s up to you. In my opinion, attitude is best developed with confidence and the way you become a confident athlete is by paying your dues and becoming a student of your sport. If you' re a football player that means knowing what the heck you' re doing on the football field and mastering the technique required of your position. If you' re a basketball player that means hours and hours of practice. The same goes for any other sport. The greater the degree of mastery you have in your sport, the more confidence you will have. You’ll play faster because you will be able to react instinctually instead of having to think about everything. When you' re in a high-pressure situation and the adrenaline is flowing you' ll instinctively tend to revert to the things that come to you instinctually. Ever heard of accomplished martial artists getting whipped in bar fights against ordinary Joes? Unless the black belt is the type who has a lot of actual street fighting experience most of the time when he gets in a street fight the majority of his training will go out the window. If he' s lucky, he' ll revert to 1 or 2 moves he feels most comfortable with that have become part of his instinct. It’s possible he' ll forget EVERYTHING he ever learned in the dojo. The same thing happens with athletes. Throw them into a high-pressure situation and they' ll revert to the few things that come to them instinctively. Part of becoming a great athlete is expanding your instincts so that the things you do become 2nd nature. The way you do that is through repetition, confidence, and plenty of exposure to game type conditions. I’m sure you could take Steve Nash and line him up against every other point guard in the NBA and put them all through a battery of tests designed to evaluate their athleticism - a sprint, agility drill, vertical jump, or what have you. If you were to do that I guarantee Nash would finish last in just about every category. Yet Nash can PLAY the game of basketball extremely fast because he is so in tune with what he' s doing on the court. The same goes for a guy like John Lynch in football. He' s probably one of the slowest safeties in the league but he plays extremely fast because he' s such a student of the game and knows exactly what he’s doing on each and every play. Becoming a student of your sport is up to you. What I can do is give you the knowledge you need to improve your various physical qualities and hopefully you can put that together with your ability to play your chosen sport and really become a game breaker.
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Improving Quickness First let' s talk about quickness. Technically, quickness is the ability to move in the absence of much external force and without any wind-up. How fast are your hands and feet in simple unloaded movements? A person can be very quick but not really fast in a sprinting sense, and vice versa. From a technical standpoint, there' s a very strong genetic component when it comes to being quick. As I mentioned earlier, take a group of athletes and see how many times they can stand and tap their feet in place over a given interval. Or see how many punches you can throw in a given time interval. Measurements like those are good measurements of pure quickness. If you aren’t naturally all that quick there' s not a whole lot you can do about it - at least not if you' re referring to the technical definition of "quick". However, in the real world, quickness is really just another name for reaction time and first step explosiveness. Reaction time refers to how long it takes you to react to a stimulus. Think of a sprinter reacting to the gun going off. The reaction range is typically 0.2 to 0.3 seconds and is improvable around 10 to 20%. The younger and less coordinated the athlete, the greater the potential for improvements. Probably the best real world way you improve your reaction time is by mastering your sport – Know what’s going on and be in the right position to make a play. A form of over-speed training can also be of use for those that have access to it. With this type of training you learn to react to things that move much faster than those that occur in your sport. A baseball player might take batting practice while using a special pitching machine that throws pitches at 130 to 150 miles per hour. His brain would adapt to seeing the faster pitches. In turn, this would improve his ability to react to a 90 to 100 mile an hour pitch. A NASCAR driver might use a special driver simulation device that mimicks driving a race car at 200 plus miles per hour. This makes driving at 130 miles per hour seem slow and easy by comparison. You don’t necessarily need a special machine. For example, an offensive tackle who has bad reaction time and continuously gets beat off the ball against defensive ends might practice pass protection drills against speedier linebacker types. Their greater speed would improve his ability to react to the slower defensive end. The way you improve first step explosiveness is by boosting the same qualities that make you fast and apply them to the movements in your sport. With all things being equal, a fast athlete will always have an advantage over a slower athlete in first step explosiveness. In other words, if you were a defensive back and you were playing in a deep zone, who would you rather have catch the ball in front of you: The 5.2 second 40yard dash guy or the 4.2 guy? Case closed. Next, let' s talk about agility and overall athleticism.
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Improving Agility Agility and overall athleticism influence your ability to cut, change direction, stop on a dime, accelerate, and do all those other things most people refer to when they refer to game speed. Fortunately, the same training principles and core motor abilities that improve linear speed will also improve agility. The only other thing that needs to be incorporated when seeking agility is the skill needed to properly carry out the agility movements themselves. In other words, improvements in agility come about through the same core qualities that bring about improvements in linear speed - those being improvements in explosive power. The only factor that really separates the 2 is the application of your speed and power. You must be able to apply your speed and power towards properly carrying out the actual movements that you want to be agile on. Let' s use a real world example: Take an olympic 100-meter sprint champion, throw him on an NFL football field as a cornerback, and ask him to cover receivers and move like a cornerback is supposed to move. Even though he' s obviously fast and athletic enough is he gonna be very good at it? Probably not! He' ll probably be stumbling all over the place and will likely find it extremely difficult to carry out the moves of a cornerback. Yet give him a year or 2 to practice and master the specific movements a defensive back needs and he' ll probably be pretty good at it, simply because he already has the core speed and quickness necessary to do so. Let' s use another example: Take 2 groups of 5 people and time them on a 20-yard shuttle drill. Let' s say neither one of these groups has ever done the shuttle before. All you know is that one group averages a 4.5 second 40-yard dash and the other group averages a 5.0 second 40-yard dash. Which group do you think will have the fastest 20yard shuttle times? Definitely the 4.5 group. The best way to improve agility as it relates to your sport is to focus on optimizing your motor abilities, such as explosive strength and reactivity, while perfecting the required in your sport. If you were a defensive back you' d practice covering receivers. If you were a running back you’d practice running around tacklers. If you' re a basketball player practice driving to the hole or defending an opponent. You obviously can' t always do this year around in all sports, but providing you take the time and recovery necessary to boost your general motor qualities (strength, explosiveness the same qualities that make you run faster), actually in your sport will be the best way to improve your agility in a given sport. No amount of specific agility DRILLS can match the real thing.
What About Agility “Drills”? Having said that, the benefit of using agility drills is they allow you to duplicate some of the movements that occur in your sport if you don' t have the option of working
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with a real live opponent, and, even if you do have live opponents to work with, they allow you to zero in on a particular movement pattern. That' s why football players go through such a wide variety of drills during pre-season practices. Not only do they practice against live opponents, but they also break down the specific moves and movement patterns required of them and seek to improve those movements or isolated parts of those movements. When most of us think of agility drills we probably think of a course full of cones or bags that we go out and run through in a pre-determined pattern. Drills like these are called closed-loop drills. These can be helpful to make sure your body can carry out a movement and they can also be effective as conditioning tools, but the BEST way to run agility DRILLS is to utilize drills where you have to react to a signal or command in a reactionary fashion. These are called open-loop drills. For example, a defensive back might pack-pedal at the snap and break right or left depending upon a coaches signal. If you feel you need specific agility and quickness drills keep the following points in mind: 1. Just like the act of sprinting itself, once a given level of proficiency has been reached, you DON'T need to spend all year out on your feet doing various drills. Don' t let them interfere with your improvement in more general motor qualities. In other words, if you' re a football player, the first few months of your off-season is a time to improve your general motor qualities such as strength and power, and IS NOT the time you need to be out in the heat running hours of conditioning and agility drills every day. The time for agility drills is during the late off-season and pre-season. Use the off-season to improve your strength and speed. Often the best way to get faster and more agile is to simply get stronger overall. As a general rule of thumb, many athletes can see dramatic improvements in both linear and lateral speed and agility without training these qualities directly with traditional drills. This is obvious if you take a weak and scrawny athlete and focus on strengthening his lower body for an entire off-season. Throw him back out on the track and he’s floating like never before and his mechanics are better then ever before. He’s more explosive, quicker, and is 10 times more agile then before. He didn’t improve from performing drills, he improved by getting a bigger and more powerful motor. 2. Generally speaking, during the off-season, unless an athlete is significantly deficient in them, both speed work and lateral movement work (agility) sessions should be performed only once or twice per week. Traditional speed and agility drills can be more valuable for those athletes with favorable strength qualities, muscular balance, and dynamic flexibility, but poor sprinting speed and agility. These athletes would want to engage in some type of movement work a minimum of 3 days per week and often as frequently as 6 days per week. 3. Keep the distances and length per set specific to your sport. A football player would run an assortment of drills 5-10 seconds long since that' s the average length of a play.
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4. When IMPROVEMENT in agility is a goal, take full recoveries between sets and stop the workout prior to or as soon as your performance starts to decline. It is important to allow complete or near-complete recovery between sets in all movement training. 5. If you’re using agility drills as a form of conditioning work, disregard #4. 6. If the goal is to improve agility AND conditioning, start the workout off performing high quality repetitions with full recovery where the focus in on improvement. Finish up with the conditioning. 7. Always take a day off in between bouts of intense agility work.** 8. If you' re going to mix linear speed with agility training, do the agility first. 9. Get creative with the drills. Grab some cones and make up obstacle courses or whatever you wanna do. There are no shortage of agility drills out there. 10. Youngsters and those who struggle with heavy feet can benefit the most from traditional closed loop agility type drills. These include things like agility ladders, dot drills, hurdle drills, cone drills etc. They can also do them more frequently. (every day or every other day) 11. More advanced athletes should use reactionary drills, where they have to react to a signal or command. **By”intense”, I’m referring to drills that incorporate a lot of explosiveness, knee bending, and stopping on a dime (deceleration). A 20-yard shuttle run would be an example of an intense agility drill. Agility ladders and dot drills would not considered intense since there isn’t much intense stopping and changing direction.
Sample Off-season workouts for football What follows are examples of fairly detailed off-season workouts that I have used with football players. Although I had a football player in mind when I wrote them, they can be utilized by athletes in any sport requiring speed, strength, and size. Football is a special sport because realistically, it can be just as much about bodybuilding as it is performing. Yes I did say bodybuilding there. Football players not only have to be faster and stronger every year, but they often gotta get significantly bigger too. How many times have you heard a football coach say, “Son, I want you at (fill in the blank bodyweight) next year.” With that in mind, what I’m going to lay out next is a sample 12 week off-season program for football where the focus is not only on getting stronger, faster, and more explosive, - but also a tad bigger too. *** When a person has accumulated some training experience and has reached a point where training all the major qualities with equal volumes throughout a training week no longer works quite so well, that is the time when more focus addressing the deficiencies of a given athlete will be the best course of action to take for increased performance. As I mentioned earlier, if you’re stronger then you are fast you’ll tend to improve athleticism
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by focusing a bit more on your speed and explosiveness. If you are faster then you are strong you’ll tend to improve by increasing your strength. But what if you need to get bigger, stronger, and faster? Then you have to approach things a tad differently. The following 12-week workouts include sample workouts for strength-dominant athletes and workouts for speed-dominant athletes. Each 12-week workout is broken down into three 4-week phases. The main difference in the training of the speed dominant athlete and that of the strength dominant athlete is the latter (strength dominant) needs to spend a bit more time on his feet working on things related to his movement proficiency and general explosiveness. The former (speed dominant) can focus more on pure strength and hypertrophy work. Despite considerable differences in the structure of the following programs between the 2 groups throughout the first 8 weeks, the final 4-week phase appears quite similar, as both groups will be working towards some personal records in various field tests. At the conclusion of the programs not only should athletes following these workouts be bigger and stronger, but they’ll hopefully finish up having set some PR’s in the 40, vertical jump, and agility drills. In my opinion a football player should have his speed and explosiveness in place just prior to the time when he starts implementing his conditioning work, which might be early June or might be July. Assuming one could start base off-season training in January and assuming they’d start conditioning in June, that would allow approximately 20 weeks of off-season workouts. I’ve given examples for 12 weeks here. For a 20-week offseason a person might perform phase 1, 2, and 3 over twelve weeks then repeat phase 1 and phase 3 once more over the final 8 weeks. Someone with a slightly longer off-season might have time to go through each phase twice. Remember, even though there is quite a bit of individuality written into the programs these are just examples and can’t be perfect for everyone. *** With the increased size aspect in mind, during phase I of the following workouts the most important thing an athlete can do is make sure he takes in enough nutrition. The focus should really be on taking a no-holds barred attitude when it comes to tieing on the feed bag and getting that scale weight up.
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Strength Dominant Athlete: Phase I Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
3x 10 seconds
3 x 10 seconds
2 x 10 seconds
3x6/leg
4x6
4x6
eliminate
3x5
4x3
4x2
3x3 (should be easy)
B) DB Bulgarian Split Squat
2x6/leg
2x6
2x6
1x6
C1) Weighted Glute-Ham Raise, Reverse Hyper, or leg curl
3x8
3x8
3x8
2x8 (easy)
Sunday: Off
Monday: Lower Body Single leg lateral line jump (hop back and forth quickly over a line) Altitude drop jump into lunge landing on balls of feet (use box up to the height of your best vertical jump) A) Snatch Grip Deadlift
C2) Decline leg raise
3x10 seconds/leg
2x max reps
3x max reps 3 x max reps 3 x max reps
Tuesday: Rest day, Skill work or tempo
Wednesday: Upper Body Power Skipping into sprint Single leg on box Jump (jumps onto a box) A1) Incline Press
3x25 yards 4x25/25 yards skip/25 yards sprint
4 x 25/25 yards
2 x 25/25
2x5 3x 3 (light weight) should be easy)
4x5/leg
4x5
4x5
3x 8
4x6
4x3
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A2) Chest-Supported Row Pronated Grip
3x8
4x8
4x8
2x8 (easy)
B1) Incline trap raise
3x15/side
3x15/side
3x15/side
3x15/side
B2) Full Contact Twist
3x8/side
2x8/side
4x8/side
2x8/side
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
4x5/side
2 x 5/side
4x8/side
2x8
Optional beach work: 10 minutes biceps, triceps, “beach” muscles
Strength Dominant Athlete: Phase I Week 1 Thursday: Rest day, Skill work, or tempo
Friday: Single-leg Lateral/medial Box Jump (onto a box from the left and from the right) Lateral depth drop on toes (step off box to the side and land up on the balls of the feet)
3x5/side
4x5/side
3x8/side
3x6/side (higher box)
6 x 2 at 60%
6x2 at 55%
B) Single Leg RDL
2x5/side
3x5
3x5
2x5
C) DB Step-up
2 x 6/side
2x6/side
2x6/side
Eliminate
2 x 30s/side
3 x 30s/side
3 x 30s/side
2 x 30s/side
A) Box Squat
D) Side bridge hold
6 x 2 at 50% 4 x 2 at 60%
Saturday: A1) Speed Bench Press – Max 3 sets at 65% 4 sets at 65% 4 sets at 65% 2 sets at 65% Reps in 10 seconds 1RM A2) Close Grip Chin-up B1) Incline Barbell front raise
3x5
4x5
4x5
2x5
3 x 6-10
3 x 6-10
3 x 6-10
2 x 6-10
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C1) side cable external Rotation Optional Beach work: 10 minutes arms, delts etc.
3x12/side
3x12/side
3x12/side
2 x12/side
Strength Dominant Athlete: Phase II Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
3x10
3x10
3x10
3 x 10
4 sets/leg
4 sets/leg
4 sets/leg
eliminate
A) Low Bar Power Squat
4x3
5x2
B) Glute Ham, Reverse Hyper, or cable pull through
2x6
3x6
Sunday: Off
Monday: Lower Body Lateral Barrier Jump (knee high barrier) Single leg triple jump (take 3 hops forward on one leg)
C) Hanging knee raise
5x1 3x3 (should (working up be easy) to max single) 3x6
2x6 (easy)
2 x max reps 2 x max reps 2 x max reps 2 x max reps
Tuesday: off day, skill work, or tempo,
Wednesday: Upper Body Standing Knees to Chest Tuck Jumps Lateral barrier jump + 10-yard Sprint (jump over cone, chair or other obstacle and immediately sprint forward)
3x5
4x5
4x5
2x5
3 sets
4 sets
4 sets
2x5
A1) Barbell Floor Press
4x3
5x2
5x1
3 x 3 (easy)
B1) Flat DB Press
2x6
2x6
2x6
2 x 6 (easy light weight)
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B2) One-Arm DB Row
3x6/side
3x5/side
3x6/side
2x6/side (easy)
C1) High to low cable woodchop
2x10/side
3x10/side
3x10/side
2x10/side
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
4 x 20 seconds/leg
4 x 20 seconds
4 x 20 seconds
2 x 20 seconds
3-4
3-4
4x5@ 25%
3 x 5@15%
3 x 5/side
Eliminate
3x10
2x10
Optional Beach Work: 10 minutes biceps, triceps, delts etc.
Strength DominantAthlete: Phase II
Thursday: Off day, skill work, or tempo
Friday: Lower Body Single leg 4 star hop (hop around in a square)
50 yard sprints at 80% max speed 3-4 sprint reps 3-4 4 x 5 @ 30% A) Barbell Jump Squat 4x5 @ 25% of 1RM squat B) Dumbell reverse lunge (step2 x 5/side 3 x 5/side back lunge) C) Cable Pull through, reverse hyperextension, or glute-ham 2x10 3 x 10 raise D) V-sit
2 x max reps 2 x max reps 2 x max reps 2 x max reps
Saturday: Upper Body A1) Seated semi-supinated DB Press
3x4
4x4
5x4
2x5
A2) (Weighted) Mid-Grip Pull-up
3x4
4x4
5x2
2 x 5 (easy)
B1) Prone Trap Raise
3x12
3x12
3x12
2x12
C1) Side raise lying in back extension device
2 x max reps 2 x max reps 2 x max reps 2 x max reps per side per side per side per side
Optional 10 minutes beach work
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Strength Dominant Athlete: Phase III Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Stop at first sign of performance Depth jump for maximum height drop-off - Find box height that maximizes jump height. 4x3
Same
Same
Same
4x3
4x3
4x3
A) Deadlift
3x2
2 x 2 at 80%
eliminate
B) Peterson step-up (low box step-up) use box approximately mid-shin level in height – use a controlled 3-5 second eccentric tempo
2 x 12-15/leg 3x 12-15/leg 2 x 12-15/leg
eliminate
C1) Reactive Glute-Ham Raise
2 x max reps 2 x max reps 4 x max reps 2 x max reps in 10 seconds in 10 seconds in 10 seconds in 10 seconds
Sunday: Off
Monday: Lower Body 20 yard dash
C2) Cable pull-ins
2x3
2 x 15-20
3x 15-20
3x 15-20
2 x 15-20
Pro-Agility (5-10-5 Drill)
Stop at first sign of dropoff
Same
same
same
A1) Decline Bench Press
3x5
4x5
5x3
2x 5
B1) Chest supported row
3x8
4x6
4x8
2x8
B2) Decline Tricep extension
2x10
2x10
2x10
eliminate
C1) Face Pull
3x10
3x10
3x10
3x10
C2) Medium Cable Woodchop
2x10
2x10
3x10
2x10
Tuesday: off, skill work, or tempo Wednesday: Upper Body
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Strength Dominant Athlete: Phase III Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
To first sign of dropoff
To first sign of drop-off
To first sign of dropoff
3 x 2 at 8590%
eliminate
eliminate
2x10
eliminate
eliminate
To first sign of drop-off
To first sign of drop-off
To first sign of drop-off
4x4
5x3
2 x 4 (easy)
Thursday: Rest, Skill work, or tempo
Friday: Lower Body
40 yard dash A1) Squat A2) Single leg back extension
Stop at first sign of performance dropoff 2 x 3 at 8590% 2x10
Saturday: Upper Body Stop at first Depth jump for maximum height sign of - Find box height that maximizes performance jump height. drop-off A1) Push Press A2) Wide Grip Sternum Pullup
3x5
3 x max reps 4x max reps 4 x max reps
2 x max reps (easy)
B1) Incline DB Lateral
3x12
3x12
3x12
2 x 12
B2) Cable external rotation
3x12
3x12
3x12
2x10
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Speed Dominant Athlete: Phase I Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
4x4
2x4
Sunday: Off
Monday: Lower Body Depth drop landing on balls of feet – (use box equaling best vertical jump height)
4x4
4x4
4x5
4x4
3x1 2x3
2x8/side
3x8/side
3x8/side
C1) Glute-Ham Raise, Reverse hyper, or Leg curl
4x8
3x8
4x8
2x8 (easy)
C2) Decline Leg raise
3x12
3x12
3x12
3x12
3x8
4x8
4x8
2x8 (easy)
3x8
4x8
4x8
2x8 (easy)
B1) Single arm cable lateral
3x12/side
3x12/side
3x12/side
2x12/side
B2) Prone Trap Raise
3x12-15
3x12-15
3x12-15
2x12-15
2x 15-20
3 x 15-20
3 x 15-20
2 x 15-20
A) Snatch Grip Deadlift B) DB Bulgarian Split Squat
3x 3 (easy) 2x8/side (easy)
Tuesday: Off day, Skill work or tempo (your choice)
Wednesday: Upper Body A1) Neutral Grip DB Bench Press A2) Chest-Supported Row Pronated Grip
C) Decline Russian twist with med/ball Optional 10 minutes beach work (biceps, triceps, etc.)
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Speed Dominant Athlete: Phase I Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
4 x 4/side
4 x 4/side
4 x 4/side
2 x 4/side
5x2
4x1
3 x 2 (easy)
3x5
3x6
2x5
2 x max reps/side
2 x max reps/side
2 x max reps/side
2 sets
3 sets
4 sets
2 sets
2 sets
3 sets
4 sets
2 sets
B1) Bicep exercise of choice
3 x 8-10
3 x 8-10
3 x 8-10
3 x 8-10
B2) Tricep exercise of choice
3 x 8-10
3 x 8-10
3 x 8-10
3 x 8-10
C1) Side lying DB external rotation
2 x 12-15
2 x 12-15
2 x 12-15
2 x 12-15
Thursday: Off day, skill work, or tempo
Friday: Lower Body Depth Drop into Lunge Stance (landing on balls of feet)
A) Front Squat 4x3 B) Russian Good morning (close stance arched back good 2x6 morning) C) Side raise lying in back 2 x max reps/ extension device side
Saturday: Upper Body A1) Bench Press - max reps at bodyweight (as many reps as possible with bodyweight) A2) Bodyweight pull-ups – max reps with bodyweight
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Speed Dominant Athlete: Phase II Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
4 x 4/side
4 x 4/side
4 x 4/side
2 x 4/side
3x5
3 x 3 (easy)
Sunday: Off
Monday: Lower Body Single leg backwards low depth drop landing on ball of foot A) Power Squat
3 x 5/ 1 x 15- 3 x 5/1 x 1520 20
B) Stiff-Legged Deadlift
2x6
3x6
3x6
2x6 (easy)
C) Full Contact twist
2x12
2x12
3x12
2x12
A) Bench Press (Wks. 1,2) Barbell Floor Press (Wks. 3,4)
4x3
5-6 x 1-2
3 x 2/ 3 x 3
3x3 (easy)
B1) Incline barbell front raise
3x8
4x8
4x8
2x8 (easy)
2x6/side
3x6/side
3x6/side
2x6/side (easy)
3x15
3x15
3 x 15
2 x 15
Tuesday: off day, skill work, or tempo
Wednesday: Upper Body
B2) One-Arm DB Row C1) Pulldown cable crunch Optional 10 minutes beach work (biceps, triceps, etc.)
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Speed Dominant Athlete: Phase II Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
4 x 4/side
4 x 4/side
4 x 4/side
2 x 4/side
Thursday: Off day, skill work, or tempo
Friday: Lower Body Single Leg low backwards depth drop landing on ball of foot A) Speed Deadlift B) Reverse Lunge (step back lunge)
4 x 3 at 70% 4 x 3 at 70% 4 x 3 at 70%
Eliminate
2 x5 /leg
2 x 5/leg
2 x 5/leg
2x5/leg
C1) Cable Pull-Through
2x12
3x12
3x12
2x12
C2) Weighted Swiss ball crunch
2x10
3x10
3x10
2x10
A1) Semi-Supinated DB Overhead press
3x5
4x5
4x4
A2) (Weighted) Mid-Grip Pull-up
3x4
4x4
1 x 3, 2 x 4
C1) Prone Trap Raise
3x12
3x12
3x12
Saturday: Upper Body
C2) Hanging leg raise
2 x 5 (easy weight) 2 x 5 (easy weight) 2x12
2 x max reps 2 x max reps 2 x max reps 2 x max reps
Optional 10 minutes beach work
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Speed Dominant Athlete: Phase III Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Stop at first sign of performance drop-off – use full recoveries
Same
Same
Same
4x3
4x3
4x3
4x3
2x3
3x2
2 x 2 at 8085%
eliminate
Sunday: Off
Monday: Lower Body 20-yard dash
Depth Jump for maximum height (use box that maximizes jump height) A) Deadlift B) Peterson step-up (low box step-up)
2 x 12-15/leg 2 x 12-15/leg 2 x 12-15/leg 2 x 12-15/leg
C1) Reactive Glute-Ham Raise
2 x max reps 2 x max reps 2 x max reps 2 x max reps in 10 seconds in 10 seconds in 10 seconds in 10 seconds
C2) Cable leg raises
2 x 15-20
3x 15-20
3x 15-20
2 x 15-20
Pro-Agility (5-10-5 Drill)
Stop at first sign of performance drop-off
Same
same
same
A1) Decline Bench Press
3x5
4x4
4x3
2x 5
A2) Chest Supported row
3x8
4x6
4x8
2x8
B1) Decline Tricep extension
2x10
2x10
2x10
eliminate
B2) Medium Cable Woodchop
2x10
2x10
3x10
2x10
Tuesday: off day, skill work, or tempo Wednesday: Upper Body
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Speed Dominant Athlete: Phase III Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Thursday: Off day, skill work, or tempo
Friday: Lower Body
40 yard dash A1) Squat A2) Single leg back extension
Stop at first To first sign To first sign To first sign sign of of of of performance performance performance performance dropoff dropoff drop-off dropoff 2x3 at 853 x 3 at 85eliminate eliminate 90% 90% 2x10
2x10
eliminate
eliminate
To first sign of drop-off
To first sign of drop-off
To first sign of drop-off
Saturday: Upper Body Depth Jump for maximum height To first sign - Find box height that maximizes of drop-off jump height. A1) Push Press
3x5
4x5
5x3
3 x 8 (easy)
A2) Wide Grip Seated Row
3x8
4x 6
4x6
3x6 (easy)
B1) Incline DB Lateral
3x12
3x12
3x12
3 x 12
B2) Cable external rotation
3x12
3x12
3x12
3x10
Training For Track What about training for competitive sprinting? How would you go about implementing a plan for a sprinter? Well, just follow the same basic principles and address your deficiencies as an athlete. Build your speed and acceleration over short distances then carry that out over longer distances. I find a lot of sprinters get carried away thinking they have to follow very elaborate models. In my observation, most sprinters spend too much time on the track and perform an excessive amount of running in general. The result is many that I’ve worked with tend to be chronically over-reached. I’ve yet to see a sprinter who
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didn’t make good results scaling back on overall volume and putting in more quality work. That usually means a reduction in conditioning and tempo work is a good thing.
Sample Programs For Track Here is how you might set up a sprinters workout for a strength deficient athlete: Phase I GPP – 4-8 weeks – Get In Shape/Hypertrophy Exercise and Day Volume Comments Monday Short Sprints 10’s and 20’s – up Add 5 meters per to 10 reps each week to each sprint. Walk back recovery Weights Squat 4 sets of 8 Row 4 sets of 8 Bench 4 sets of 8 Leg curl or Glute 4 sets of 8 Ham Tuesday- Off day, Up to 1500 meters tempo, extensive running – Add up to intervals 250 meters per week not surpassing 3000 Wednesday: Short Sprints 20’s and 40’s – up Walk back recovery to 10 reps each Deadlift 4 sets of 5 Pullup 4 sets of 8 Dip 4 sets of 8 Thursday- Off day, Up to 1500 meters tempo, extensive running – Add up to intervals 250 meters per week not surpassing 3000 Same As Monday Same As Monday Friday: Same as Tuesday Same as Tuesday Saturday: and Thursday and Thursday Phase II – Max Strength – 4-8 weeks Exercise and Week 1 Week Week 3 Day 2 Monday: Starts, 20’s and Stop Prior to Same Same 30’s any noticeable drop-off in
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Week 4
Comments
Same
Do these with full recoveries – Perform from various starts – blocks etc.
Weights Squat
time 4x3
5x2
Glute Ham Pullup
3x5 4x5
3x5 5x5
5x1 (not to failure) 3x5 5x4
Bench
4x5
5x5
5x4
Tuesday: Off day, tempo, extensive intervals
Wednesday: 60’s or flying 20’s Weights Optional 15-20 minutes easy upper body work Thursday: Friday: 30’s Weights Snatch Grip Deadlift DB Bulgarian split squat Row DB Bench Press Saturday
Stop when Same time declines
3 x 3 at 80% 1rm 3x5 3x3 (easy) 3x3 (easy)
Same
Eliminate
Stop when Same time declines
Same
Same
3x3
4x2
5x1
2 x 5/leg
Same
Same
3x2 (easy) Eliminate
3x5 3x5
3x5 3x5
3x5 3x5
3x5 3x5
Same as Tuesday
Same as Tuesday and Thursday
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1500-2000 meters total tempo – These are also a training option on Thursday and Saturday. If you perform them, do them 1 or 2 days per week, but not 3. Do these with full recoveries
Phase III – Competition Phase Day and Exercise Monday: Flying 20’s Weights Squat Bench Row Tuesday: Off day Wednesday: 30’s Thursday: Extensive interval circuits Friday: Off day Saturday: Competition
Volume
Comments
Stop when time declines 3 x 3 at 80-90% 3 x 3 at 85-90% 3 x 3 at 85-90% Stop prior to time declining
Keep volume and intensity low
Here’s what a plan might look like for a speed deficient athlete Phase I GPP – 4-8 weeks – Get In Shape/Strength Exercise and Day Volume Comments Monday Short Sprints 10’s and 20’s – up Add 5 meters per to 10 reps each week to each sprint. Walk back recovery Weights Squat 4 sets of 5 Row 4 sets of 8 Bench 4 sets of 8 Leg curl or Glute 4 sets of 5 Ham Tuesday- Off day, Up to 1500 meters tempo, or extensive running – Add up to intervals 250 meters per week not surpassing 3000 Wednesday: Short Sprints 20’s and 40’s – up Walk back recovery to 10 reps each Deadlift 4 sets of 3 Pullup 4 sets of 8 Dip 4 sets of 8 Thursday- Off day, Up to 1500 meters tempo, extensive running – Add up to
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intervals Friday: Saturday:
Same As Monday Same as Tuesday and Thursday
250 meters per week not surpassing 3000 Same As Monday Same as Tuesday and Thursday
Phase II – Max Strength and Power – 4-8 weeks Exercise and Week Week Week Week Day 1 2 3 4 Monday: Starts, 20’s or Stop prior to Same Same Same 30’s time declining Depth Jump
3 reps per set Do one set of depth jumps in between each set of sprints
Weights Box Squat Glute Ham Pullup
5 x 2 at 60% 3x5 4x5
Same 3x5 5 x5
Same 3x5 5x4
Bench
4x5
5x5
5x4
Tuesday: Off day, or optional tempo, extensive intervals
Wednesday: 60’s
Stop when time declines
Weights Optional 15-20 minutes easy upper body work Same as Thursday: Tuesday Friday: 30’s Stop when time declines Depth Jump
Same 3x5 3x3 (easy) 3x3 (easy)
Comments Do these with full recoveries – Perform from various starts – blocks etc. – Use medium height box on depth jumps about 18 inches
1500-2000 meters total tempo – These are also a training option on Thursday and Saturday. If you perform them, pick 1 or 2 days per week, but not 3.
Same
Same
Eliminate Do these with full recoveries
Same
Same
Same Use box about 18 inches high
4x3 120
Weights Jump Shrug or Snatch Pull Row DB Bench Press Saturday
3x3
4x2
5x1
3x5 3x5 Same as Tuesday and Thursday
3x5 3x5
3x5 3x5
3x2 (easy) 3x5 3x5
Phase III – Competition Phase Day and Exercise Monday: Flying 20’s Weights Speed Squat Bench Row Tuesday: Off day Wednesday: 30’s Thursday: Optional Extensive interval circuits Friday: Off day Saturday: Competition
Volume
Comments
Stop when time declines 3 x 3 at 70% 3 x 3 at 85-90% 3 x 3 at 85-90% Stop prior to time declining
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Go down under control – explode on the way up
Keep volume and intensity low
Conclusion To review, building great speed and athleticism is just a matter of implementing the following basic principles: 1. Establish efficient movement patterns and coordination (learn to move fluidly on your feet, drive from the hips, and control your body efficiently) 2. Establish or maintaining baseline levels of general fitness 3. Get and/or keep yourself lean 4. Establish good mobility 5. Establish baseline levels of strength 6. Identify whether you are stronger then you are fast, or faster then you are strong. 7. Focus on your weak points. 8. Get out and let the horses run! Or, (since I know you aren' t tired of hearing this yet), if we were to look at this from the same perspective as if we were building a racecar, what we' re really doing is this: 1. Making sure we invest in good tires to get our car down the road. (getting good feet) 2. Making sure we invest in a good frame 3. Making sure we have a big enough motor to get us down the road. (getting strong and powerful in the hips) 4. Making sure we take care of our motor and keep all moving parts well lubricated. (establishing and maintaining proper mobility) 5. Determining whether we should invest in a bigger motor, or whether we would be best served to modify our motor to get the car faster. 6. Taking the time to make the necessary modifications. 7. Have fun, take our car out to the track, and turn it loose! When you really boil it down to the sheer nuts and bolts, getting faster or more explosive really just involves 2 very simple points: A: Get strong and increase your ability to exert force. B: Do enough running, mobility work, and other movement work to either maintain or improve the efficiency and proficiency of your movements. If you take nothing else from this manual I hope you remember those 2 very simple points. In conclusion, creating a speedy, fluid, and agile athlete is a relatively simple process. Hopefully, with this information, I’ve been able to give you a solid road map to work from. Building athleticism is not easy and does require a lot of hard work, but providing you’re willing to work hard, consistent success is there for the taking. -Kelly
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Q&A Q: I have a 14-year old son who seems to lack strength and movement efficiency. Can you give me an example of workout you would set him up on? A: You might want to go check out my training templates article included here under Appendix B. Here is an example of a weekly phase I’ve used for an athlete of that age. Monday Dynamic warmup Lateral single leg hops in place - 2-3 x 15-20 reps (or 5-10 seconds) Single leg on-box jumps- 3 sets of 3 reps forward and to each side 20-yard accelerations - 5-8 reps Squat- 3-5 sets x 5-8 reps Glute ham raise or leg curl- 4 sets x 6-8 reps Wednesday Dynamic warmup Low squat hops in place- 2-3 x 15-20 reps Single leg hop in place - 2-3 x 15-20 reps Deadlift- 2-3 x 3 reps Dumbell Split Squat- 2-3 x 6-8 Friday Dynamic warmup 4 square hops - 2-3 sets x 20 seconds Knees to chest jumps- 3-4 sets x 8-15 reps 20-yard sprints - 5-8 reps Squat - 3-5 sets x 5-8 reps Glute-ham raise or leg curl- 4 sets x 6-8 reps Add in some upper body movements such as dips, bench presses, pull-ups, and rows, and that’s really all he’d need. You could actually cut the workout down to 2 days per week and be just fine. Realistically, he really wouldn’t even need to do as much sprinting as I gave in this example. You could that down by 50% and he’d do fine. Q: You've talked about the importance of running through the hips and the toes but what about the various muscles involved like the calves? I've heard some people say they're totally unimportant and others say that they are the secret key to unlocking athletic potential. Is calf strength a limiting factor towards being fast, 123
agile, and moving efficiently? Should a person do specific drills for the calves or are they over-rated? A: The importance of the calves is more along the lines of their function and not necessarily their strength. Their main purpose is to control the feet and transfer forces from the larger and stronger hip, hamstring, and quadriceps into the ground. You build function in the calves by learning proper movement patterns and developing the ability to become light on your feet. If you don' t become well coordinated on your feet at an early age you may have a propensity to become heavy-footed unless you correct that. Obviously, if you have 2 broken ankles or 2 flat tires on your car you ain' t going anywhere in a hurry! Therefore it' s really just a movement efficiency issue. Strength can be a factor for some people. If you’re not strong enough to stride forward at an easy pace on the balls of your feet, or bounce up and down on one foot without your heel striking, you could probably stand to incorporate some calf raise variations, but that probably won’t be an issue for most people. Drive by a playground and watch little kids move. Pay attention and you’ll see plenty of 6 and 8 year olds move smoother on their feet then a lot of adults. They don' t move better because they' re stronger in the calves, they move better because they' re more fluid on their feet. In other words, they CONTROL their feet, ankles, and calves better. So, performing a multitude of specific drills and engaging in lots of strength work just for the calves is usually not needed, but establishing proper movement efficiency is. The calves will usually get as strong as they need to get just by virtue of being involved in all the activities that an athlete participates in. So, if you' re not already, simply work on getting light on your feet and get to the point where you can move efficiently. How do you do that? Well, get up off your butt and stop playing so much x-box and get away from the computer for one thing! Get outside and move! All the assorted plyo, agility, and even sprint drills are good for that purpose. Jump rope, hopscotch, tag, dodgeball, you name it. If needed, probably the best drill for developing specific calf (plantar flexor) power, is dropping off a box and landing up on the balls of your feet. Q: You talked about the importance of using the off-season to focus on core neuromuscular qualities like strength and minimizing sport and conditioning while minimizing anything that interferes with that. You used the example of basketball players that play too much. Does that mean you’re saying an athlete should not participate in their sport? A: I’m not saying to ignore everything related to the sport but a lot of people go way overboard. A game or 2 each week ain’t gonna kill a basketball player but 2 hour games every day will. I would normally recommend basketball players focus more on their skill work. That includes shooting, one-on-one play etc. Karl Malone didn’t play basketball AT ALL during the off-season and it never affected him in a negative way. A receiver in football might practice running some routes and catching passes a few days per week. A soccer player would get out and mess around with soccer related ball drills. No need to get totally away from everything, but you wanna cut down on the hardcore conditioning.
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Q: You're saying that if my goal was to run faster and the testing indicates that I need to learn to better express my strength that all I really would need to do is get out and focus more on sprinting? I wouldn't need to necessarily do any plyometrics, explosive weight training etc? All I would really need to do is sprint? A: Yes that' s pretty much spot on. If you were to do nothing except get out and run sprints at a high intensity 2-3 days per week you could get good results without adding anything else. Having said that, you might get slightly better results engaging in a bit more specific explosive work like jump squats and various plyometric type drills which increase the magnitude of tension of specific weak areas, movements, or muscles. For example, when simply jumping from one leg to the other the dynamic characteristics of the push-off are greater than the dynamic characteristics involved with running. Therefore, jumps like these and other similar drills can be an excellent form of power training for a sprinter. Another beneficial thing to do would be to incorporate at least enough heavy weight training to maintain your strength. But if in doubt keep things simple. I’ve said before that a person can get just about as fast as they’ll ever need to be using a total of only 3 exercises. Those exercises are squats, glute ham raises, and sprints. Or deadlifts, split squats, and sprints. Q: Why do you recommend approaching things in phases instead of using the conjugate periodization and hitting everything at once? You recommend a strength-dominant phase, explosive-dominant phase etc. Isn’t this just basic linear periodization? Isn’t it better to focus on all qualities so you don’t lose any of them? A: There is often quite a bit of confusion as to what conjugate periodization is so let me clarify that. A lot of people think true conjugate periodization is where you train all the necessary strength qualities at the same time without getting away from any of them. For example, you' d train maximum strength, reactive strength, explosive strength, and endurance with equal volumes during the same training week so as to address every quality. But that’s not really true. There are essentially two main systems of organizing long-term training: A: The concurrent system B: The conjugate sequence system. The concurrent system involves the simultaneous training of several motor abilities, such as strength, speed, and endurance, over the same period of time, with the intention of developing all of them simultaneously. Sound familiar? Although research has corroborated the effectiveness of this system, the subjects used in these studies were generally conducted on athletes of lower qualification. While the negatives of the concurrent system are not apparent with less advanced athletes, they become very noticeable with elite athletes. It produces only average results in higher level athletes
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simply because, when you try to train everything at the same time, you limit the amount that you can focus on any given quality. Advanced athletes tend to need more focus on a given quality in order to improve that quality. To create a more powerful training effect in advanced athletes it is better to use intense phases with a singular focus and to arrange these phases in an order that produces a sum greater then it' s parts. This is precisely the purpose of the conjugate system. The conjugate sequence system involves successively introducing into the training program specific phases, each of which has a progressively stronger training effect, and sequencing them in a way that creates favorable conditions to grasp a greater net effect of all the training loads. The conjugate sequence is characterized by a concentrated focus on developing individual specific motor abilities (strength, speed, strength endurance etc.), each of which is confined largely to a given period. So each phase builds off the next and because of the concentration used, each phase has delayed effects, which carry over into the next phase. To give you an example, for someone in a speed dominant sport the sequence of phases would look something like this: Gpp (4-6 weeks---->Strength-(4-12 weeks)---->explosive strength (4-12 weeks) (shock/plyometric/speed)---->competitive Gpp builds a base of basic fitness by using a higher volume of low intensity work. This leads into a strength phase, which uses a high volume of strength loading. This leads into a shock phase where the focus is on displaying strength. During this phase, the total amount of work is lower but the intensity is higher. Not only will the body be adapting positively to the shock loading itself, but it will also be super-compensating positively from the previous phase of high volume strength work, as fatigue is allowed do dissipate. So, as you’re entering an explosive oriented phase you get the delayed transformation effect of the previous strength work, therefore you' re getting stronger, faster, and more explosive at the same time. It should be noted that reversing the order of the training sequence will not always produce the same summation of training effects. It' s also worth noting that some phases can be lengthened, that' s just a general outline. Simple enough! There was an old Soviet study done pertaining to the vertical jump that really helps elucidate this topic. What they did was take 4 groups of athletes and had each group perform one of 4 different types of training for 4 weeks each over a total of 16 weeks. All 4 groups hit each type of training but in varying sequences. The various phases looked like this: A: Basic low intensity jumps
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B: Heavy weight training (squats and assorted lifts) C: Lighter explosive weight training and jumps with weights D: Intense plyometric training (depth jumps). One group performed D for 4 weeks followed by B for 4 weeks, followed by C for 4 weeks, followed by A for 4 weeks. Another group performed B, followed by D, followed by A, followed by C, for 4 weeks each Another group performed A, B, C, and D all at the same time. Another group performed A, followed by B, followed by C, followed by D, for 4 weeks each. At the conclusion of the study, it was found that the group that performed A, B, C, and D all at the same time got inferior results compared to the other groups. It was found that whenever any group happened to be performing D they got a quick boost in vertical jumping ability, but stagnated just as quickly. In other words, the group that performed depth jumps in the second 4-week period did improve their vertical jump during that period, but failed to improve through the final two 4 week phases. The group that performed A, followed by B, followed by C, followed by D got the best results overall, and the results improved linearly nice and smooth through the entire study. It makes sense if you think about it. They started off with basic low intensity jumps, which allowed the athletes to establish basic movement efficiency and ingrain basic motor patterns. They followed that up with heavy weight training, which allowed them to build up their relative strength levels. They followed that up with explosive weight training and jumps with weights, which allowed them to better display the strength they had built. They followed that up with depth jumps, which provided a means to further intensify the display of strength in a high intensity manner. So: movement efficiency, strength, strength expression. Now does that mean when you' re focusing on one quality that you should totally avoid the other qualities?? No! It just means that those other qualities would be maintained with less volume and intensity. If you were a speed athlete and you were in more of a strength
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focused phase, your speed workouts might consist of performing low intensity technical drills and running one day per week. If you were in a speed phase your strength work might consist of lifting done as infrequently as once per week consisting of 3 x 3 at 8085% for a few movements. In summary, beginner and low-level intermediate athletes do fine working on all qualities simultaneously, but more advanced athletes will need more focus. Q: I have a question about what you said regarding there not being much of a need to engage in explosive weight room work like cleans etc. I love the hang power clean. Are you saying that improving the clean doesn’t also improve explosivness in other activities? Just like any other explosive movement, the clean can help bridge the gap between total strength and total useable strength, if that is an area lacking. However, by itself it isn’t a miracle exercise. I love performing hang cleans myself, but a good clean is really a demonstration or indicator of explosiveness, just like a fast sprint and a good vertical jump are good demonstrations of explosiveness. Let' s just say for the sake of argument that the clean correlates perfectly with your on-field explosiveness (running and jumping etc.) So, any improvements you make to your clean will be transferred into your running speed. You' d obviously want to get your clean poundages as high as possible right? With that being said, what is the best way to get your clean up to 315 pounds? Can the guy with a 200-pound squat build his clean up to 315 pounds by just performing cleans and associated lifts? No. Can the guy with a 300-pound squat clean 315? No. Can the guy who practices cleans every day of his life, yet only squats 300 pounds, clean as much as the 700 pound squatting powerlifter who comes into the gym and does cleans for the first time in his life? No. My point is this: How much you can clean is highly dependent on how strong you are overall and cleans don’t really make you stronger overall. Regardless of how good your technique is on cleans and how much you practice them, the only way you' re gonna clean 315 is if you get your overall body strength up to the point where you are capable of at least a ~400 pound squat and 400 pound deadlift. Once you' ve mastered the technique in the lift and learned to express your strength in the lift, the only way to continue driving your clean poundages up is to get stronger overall. The clean is really about 1/3 technique, 1/3 explosiveness, and 1/3 strength. Initially, clean poundages will increase as you master the correct technique. Once you' ve mastered the proper technique, you' ll continue to make some gains as you better learn to express your strength, or become more explosive in the exercise. If you' re the guy who squats 500 pounds and only cleans 175, you obviously have a lot of room for improvement. You' d probably be able to take your clean all the way up to 315 by doing nothing but cleans. But if you' re the guy who squats 300 pounds and cleans 225, you' d probably never get any better at cleans by just practicing cleans. At some point, you' d have to pay your dues in the power rack getting your strength up on basic movements like squats and deadlifts so that you’d have more raw strength to express.
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Now, let' s look at a sprint the same way we would the clean. It' s a demonstration of explosiveness. Since actually practicing the clean is the best way to learn to express your strength in the clean, wouldn' t it make sense that practicing variations of the sprint (and things closely related to that like plyometrics), would be the best way to learn to express your strength in the sprint? There is a lot of specifity involved with improvements in speed-strength movements and the carryover from one activity to the next is fairly small. If you couldn' t express your strength very good in the sprint, what makes you think you' d best improve upon that by engaging in cleans? Improvements in the sprint are just like improvements in the clean. Initially you' ll improve as you master the correct technique. You' ll continue to improve as you are better able to express your strength in the sprint. If you' re the 175 pound guy who squats 500 and only runs a 5.2 40 yard dash, you will probably have a lot of room for improvement. But if you' re the 175 pound guy who only squats 250 and already runs a 4.55 forty yard dash, you' re probably not gonna get much faster by just sprinting. At some point, just like the clean, you' re gonna have to pay your dues with the heavy iron and get your strength up so that you have more raw horsepower to tap into. Now, let' s assume that you already spend a significant amount of time in the weight room getting stronger overall. Let' s also assume that you spend a fair amount of time performing a nice assortment of sprint, movement, and plyo work. So, in the weight room you' re driving your strength and baseline levels of horsepower up. On the field, you' re better learning to express that strength in the most direct way possible - by engaging in the very things that you' re trying to improve (sprinting), and very similar activities, like jumping. Since you' re already addressing your baseline strength, and you' re already directly addressing your ability to express strength in the sprints, what are cleans gonna give you that you' re not already getting? I hope that makes sense. It’s not that cleans will hurt you by any means, I like them too and think they’re fun, but it’s not like you need them. Having said all that, the best utility for the cleans and other explosive weight room movements would be for someone like I mentioned above who had a 500 pound squat (or whatever), and slow running times. His maximum strength is already there and it need not be a big focal point, so, instead of just getting him stronger in the weight room, we could focus on getting him to express his strength better in all his activities, including the weight room. He could use lots of speedier type exercises like cleans, speed box squats, and jump squats while also working on getting more explosive in field activities. Where cleans and related exercises would REALLY be more beneficial is for this same “strong but slow” type of guy who also, for whatever reason, isn’t able to get out and engage in much specific sprint, movement, and plyo work. They wouldn’t be as effective as the specific sprint, movement, and plyo work, but would at least allow him to train his nervous system to produce faster contractions with some type of accelerative emphasis. One other good utility for the clean and associated movements is this: Assuming that one has pretty good technique in the clean, it can also be used as a pretty good gauge to ensure that you' re building useable strength, or strength that you can use in a fairly high-
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velocity manner. In other words, let' s assume that I determine that a person that can clean 75% of his best back squat is doing a pretty good job utilizing the raw strength that he has. So, assuming that technique is good, a person squatting 200 pounds should be able to clean 150, while a person squatting 400 pounds should be able to clean 300. Let' s say you have an athlete that squats 400 pounds but only cleans 200. From that information, we know that he' s not able to utilize his strength in a high velocity specific manner very effectively, so he would best work on bridging the gap between his strength and useable strength. In other words, instead of continually trying to push up his squat weight, he' d be best to focus on more explosive oriented work in his training. In contrast, the guy squatting 400 and cleaning 300 is already doing a pretty good job using the strength he has, and, assuming his field related tests didn’t show any explosive deficiencies, he’d know that in order to improve he could just get stronger overall. Q: Can you give some examples of what sort've templates you would use for combine preparation for a strength dominant and speed dominant athlete respectively? A: You have to keep in mind that most people don' t typically have a ton of time to prepare for a combine and there is a lot of technique involved in the various tests that must be addressed. For the speed deficient athlete, you might use the sled as the major strength movement. For the strength deficient athlete, I' d have just one heavy lower body session per week. The templates might look something like this:
Speed Deficient Athlete MONDAY – dynamic warmup, vertical jump, and 40 yard dash (Initially focus on technique for the start and work your way out each week) TUESDAY – Heavy upper body lifting WEDNESDAY – Dynamic warm-up, 3-cone, 20-yard shuttle, heavy sled marching (use heavy sled) THURSDAY – Off FRIDAY – Lighter upper body strength training (225 test for reps) SATURDAY – Dynamic warm-up, Broad jump, Resisted sled sprints (use light sled), alternated with normal sprints (focus on distances between 20 and 40 yards) SUNDAY - Off When regulating volume of the various movement work, use the drop-off method, or stop the workouts with any performance drop-off
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Strength Deficient Athlete MONDAY - Dynamic warm-up 40-yard dash technique work, Heavy Upper body strength training (For the 40 yard dash, Initially focus on the starts and work your way out each week) TUESDAY – Mobility drills, vertical jump & broad jump WEDNESDAY - Dynamic warm-up, pro-agility & 3-cone THURSDAY - Lighter upper body strength training FRIDAY - Dynamic warm-up, 40-yard dash SATURDAY – Heavy lower body strength training SUNDAY – OFF Q: How do you feel about popular sport specific training methods and specialized implements like bosu balls, unstable object training etc? Let' s start off with a definition of sport-specific. A truly sport specific exercise must: A: Duplicate the exact movement witnessed in certain actions of the sports skill B: The exercise must involve the same type of muscular contraction used in the skill execution. C: Develop strength and flexibility in the same range of motion (ROM) as the actual skill. As an example, alternating bounds duplicate the extension witnessed in the sprint stride over the same range of motion. They also duplicate the type of contraction found in the sprint. The difference is, the magnitude of force and tension in the bound upon both landing and toe-off is greater, which can provide a positive training effect to the extension and plant that occurs during the acceleration phase of a sprint. Classifying Exercises There are basically 3 classifications of exercise along the general to specific continuum. General strength exercises - These exercises are necessary to develop general muscle strength (force component of power) and do not need to duplicate sporting tasks. (Squats, front squats, deadlifts etc.) These exercises are heavy and slow in nature thus do not
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replicate the exact demands of sport and power events. They are, however, specific to the sport of powerlifting. Anything that increases general strength could be considered a general strength exercise. Exercises that best impact general strength are the best general strength exercises. Special strength exercises - These exercises attempt to convert general strength to power but are still "strength" oriented. Most explosive oriented loaded lifts and movements fit in this category. Some examples include: Olympic lifts, medicine ball tosses, jump squats, heavier sled towing, and various kettlebell swings. Specific strength exercises- These exercises attempt to provide power improvement in a way which is very specific to the required technique of an athlete. Examples of such exercises would include: Unloaded and lightly loaded plyometric exercises, sprint drills, and towing a very lightly loaded sled. The most specific strength exercise for any given movement is the actual movement skill itself. Thus, the most specific exercise for a sprinter is a sprint. The most specific exercise for a boxer is a punch. A loaded specific strength exercise should not be loaded to the extent that an athlete' s technique is compromised much at all. So, someone using loaded sprints as a specific strength exercise would not use a load that causes his sprint times to drop off by more than ~10%. In contrast, someone using loaded sprints as a special strength exercise could use more weight as he' s seeking more of a general effect on explosiveness. He would not need to worry so much about the load interfering with his technique in the sprint. Exercises typically are described as either general or sport-specific. However, there is a range along which all exercises fall. It' s probably more accurate to describe exercises as either more or less specific in relation to one another. Where a particular exercise falls on this continuum depends upon how well it meets the criteria for a specific movement for a particular sport. So What is Sport Specific Again? Based on that information, it should be obvious that unless you' re a skateboarder, surfer, or trapeze artist, most unstable implements and exercises are not really sport-specific at all! Wobble boards, bosu balls and the like would be general training movements - just not very potent general training movements. This is due to the lighter loads they inherently entail. The Recipe To improve athletic performance, general strength exercises should be used in the initial stages to build a base. The goal of these movements is to stimulate and strengthen the same muscles involved in the sports skill. Once a strength base is in place, exercises that are truly specialized (sport-specific) can be incorporated to zero in on targeted weaknesses involved in the sports skill or to help enhance the transformation of general strength into specific strength. In this way, maximal strength is developed initially and then used to enhance explosive strength that can be incorporated into the sport action. 132
I think there is a time and place for exercises in every category depending on the situation of a given athlete or coach, however, there' s also not exactly anything wrong with taking the straight line approach. The Straight Line Approach The straight-line approach would entail taking the most direct approach to boosting up the general strength (lift heavy and get stronger in basic movements), and engage in and hone the technique of the most specific strength exercise. You’d practice the specific movement you' re trying to improve in order improve the capacity to express strength in that movement, - whether it' s sprinting, jumping or whatever. With this approach you have both ends covered. Although simple, this can work well because a lot of people already do plenty of sport-specific exercise just by virtue of playing their sport. In fact, many people are apt to regress by partaking in an excessive volume of sport specific work while neglecting general supportive work. Additionally, research comparing groups of people who use a very multifaceted approach to development to those who use the simple straight-line approach to development, don' t tend to demonstrate many advantages for the multi-faceted approach. In other words. let' s say we take 2 groups of sprinters: Group A: Squats heavy, engages in explosive lifts (cleans or jump squats etc.), pulls loaded sleds, engages in plyometrics, and sprints. Group B: Just squats heavy and runs sprints. Despite the more holistic and multifaceted approach implemented with the group A, you don' t tend to see a consistent variance in improvements between the 2 groups. The ability to properly administer the more multifaceted approach takes more knowledge and skill. Ideally, you' d individually evaluate and assign target exercises based upon individual needs. Q: I heard you ran a sub 4.3 second 40-yard dash. What routine did you use to get that fast? A: In high school the fastest 40-yard dash I timed was 4.9. That was without any specific sprint training. I was, however, a late bloomer and was very weak so I probably did have quite a bit of latent ability. I started training and lifting fairly seriously around age 18-19 to prepare for martial arts. I rarely ran sprints but one day at the age of 21 I decided to run a timed 40 and clocked a 4.8. So, between the ages of 18-21 I actually improved my times despite not running any sprints during that time span AT ALL. At about that time I decided to make a deliberate attempt to try and improve my 40 and in my ignorance I came up with the workout I’m getting ready to show you. I used this workout on 3 different occassions. The first time I followed it was when I was 21. My 40 went from 4.8 to 4.6 within a month. The next time I followed it was at age 24. This time I got my 133
40 down to 4.4 seconds. A year later I used it again and on 2 different occassions ran a 4.27. That is a handheld time taken off video from the first movement so not quite as fast as a legit electronic time. Unfortunately, at the time I didn’t know how to start from a 3pt stance so just ran like a wide receiver out of a 2 pt. stance. It would’ve been nice to see how fast I would’ve run if I knew what I do now but oh well. The routine is not perfect but got the job done, which is what counts. Here it is:
Workout 1: Squats: work up to 3rm with as heavy a weight as possible Reverse hypers: 2 sets x 12-15 reps with as heavy a weight as possible (the first time I went through the workout at age 21 the workout reverse hypers were not a common exercise so I did leg curls instead). Repeat workout every 4th to 5th day
Workout 2: 40 yard sprints: Warm-up and go for PRs – Stop the workout as soon as it was obvious I wasn’t gonna improve on my times for the day. (this would generally mean I’d run 5 to 7 total sprints. I’d typically hit my best efforts on the 3rd attempt.) I’d perform workout two 2 days after workout 1. I’d just alternate those 2 workouts back and forth. So I might perform workout 1 on a Monday, workout 2 on a Wednesday, workout 1 again on Saturday, workout 2 the next Monday and so forth. The only other activities incorporated were a couple of upper body workouts. I also played some half court 3-on-3 basketball a couple of days per week. That was my "tempo" work. I' d do a dynamic warm-up before each workout and quite a bit of mobility work each and every day (which I still do). That' s about it. Q: How long should it take to see results in speed and explosiveness? A: It really depends on the level of athlete. If you’re really slow and lack coordination anything you do will improve your speed and it will improve very quickly. That’s why it’s not uncommon for high school athletes to go to these combine camps and get a .2 to .3 improvement in 40-yard dash in less than a week. However, if you’re advanced, it might take 6 to 8 weeks training 5 days per week to see any significant speed gain. Also, keep in mind sometimes you have to take the time to bring up indirect qualities and then apply those gains to speed. For example, an athlete might spend 6 to 12 weeks bringing up his strength levels and not see any speed improvement in speed until he applies those gains with a block of speed and explosive oriented training. Q: How much does the upper body contribute to running speed?
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A: The arms are what drive the legs so it does serve some importance, however, I don’t think it’s nearly as important to support the volume some speed-seeking athletes and sprinters train their upper body with. Many sprinters like to do a lot of upper body work because they want to look good and brag about their strength. That’s the truth. Assuming you can knock out a set of 10 or more pull-ups and bench press your bodyweight, you’re probably strong enough. A fast athlete will tend to be strong in his entire body and will have a strong upper body just on account of being strong all over. Core lower body movements like squats and deadlifts will also give you some degree of strength in the upper body because they have global effects on your nervous system. Now, if you’re a football player or even a basketball player, sure you want to be strong in your upper body. But that doesn’t mean you need to have a 500-pound bench press in order to run fast.
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Appendix C: Various resources Agility Ladder Drill Videos http://www.uop.edu/AthleticPerformance/exercise%20videos/ladder%20drill%20videos/l adder_drillsweb2.htm Plyometric and Power Training Videos http://exrx.net/Lists/PowerExercises.html Dynamic Warm-up video EN N
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Sample Agility Drills http://www.eliteathletetraining.com/Tips/Agility.aspx Testing Drills Hexagonal movement efficiency test http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/hexagonal.htm
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