I’ve decided to start doing more athlete dedicated blog posts along with the usual general health and fitness posts I do on Sundays, check out the latest one here. These blogs will be bi-weekly, instead of weekly. Like I said above, they will focus more on athletic development and performance with a mixture of more strength and conditioning based topics like periodization, energy system development, agility development and so on.
Some say you’re either born with it or not when it comes to speed. There is a certain amount of truth to this, but it is 100% possible to make people faster through technique and practice. Now, I will never develop speed like Usain Bolt, his genetic make-up, strength and years of practice make him a speed freak, but I could definitely improve with relation to myself.
Keys to Speed
1) Technique
2) Strength
3) Body Composition
4) Practice and Consistency
Technique
Sprinting is a skill and a skill that is hard to perfect. Developing the correct technique can have a massive impact on your overall speed, from getting better at the take off to developing good mechanics at top end speed, every aspect will either benefit or hinder your performance.
Lack of knee drive is probably one of the biggest limiting factors in every stage of sprinting, from acceleration to top end. For acceleration, wall drills like posture holds, single, double and triple exchanges can be great for teaching and improving the knee drive.
At top end speed one of the biggest mistakes I see, especially among field sport athletes, is the heel strike and kick back. Many athletes never learn to sprint properly and end up striking the ground with their heel slightly in front of their center mass instead of with the mid-foot directly under the center mass. This causes a breaking effect and can lead to hamstring issues. From there, they go on to have a large back swing with their leg instead of snapping it up and driving the knee forward. Ideally, the mid foot should strike the ground directly under the body, the heel should then snap up close to the bum, knee drives forward and up in line with the hip while the ankle stays plum to the knee. From there the cycle repeats with the ground contact.
My favorite drills for correcting these two common mistakes are marches and skips.
I could actually probably write an entire piece on a full 100m sprint break down and identify common mistakes and drills to combat but the basics will do for today. The drills mentioned are easy to incorporate to your current training on a weekly basis. For more info on this I recommend checking out the EXOS 40-yard dash model.
Strength
By no means do you have to be superman to sprint fast but being relatively strong is a key factor with speed. There are a number of reasons why this is so important, 1) stronger muscles, trained appropriately, will act as a bigger engine. The stronger you are, theoretically, the more force you should be able to produce. 2) When sprinting at top speed you can experience up to 2 times your bodyweight in force upon ground contact. Think about that for a second… a 70KG athlete will experience 140KG of force EVERY STEP! Are you strong enough to withstand that? You’ll have to be. Finally, 3) with that fact in mind, stronger athletes should have less injuries. Now, some injuries are just going to happen anyway and there are exceptions to this rule but having higher levels of requisite strength is definitely a bonus when it comes to sprinting.
Everybody is different but there are a few good places to start when it comes to developing strength for speed. Obviously, a lot more goes into it than just picking the correct exercises but you’re definitely going to want to increase lower body size, strength, power and rate of force development.
Like I said, everybody is different, but my go-to fallbacks will always be the squat, some form of deadlift and lunge. As you get stronger you can 100% incorporate single leg work but for pure strength development it’s hard to look past the squat and deadlift. Sprinters will always need to do some focused hamstring work, eccentric focused in particular, due to the high eccentric demand on hamstrings while sprinting.
Body Composition
Fat Don’t Fly.
Pretty self-explanatory. Body composition refers to how your weight is made up from muscle and fat content to bones and hydration levels. Fat adds absolutely nothing but dead weight when it comes sprinting. Check out speed athletes, Olympic sprinters, wide receivers and DBs in American Football and wingers in Rugby, there isn’t a pick on them and that’s not an accident. Being able to lower your body fat percentage and maintain muscle mass is key to improving your force ratios. Imagine this, you’re 80KGs and carrying a bit of timber, you then alter your body comp, drop to 76KGs but maintain the same level of muscle. So now you have the exact same muscle, but you have 4KGs less to move? Obviously, you’re going to run faster.
When it comes to sprinting, Fat Don’t Fly.
Practice and Consistency
Where there is 100% a time and place for speed drills and strength work, nothing mimics sprinting like sprinting. If you want to run fast, run fast. If you neglect sprinting every week, you’re going to lose your speed, the exact same way as you would your strength if you stop strength training.
This doesn’t have to be 10*100m. A correct programme should be based around whatever sport you’re taking part in and the needs of that sport.
So, when it comes to sprinting and improving speed it can 100% be done. There is no need for expensive resistance bands you see on Instagram and you’re not doomed to be slow. Technique, strength and consistency will help you hone your sprinting skill. If you’re serious about it ask your S&C coach for extra help or seek out a coach who is qualified and competent in the area of speed development.
Check back in two weeks’ time for the next athletic development focused post but remember every Sunday the weekly blog is posted, focusing on more general topics like nutrition and exercise for health and general population.
Also, because this is a new segment, any feedback would be greatly appreciated. If you have any questions about athletic performance and how you can improve your game just reach out.
Rory.