Best Ways to Improve Your Speed
Many athletes need to improve their speed to perform at their best, and many often turn to programs on the internet to help them out. While those programs may help many people, they will fail many others, and a minority of people will get injured. The inherent problem with that is that the athlete has to fit the program. In my opinion, it is the program that has to fit the athlete.
The most effective programs are those that have been individualized for you.
Don’t do cookie-cutter programs
As I mentioned in my introduction, for some people, cookie-cutter programs will work. For many other people, they are a highway for stagnation and frustration. If you are able to, get a qualified fitness professional to give you personalized attention and advice.
Play Your Sport
In the very early stages of training, you don’t even have to worry about speed training. Playing your sport will take care of the speed. Up to a certain point. Once that point comes, you have to do more specialized training.
How do you know what that point is? Find a test for speed. The 10-yard and the 40-yard dash are good examples. Then, measure your speed in those tests. Continue measuring every 2 weeks. As long as your speed is improving just from playing your sport, you don’t have to do any supplemental speed training.
Get Stronger
There are only 2 factors that determine speed:
stride length and stride frequency.
On the surface, it may seem like stride length is about flexibility, and to some degree it is, but there is another factor: strength. Basically, the more force you put into the ground, the farther you push off with each stride.
Optimally, you should be able to squat 1.5 times your bodyweight.
Do not train in a fatigued state
One of the most common mistakes is to turn speed training into a conditioning session. Let’s be clear on one thing: training for speed is training the nervous system. You are working on speed, not cardiovascular endurance, and not mental toughness.
Rest periods should be very ample (3-8 minutes) to allow the nervous system to recover. And the nervous system takes much longer to recover than the muscular system.
Let’s think for a little bit. Let’s say that your fastest time in a 40-yard dash on one day is 4.35 seconds. If you continue sprinting without fully recovering, your next sprint will be 4.41 seconds. Then, it will be 4.48 seconds. Then 4.58 seconds. And it keeps getting slower and slower. So you just did more sprints at a submaximal intensity than you did at a maximal intensity. What exactly is this training your body to do? This is a wonderful way to teach your body to run at submaximal speeds. Not quite what you want.
Use Overspeed Training
This method is reserved after training for over about 6-9 months. Not just training, but training seriously, AND correctly.
What is overspeed training? Overspeed training is using some way to make yourself go faster than you otherwise would have (and I’m not talking about steroids here). An example is being pulled by a car, or running downhill, or any other method that speeds you up.
However, whatever you are doing should not change your body mechanics too much, and should not be used in large volumes. If you mis-use this method, you can change your technique for the worse.
So use this method, but use it with caution.