We skied (around 1.5 ft of snow while in Mich while averaging around 10-25 degrees outside), relaxed, watched football (totally different than relaxing because there are so many amazing college football games over the holiday season), played some games out on the ice (a frozen lake, not an ice rink that's indoors, for all you southern gems), spent time with family (the best time of all), visited with many past and present friends, and reflected on how much I have been blessed with throughout my life.
Now that I have got my holidays bliss out of the way, lets' get to the last installment of the top 10 speed training myths! Pay special attention to #9. Flexibility, in my honest opinion, is the most overlooked component of any strength and conditioning program. Parents and athletes alike are amazed when I tell them I can make them faster by simply making them more flexible. Enjoy!
8. Interval training is the same as speed training.
Repeatedly running 100s, 200s, etc. won’t improve top speeds. Even running repeat 40s with short recovery periods won’t improve acceleration and top speed. Speed work is defined as 2–8 seconds of maximal intensity running with full recovery. That means there should be at least two minutes of light dynamic movement between each effort. This goes against the experience of some coaches but is the only way to improve speed. An athlete must be able to focus on proper form and maintain intensity in order to get faster. If they don’t recover properly from each interval, they won’t be able to replicate proper mechanics with consistency and they can’t improve.
9. Flexibility won’t help you get faster.
Both coaches and athletes spend so much time on the skills of their sport, speed training, and conditioning, they often forget a fundamental component of success—flexibility. After practice or a game, the muscles are warm and loose. This is the time to work on increasing flexibility. So many athletes suffer injuries or compete below their capacity because poor flexibility inhibits their range of motion and speed. We see this in the hips and hip flexors where the stride lengths of athletes appear conspicuously short. Most often we see this in male athletes who will lift weights, train hard, and then skip out on their cool down and flexibility work.
10. Lift your knees.
When parents and coaches want their kids to run faster or when the kids are beginning to fatigue, I hear many yell at the kids, “Lift your knees. Get your knees up.” This is one of the most backward cues that we can give to athletes. The way to run faster is to apply more force to the ground. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction so the more force that you apply to the ground, the more the ground will give back. So when we cue athletes to lift their knees, we’re doing two things incorrectly. One, we’re telling them to use their hip flexors to lift instead of their glutes and hamstrings to drive down. Just think about the size of your hip flexor versus the size of your glutes and hamstrings. Now which muscles do you think can create more force and therefore more speed?
Second, we’re cueing them to do a movement that is in opposition to what generates speed. If an athlete learns at age seven to lift his knees when he needs a burst of speed, the improper cue will be hardwired into his brain. To unlearn that as a teenager and to do the opposite and drive down will delay the athlete’s progress. He or she will have a difficult time coordinating an entirely new way of running and will potentially have to take a step or two backward. That’s why it’s critical to learn proper form early and get an advantage over those who still aren’t getting the best instruction. So cue athletes to step over the opposite knee and drive the foot down into the ground with the foot landing underneath the hip.
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