Get Up to Speed on Upping Your Speed

I was never the fastest guy on the field or court. I just thought that was the way it was. Some guys and girls were born faster than others. And while that is true to an extent, it might not be the end of the story.

I played a few sports in my youth: soccer, basketball, tennis (when I reached high school). The thing I disliked the most was the conditioning we sometimes did in practice. Anything long distance was the bane of my existence. I actually didn’t mind the suicide running drills as much. It seemed like most of it wasn’t really for conditioning anyway, but more to torture us or test our grit. (Kate said I wasn’t allowed to use the term “testicular fortitude.”) While some athletes are born with specific physical qualities that make them more explosive, there are ways to make any athlete faster than they currently are. Suicides aren’t really one of those methods.

Though I didn’t like conditioning in practice, my two favorite sports were soccer and basketball, where I pretty much ran nonstop. There was far more running without the ball than there was with the ball. Have you heard the saying “speed kills”? You can be the most skilled person on the field with a soccer ball, but if someone else gets to that ball before you do, all the skills in the world don’t matter. You could have the best hands on the football field, but if you can’t create separation from your defender, those hands become far less effective.

With the importance of speed, it’s amazing to me there isn’t much more time spent teaching proper sprint mechanics for every sport. Proper sprint mechanics make you more efficient at producing power. That power production doesn’t just make you faster; it can translate to vertical leap and many other sport-specific movements. Proper sprint mechanics can greatly mitigate injury risk as many noncontact hamstring and adductor strains are a result of faulty movement patterns that can also lead to ACL injuries. Proper sprint mechanics will make you a faster, more efficient, less injury-prone athlete. Greater emphasis needs to be put on not just making kids run, but teaching them how.

Michael and Kate Hauf working on speed training exercises.

We have gained broad statistical data from studying the world’s great sprinters. They all share many common qualities in their technique. Ground contact time refers to how long the foot is in contact with the ground. The average ground contact time for elite sprinters is from 0.087 seconds to 0.11 seconds. The longer the foot stays on the ground, the slower you go. With this information, we can utilize drills to increase lower leg elasticity to get that foot off the ground as fast as possible. Flight time is the length of time the athlete is not in contact with the ground while in stride. The average flight time for elite sprinters is from 0.123 seconds to 0.127 seconds. Both strength and the aforementioned elasticity are vital factors needed here. Drills to increase vertical force production will help you bound forward for that flight time. Stride frequency is a consistent 4.5 to 5 steps per second. All of these qualities can be improved with proper drilling. If you can improve mechanics in training, those improvements will transfer to the court or field.

In order for your body to adapt, it must be placed under stress. This stress has to be greater than the normal stress it usually encounters. When lifting weights, if you lift a weight that you can easily lift, your body has no need to adapt. When lifting heavy weights, your body needs to adapt to make the lifting easier. This is achieved with the building of muscle (and neuromuscular efficiency). The stress has to be significant enough to force adaptation.

The same goes for sprinting. In order to get faster, you must train at maximum velocity. In most team sports, an athlete is hardly ever going to reach maximum velocity. There is always going to be something keeping them from hitting top speed. There might be players in the way, change of direction, curved running, uneven ground surface, or handling of a ball/stick. Therefore, in order to get better, it must be done in training. Let’s say an athlete may reach about 85% maximum velocity while playing their sport. This will not be enough to initiate adaptation to get faster. When training at 100% maximal velocity, an athlete’s 85% speed during play will be faster. That’s called increasing speed reserve.

Nonathletes may find some serious benefits to sprint training as well. Fat loss and muscle building – specifically the glutes – may accompany your other results, especially for someone who hasn’t trained this way before. For the older athlete, you might regain that feeling of athleticism you once had as well. For current athletes who want to be faster and stay on the field by mitigating injury risk, there should be some maximum speed sprinting in your training. Speed is good for all. Find a coach who can teach proper mechanics. The Stone Harbor Recreation Department is offering a Speed School class this summer. Check it out. Get fast and test your grit.

I might not have had the speed, but I did have the fortitude not mentioned above. It’s better to have both.