Speed Training Speed and power are critical for success in racing sports swimming, cycling and running ; all field and court sports; acrobatic, racquet, combative and bat and ball sports; and power sports such as track and field.

Maximal speed is the highest speed an athlete can reach. This normally occurs three to five seconds after a start from a stationary position. Acceleration speed in sports such as touch, netball, basketball, football and tennis is crucial.

These are sports in which short sprints are done and maximal speed may not be reached. The ability to get into space, get off the mark or take a gap is more important than maximal speed in these sports. Speed endurance is the ability to sustain maximal speed or near-maximal speed and to withstand the effects of fatigue.

Events longer than five seconds e. Change-of-direction speed is crucial in most team and racquet sports. The ability to evade or chase an opponent in team sports and change direction quickly in racquet sports requires agility as well as acceleration speed.

Developing Speed It is beyond the scope of this chapter to give a specific formula for developing speed in every athlete of every age and gender for every sport. However, the following guidelines can help develop speed in any athlete of any age or ability: Be fresh.

All speed training should be performed when the body is fully recovered from a previous event or training session. Tired, sore or overtrained athletes cannot improve their speed. Master correct technique. Correct sprinting technique is developed through many repetitions to reinforce skill development.

Initially, this should be done at slower speeds, but then the speed should be gradually increased while maintaining correct form. Sport-specific drills are an excellent means of developing correct sprint technique. See the References and Resources section at the end of the chapter.

Warm up with intensity. A warm-up should include low-intensity work that develops a light sweat, followed by static holding then dynamic swinging, bouncing stretching of the specific joints and muscles used in the sport or event.

This should be followed by specific drills and then gradually increasing intensity to the speed required in training. Recover between efforts.

All sets and repetitions of a speed training session must be followed by adequate recovery so the next effort is high quality. The shorter the effort is, the shorter the rest should be. As a general rule, a to work-to-recovery ratio is recommended.

Vary the training. Speed training sessions should vary among light, medium and heavy days. Monitor training volume. Coaches should track the total distance covered during each maximal speed training session to ensure a gradual progression in distance or number of repeats.

Develop speed endurance with longer intervals or shorter rests. Doing longer intervals e. The aim should be sport specificity. Obviously, a touch football player needs to do short sprints up and back with short recoveries, but after, say, six metre efforts, a long rest of two to three minutes might be taken so the quality of the next set of six metre efforts is high.

Develop strength and power. The sprint athlete needs to focus on developing muscle mass, strength and power in the gym or using resistance and exercises that are sport specific see the section Strength and Power Training. Include flexibility training.

Decreased flexibility results in decreased speed due to the stride or stroke length decreasing. Basic training.

Developing a training base early in a season, during the transition phase between seasons or in the off-season gives an athlete a foundation on which to develop speed and power without getting injured.

Or, you can pick something in the distance, like a mailbox, and sprint for it, followed by a recovery jog. The idea is to really switch gears a lot during a run, but in a fun, informal way. A Fartlek run is especially helpful for your endurance runners, those that do marathons.

Incorporate Fartlek methods into longer runs and they will get better at recruiting different muscle fibers and coping with fatigue during long races.

A long run helps build aerobic capacity, which will help improve speed during shorter events. Aim for just one long run per week, and the length depends on the individual. It should be about 20 percent of their weekly mileage. Download this FREE infographic here.

A common mistake that runners make is to avoid strength training. Strategically building muscle mass helps runners reduce the risk of injury, recover more quickly, and of course, run faster.

Here are some important strength moves for your clients to at least twice a week as they build speed:. Most people ignore their glutes , but these are the powerhouses of running. They are the muscles that keep us upright and propelling forward. Strengthen the glutes at least twice a week for speed improvement.

Some good moves include:. To run and move faster, you need your legs. Building strength in the quads, hamstrings, and other big muscle groups will improve speed over time.

Aim for at least two leg strength training sessions per week that include: squats, deadlifts, and lunges. This is a tough workout, but one that will improve overall lower body strength and help your clients develop the power needed to run faster. Start out small, with less weight and shorter distances.

Progress by adding weight and pushing distance and speed. For anyone, improving foot speed, agility, and reaction time is important for functional movements and athletic performance. Here are some agility and speed exercises you can use with your clients:.

Use a fitness ladder on the ground to do foot drills that improve speed and agility. You can use lines on the ground or tape outside in the parking lot.

Start with forward and backward hops over the lines or ladder, then move to single-leg moves and lateral movements for a greater challenge. High knee drills are great for building speed and agility in food and leg movements.

Think of the classic football drill of running through tires. Start your clients out with something a little easier to avoid falls and injuries, though. Use ladders for high knees and progress to low hurdles or tires. Equally simple are dot drills, which only require tape.

Tape dots or Xs on the ground and have your client move quickly from one to another in specific patterns. Give them the pattern in advance and work on speed in changing directions between each dot or X.

Then, try doing the same types of movements but using commands rather than a pre-set pattern. Your client will have to listen and wait for your direction, responding as quickly as possible.

You can also vary dot drills by including hand touches. Start with hops and jumps between dots and progress to jumps followed by touching down on the spot.

This makes it more challenging and introduces some upper body speed and agility. Check out this ISSA blog post to get more ideas for speed and agility exercises.

Speed exercises are just one way to help your clients move faster. Other strategies for boosting speed include:. running regularly, enabling your body to build endurance and improve finish times.

engaging in strength training , which improves running economy and helps you run faster. investing in running clothing, providing a more comfortable training session while working to increase speed. An important aspect of improving speed is also giving the body adequate time to recover.

If you push it hard day after day, it increases your injury risk. Overtraining can also negatively affect your speed, making you go slower instead of faster. If you are doing resisted speed training, aim for two to three sessions per week.

The frequency varies for assisted speed training based on the drills you do. Both downhill and assisted towed running can be done three times per week, but elastic cord running can be performed six days per week. When first starting out, incorporate speed training into the routine once or twice per week.

Build up from there, increasing training sessions as strength, endurance, and speed increase. As a personal trainer, some of your clients may have speed goals.

And speed work is as varied as any other kind of training. Whether you have a client who runs marathons and wants to get a PR at their next race, or a client who is just getting healthier, incorporating workouts that improve speed provides great benefits and will help anyone hit their goals faster.

Implementing the exercises above can help them increase their speed. It can also be beneficial for you to take a course that goes into speed training in greater depth. A course to consider is one that teaches you how to work with your clients as a running coach.

If this is of interest to you, ISSA offers Running Coach certification. This course covers several speed development exercises and the science behind them.

It also includes run training programs for clients of all fitness levels. Learn everything you need to know to help clients meet their goals with ISSA's Certified Personal Trainer Course.

Start your dream career completely online! Take the course, pass the certification final exam, and be guaranteed a job - or your money back! Haugen, T. et al. The Training and Development of Elite Sprint Performance: an Integration of Scientific and Best Practice Literature. Sports Med - Open 5, 44 Juniper Publishers.

Resisted and assisted training for Sprint Speed: Brief review. Get Offer. All Categories Anatomy Audio Blogs Behavior Change Business More. BY: ISSA DATE: Featured Course. First Name. Last Name.

Ease that transition by practicing your breathing before you even get on the road or into the workout. More air equals more oxygen getting to your muscles. Jump over to this article to get a full explanation of belly breathing and a few drills to try out!

Just how spry do you feel after a less-than-healthy meal versus after a fresh, colorful plate? Probably not so great. Take an honest look at your eating habits. Are you staying hydrated throughout the day, or just chugging water right before you hit the road?

Is your daily vegetable serving limited to pale iceberg lettuce or are you getting in dark, leafy greens frequently? All of which will help you feel better, recover faster, and maybe lose a little weight as you increase your fiber intake.

What you eat while on the run is certainly important. But remember that you spend a lot more time eating while not running, giving you many more opportunities to make important changes.

Whole-grain carbs, plentiful fruit and vegetable intake, and limited junk food will all contribute to you feeling your best for your next workout or race day. To learn more about how to optimize your running through diet, check out this post!

As with any run or hard effort, your body needs to warm up before asking it to run faster. There is a reason that the first rep of interval workouts sometimes feels the most difficult, and that is that your body needs to adapt to the increased effort by delivering more oxygen to your muscles.

With the proper warm-up , all of your muscles will be firing and ready to work on some faster running. If it takes you minutes to feel loose and ready to go at the beginning of your workout, you most likely need to put in a little more prep work before your big effort.

Running at top speed requires a full-body effort. When your body gets tired, your form begins to fall apart, making your stride less efficient and slowing you down. Focusing on running with proper form will help you run faster and also prevent injury. Proper running form goes all the way from your head to your toes.

Your body should be aligned and your posture should be tall for an efficient stride. You r hips and shoulders should be working in conjunction to help you relax and allow all other parts to fall into place.

An engaged core , forward hips , and tall shoulders increase the ability of your legs to produce power from the glutes and hamstrings and allow for a driving arm swing. Once your body is aligned and activated, running faster will be easier and less likely to cause injury. Incorporate these running form drills into a warm-up or during a stride-out session.

Have questions about recovery or injury prevention? Our app is perfect for you! To run at top speed, your body needs to be loose. Rolling out on a foam roller and stretching each muscle daily will prevent soreness and injury.

Focus on opening up your hips to allow for increased stride length. Speed is a combination of stride length x stride rate, so by opening up the hips, you are more capable of reaching top speed.

As always, sleep, hydration, and nutrition all play a role in keeping your body happy, healthy, and primed to improve running speed. Mental toughness plays a big role in running at uncomfortable speeds.

When your legs feel heavy and the pace is uncomfortable it is easy to let negative thoughts creep in. Doubting your ability and wanting to back off the pace is tempting, but you often have more in the tank than you think and can run faster than you think possible.

Just as you need to build your physical strength to run faster, you also need to build mental strength. Mental toughness can be developed through the workouts and long runs in your training. Use these higher-intensity runs as an opportunity to train your mind to learn how to run faster.

These drills teach you how to run fast longer and avoid injury. One way we like to build up intensity outside of a run is to use strength training.

Or a park, or wherever you choose to do this workout. Try these other full-body workouts to make you faster. Our hips are the gas pedal for our running. The more we use them, the more power and speed we can generate!

The hips not only help keep your hips stable but they also help your glutes to fire and propel you forward. Injury prevention and speed training all in one! The box jump is essentially a plyometric squat jump up to a higher surface.

This drill is awesome for increasing that hip strength and directly applying it to your running. Try throwing it into your training program once a week! The last of our running exercises to get faster! The Fartlek technique for runners is nothing short of EFFECTIVE. Try this out on your next run:.

Sometimes, speed comes from endurance. Being able to run longer essentially means you can run faster for a longer period of time—since, you could walk at any point and make up the same distance in a much longer time.

As we get tired during a longer run, one of the first things to go is our cadence—also known as how many steps you take in one minute. Everyone has a natural cadence. You can determine yours using a simple metronome app.

As you notice yourself getting fatigued throughout the later miles of your run, check your cadence. When we get tired, we start to shuffle our feet. When you feel that happening, use your metronome to check your cadence. Even if you have the best plan and running group, learning how to run longer requires mental toughness.

Even with the best preparation and a good warm-up, your legs might feel heavy or you might seem more tired than usual earlier in the run. This can happen in a race, too. Find what works for you. Others enjoy using mental imagery, such as imagining yourself crushing your PR on race day. Try interval training to spice things up and keep your run going.

Work back down to 50 meters and repeat once or twice for clients who are up to the challenge. Interval workouts can also include longer distances, but make sure your clients moderate their pace. The 50 to meter hard runs should be at an all-out pace.

For meters and more, take the pace down a little. This funny-sounding word means speed play in Swedish. The general idea is to alternate running hard and jogging, but not necessarily with any specific plan. So, for instance, you might run hard for two minutes, jog for one, run pretty fast for five minutes, and then jog for three minutes, and so on.

Or, you can pick something in the distance, like a mailbox, and sprint for it, followed by a recovery jog. The idea is to really switch gears a lot during a run, but in a fun, informal way.

A Fartlek run is especially helpful for your endurance runners, those that do marathons. Incorporate Fartlek methods into longer runs and they will get better at recruiting different muscle fibers and coping with fatigue during long races.

A long run helps build aerobic capacity, which will help improve speed during shorter events. Aim for just one long run per week, and the length depends on the individual. It should be about 20 percent of their weekly mileage. Download this FREE infographic here. A common mistake that runners make is to avoid strength training.

Strategically building muscle mass helps runners reduce the risk of injury, recover more quickly, and of course, run faster. Here are some important strength moves for your clients to at least twice a week as they build speed:. Most people ignore their glutes , but these are the powerhouses of running.

They are the muscles that keep us upright and propelling forward. Strengthen the glutes at least twice a week for speed improvement. Some good moves include:. To run and move faster, you need your legs.

Building strength in the quads, hamstrings, and other big muscle groups will improve speed over time.

Aim for at least two leg strength training sessions per week that include: squats, deadlifts, and lunges. This is a tough workout, but one that will improve overall lower body strength and help your clients develop the power needed to run faster.

Start out small, with less weight and shorter distances. Progress by adding weight and pushing distance and speed. For anyone, improving foot speed, agility, and reaction time is important for functional movements and athletic performance.

Here are some agility and speed exercises you can use with your clients:. Use a fitness ladder on the ground to do foot drills that improve speed and agility. You can use lines on the ground or tape outside in the parking lot. Start with forward and backward hops over the lines or ladder, then move to single-leg moves and lateral movements for a greater challenge.

High knee drills are great for building speed and agility in food and leg movements. Think of the classic football drill of running through tires. Start your clients out with something a little easier to avoid falls and injuries, though.

Use ladders for high knees and progress to low hurdles or tires. Equally simple are dot drills, which only require tape. Tape dots or Xs on the ground and have your client move quickly from one to another in specific patterns.

Give them the pattern in advance and work on speed in changing directions between each dot or X. Then, try doing the same types of movements but using commands rather than a pre-set pattern.

Your client will have to listen and wait for your direction, responding as quickly as possible. You can also vary dot drills by including hand touches. Start with hops and jumps between dots and progress to jumps followed by touching down on the spot. This makes it more challenging and introduces some upper body speed and agility.

Check out this ISSA blog post to get more ideas for speed and agility exercises. Speed exercises are just one way to help your clients move faster. Other strategies for boosting speed include:. running regularly, enabling your body to build endurance and improve finish times.

engaging in strength training , which improves running economy and helps you run faster. investing in running clothing, providing a more comfortable training session while working to increase speed. If you beat your record without a problem, add another half-mile interval or extend the distance to meter or one-mile repeats.

On the flip side, if speed work feels totally miserable right now, only focus on your endurance for a bit. Just remember: The best way to boost your speed and endurance as a beginner is to make running fun—not miserable—so you keep at it, one step at a time.

No need to stress about how to get faster on every run. How to Pair Wireless Earbuds. How Many Miles Should You Run a Week? How to Gamify Your Runs. How to Estimate Your Lactate Threshold Pace.

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