Your Potential For Max Speed

In many sports, speed is the name of the game. Often times however, many athletes are pulling up lame and injuring themselves during training or they burnout and see little results across their programming. Much of this can be attributed to lack of developing the athlete’s functional capacity for high intensity sprinting/training. This would contribute to high muscular fatigue and after the acute increase of development, a gradual decrease in both speed and motor function which is detrimental to the competitive state.

Work capacity is solely dependent on metabolic energy supply. Any special conditioning should be developed with the goal of increasing this capacity in the specific muscle regimes to a higher level than is actually needed for your sport. If you immediately introduce high velocity workloads to your system, you will quickly run out of your available metabolic energy supply leading to the stagnation, fatigue, and means to realize your potential for maximum speed.

of capillaries/mitochondria must be developed in the specific muscle regimes used in your sport. This is necessary to precede high velocity training volumes because the nature of these high velocity workloads will cause the thickening of artery walls (dystrophy of chamber) and reduction in oxidative capacity due to the reduction of mitochondrion. So based off these characteristics of high velocity training, a surplus beyond what is needed of the former will allow for much less undue fatigue.

Much of the training methods used to develop this particular capacity include: Long duration work below Anaerobic threshold (sled drags, jogging, low intensity med ball circuits), Tempo work (squats, push ups, inverted rows),

When starting a macrocycle, optimal levels of cardiac chamber volume, slow twitch muscle function, and density

and low intensity plyometrics (jumping rope, low hurdle hops, low intensity jumps). All while maintaining other capacities.

Development of these capacities should take place furthest away from the competitive stage. Once you reach a transmutation block, the gradual increase of more specific and high velocity work will allow for a constant improvement of this capacity and will be realized beyond previous levels at the end of the stage leading into competition.

Importance of aerobic capacity for football

In America, the most popular of all high intensity sports would easily be Football. On the outside looking in, you would assume that the majority of all the conditioning would be an accumulation of sprints and repeated bouts until your legs could take no more. Although there is a time and a place for this sort of energy systems training, many people fail to see the importance of the aerobic energy system and it’s ability to improve the performance of an athlete in a high intensity sport. Remembering that football is aerobic/alactic in nature it is necessary to address the aerobic component of this sport to best prepare the athlete.

Why would you do aerobic work for Football?

The are numerous studies indicating that the lack of blood flow to the muscles increase the recovery period between high intensity bouts of exercise. When the muscle experiences high intensity bouts lactate will accumulate along with excess amounts of H+. If these metabolites are not removed, acidosis will occur and that fatigue will limit contractile rate of the working muscles. The majority of lactate is removed through oxidation. This oxidation largely depends on the capitalization and mitochondrial density to allow for the blood flow to transport the lactate/H+.

The adaptations that occur during aerobic training:

1. Increased blood flow because of an increased cardiac output/hypertrophy(eccentrically).

2. Increases the density of capillaries and mitochondria especially in the localized muscles that are used during training. This is important to keep in mind when constructing what tool you use for energy systems development. You want to work similar muscle regimes, as you would use during sport to enhance the density to the muscles that need it the most.

3. Increases the vasodilatation abilities of vessels, which of course allows for blood flow and oxygen to reach 02 myoglobin and working muscles faster.

Aerobic training does have its drawbacks. It has been shown to reduce the effectiveness of power development, which is a primal component of most high intensity sports. There is also evidence showing that there is a ceiling for how much of an influence an enhanced aerobic capacity has on your recovery from repeated bouts. Keeping this in mind, it would only be necessary to develop your aerobic capacity to a point that would make it optimal for recovery and limit its volume extensively during blocks of power development. As I mentioned earlier, be aware of the specific muscles in use for your sport. For example, due to football being an upright sport heavily reliable on the backside dominant musculature (Hamstrings, glutes) it wouldn't make a ton of sense to condition sitting down such as a bike (front side dominant).

Getting up early to build alactic capacity

As I posted in a article on Elite FTS, the importance of alactic capacity for football are clear. The one thing that is challenging is organizing a program that allows 80+ guys to accomplish this at the same time.
Educate your coaches
In the past, our coaches were all about LACTATE, LACTATE, LACTATE! Needless to say athletes were ran into the ground for "conditioning" All it took was a simple sit down meeting with a written plan of execution, and letting them know how to follow through with that plan. Showing them how to split up groups and making sure the athletes do not go over the set intensity or volume while following proper rest times. Coaches are great at organizing drills and getting athletes to listen and follow suit so once they communicate with the athlete the desired execution of the drill it will be done that way.

Educate Your Athletes
I have often been apart of drills during practice, training, and so forth and athletes are constantly asking, "Why are we doing this?" Not in the form of complaining but because of curiosity. Especially at the collegiate level, they want to KNOW that what they are doing is making them better. So it is key to let them in on your methods in the weight room and during conditioning. This can go a long way. This is the difference between having one pair of coaches eyes compared to dozens of eyes keeping track of everyone and whether they are utilizing there time efficiently. I have had pretty much every senior approach me asking me why we are doing this and what benefits come from a certain method (mostly due to not ever being exposed to them previously) and they all listen intently and are always glad to know what is going on. This has helped during weight room coaching cause they are just as good about cueing each other. Also during conditioning they are getting guys to hustle from spot to spot to meet the time requirements.

For example Wednesday morning during our conditioning. It was great having athletes motivating each other and knowing that when the previous group was finished, they had to get to the line and go go go! We did a variety of movements lateral and linear for a set set time which gradually increases in volume throughout the mesocycle.

It is obvious that communication with training is key and it involves everyone. People being left out will miss out. Notice that there was more to mention in terms of communicating with athletes. Coaches are great and mine have done a great job at delegating the instructions but the athletes have made a tremendous difference in getting things to run smoothly because they are the ones putting forth they effort and have a desire to do it so that they improve as much as possible.