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.

Multi-Stage Sprint Development

There are certain things you need to take into account when developing sprint capacities in athletes. First is the age of the athlete. Second, is whether there body permits them to be able to sprint without risking injury.

Now lets focus on age. The age puts you in one of the 5 stages and with in each stage there are certain guidelines that you need to be aware of.
The stages

1. The preliminary preparation stage (9 to 10 yrs),
2. The first specialization stage (12 to 13 yrs),
3. The deeper specialization stage (boys 14 to 16 yrs),
4. The elaboration stage (boys 17 to 20 yrs),
5. The high performance stage (men 21 to 26 yrs.)

Stage 1
At this age the highest stride frequencies are noted. You have to keep in respect the quality of muscle balance and must train the athlete with an overall physical development in mind. Also, with physical development in consideration variation is key but loads should not be too significant.

Stage 2
This is the time period in which focus starts to specialize towards sprints. It is a favorable time for speed and explosive power. Stride length increases at this age and balance favors the extensors of the lower body. Training should still vary (Bounds, Sprints, Jumps...) and load should increase gradually.

Stage 3
At this stage the functional capacity is high and assymetry is greater. Strength, Explosive, and speed development should favor weaker musculature groups. Volume and intensity of training should be elevated as well as you may see a jump of almost %10 in performance. There is also a gradual leaning toward more specific work.

Stage 4
This is when you push the athletes capacities to reach elite level. You functional capcites reach max levels and muscular balance, due to previous preparation, has improved. Training levels in this stage are at near maximum and a large amount of specific drills are planned. They should have a norrow focus in which the characterstics mimic the desired goal.

Stage 5
At this stage of maximum performance the main goal should be to avoid stailness. This is the main competition stage and musclar balacne should be at its best. There isn't much difference in training besides increased intensities and heavier emphasis on specific training. You won't see as high of improvements but performance shuold still increase slightly as

As you can see there are several important factors when considering speed or sprint training depending on age. If certain things were not taken into account it could be determinal to performance.

Notes from Charlie Francis, T. Jushkevitch, Y. Verkhoshansky

Squat for Speed!!

An interesting article in the Sept issue of The Journal of Strength and Conditioning used the relationship between 1 RM squats and 5,10, and 40 meter sprints. The general concept behind this would be that the ability to apply more force to the ground (strength!!) would aid your ability to produce a higher sprinting velocity. The subjects were football players from Appalachian State who were put through a warm up, produced a 1RM squat and then were timed in 40,10, and 5 meter increments. They then took the 1RM and divided it by the athletes BM. The end results were that those with the higher RM as compared to BM (able to squat a higher % of there body weight) ended up with faster 40 and 10 meter times. The 5 meter times were statistically non significant. In conclusion, this study would be a great practical reason to start using great free weight multi-joint movements like the squat. I emphasize free weight multi-joint because as the study also mentions no correlation between machine squats, or isolated muscle strengthening and sprint speed.

Football Season Kicks off...and ends for some.

With the beginning College football comes long anticipated excitement for the early powerhouse match ups, first look at new players, and realizing what you can expect your favorite team to accomplish. Sadly, in recent years, what you also can expect is a handful of injuries. More evident in preseason camp than opening day, injuries due to failure of preparation is seen in the countless non-contact ACL tears, Achillese tendon ruptures, and various strains, are more prevalent now than ever. Lets look at why?
Diagnosing Football
A typical play last all of 6 seconds. In between you have about 30 or more seconds to recover. This would make football a very alactic sport. Expanding on this system would require a higher fast-twitch capacity. That would mean high intensity loaded bouts of 10 seconds or less with approximately 30 or so seconds to recover. You can build this by repeated sprints until you are unable to stay below anaerobic threhold when recovering. Eventually reaching to about 40+ sprints in a session. Not the typical 10-15.
Missing the Boat
Anymore, the majority of work you see year round is constant glycolitic ESD until the athletes can no longer move. The major downfall to this ESD is that you can expand on this capacity for only 4 weeks before it produces a diminished return. This system is also rarely used on the playing feild. Best time for development would the weeks leading up to the season.
Conclusion
The main contributor to injuries in most sports is fatigue. When your tired you compensate and get sloppy. So avoid the heavy breathing and playing your way into shape. Get your energy systems in line and take care of it so your athletes are ready to dominate before the first snap!