Everyone wants to be faster however, the truth is most coaches can't get out of their own way when it comes to developing speed.
(Authors note: until last year I was one of those coaches)
In our pursuit of speed we seem to run into a few problems:
- How do I know they are running fast?
- Strength coaches say they want to develop speed but, they rarely test speed and probably don't really train it?
- For years, ( possibly decades) strength coaches have deluded themselves into believing that you develop speed in the weightroom. It's amazing that we can run a primarily vertical weightroom program and expect significant horizontal changes.
I, much like so many coaches, thought we ( at MBSC) were doing a pretty good job with our speed training. We lifted, we did our plyos, and we “ran” sprints.
However, we were making a few critical mistakes.
Mistake 1- Most of our lifting was vertical and, speed is obviously horizontal. Let's face it, Olympic lifts, squats and deadlifts are done up and down, not forward.
Mistake 2- Most of our plyos were also vertical or, at least more vertically oriented. We did not do enough horizontal work or, enough unilateral plyometric work
Mistake 3- Our sprints weren't actually sprints. I think we did some fast running but, I'm not sure every athlete sprinted.
Note: I have to digress for a minute and mention that Coach Steve Bunker who runs our Middleton facility had been advocating doing timed 10's for years.
I pushed back against timed sprints (and Coach Bunker) for two really bad reasons:
- Setting up the timers every day, changing batteries, dealing with technical difficulty etc. just seemed like too much work. Why not just run 5-6 untimed sprints and be done. In my mind timing just added an unnecessary layer of complexity.
- Fear. Yes fear. Timing made me think of hamstring pulls and, I hate injuries.
But, what's the Animal House line? To paraphrase, “ dumb and lazy is no way to go through life?”
The bottom line is that if you aren't timing, you can't be sure you are sprinting.
I know this may give some people pause but, think about it this way.
For running to be considered “speed work” you need to run at 90% of max speed or faster for the given distance. (Some might even say 95%)
Logically then if we don't know the speed over a given distance, how we can we determine if we've passed the 90% threshold? 90% of what?
In other words if I don't know how fast you can run ten yards, how can I know what 90% of that is? ( Note- 10 yds takes about 1.5 seconds on average. That means that anything over 1.65 isn't speed work)
The reality is that in my first 38 years we ran a lot. I'm not sure how much actual speed work we did. The devil is in the details as they say.
One thing I know is that the “eye test” doesn't work.
Timing creates intent and when done properly creates intrinsic competition. The timer also encourages self-organization without the fear of “losing”.
Note: we never race. Not racing eliminates a potentially powerful and negative extrinsic variable ( an opponent in a race).
So, we've talked a lot about problems and mistakes, how about a few potential solutions?
In Part 3, I will go over some solutions.